Thank you to the publisher for allowing me to read and review this ARC. Full review to be found on Goodreads and on my website.

Existential Angst Meets Performance Art

Our narrator allows his "...uncle to manipulate [him] into traveling to a foreign country to supply material for a performance art project that would almost certainly produce nothing but a complicated spectacle of confusion, humiliation, and rage". This book is the tale of that complicated spectacle, (with all of its attendant confusion, humiliation, and rage), and much more.

I truly enjoyed reading this book. I'm not an underliner, but if I were I would have had highlights on every page. Much of the writing here is smart and insightful and sharp and edgy. There are books that grab you at the right time and the right age and make an impression on you, (consider being twenty and reading Borges or Vonnegut or even Donleavy), but as you get older that right time/right age grab becomes rarer. Then, after you're sixty or so, when you don't really need authors to tell you how to think or live, (and you've found most of your "self", or at least the more interesting parts), it's all about style and skill and the perfect phrase or arresting moment, and that's where this author got me.

Lots of times, at least with regard to current fiction, the heroes of existential angst walkabout novels tend to be the sort of characters you just want to shake or slap upside the head. Well written or not, the books are hard to read mainly because the main characters just become too tiresome to abide. The great appeal of this book is that we have an angsty hero, Stanley, who is angsty in an interesting and substantial fashion that actually gets you invested in his situation. Even better, he is surrounded by compelling and surreal characters who hold your attention even when your interest in the main character begins to wane.

Here, our hero is caught in a web of unreality fashioned by his artist uncle. As a slightly befuddled, but also thoughtful and observant, everyman, our hero has to consider and react to the absurdity that is playing itself out around him. We are his companions as we read along, and live the story both by sharing his often hilarious and/or touching flashback memories, and following the real time events that assail him as his uncle's mark. The result is both rollicking and thoughtful, which is never a bad combination. How often do you get writing that is shrewd and tender in equal measure?

That said, while Stanley is an interesting enough protagonist, it seems fair to observe that he begins to wear out the reader after a while. (Indeed, toward the end of the book the character actors have to start explaining Stanley to Stanley in order to keep Stanley moving toward a new, self-aware Stanley. How many of us get such nice crib notes?) Luckily, as I say, new interesting characters keep piling out of the clown car, so we stay tuned right up to the abrupt end. It helps that the narrative is often laugh out loud funny. The author has a way with banter, the bemused aside, and the edgy deadpan throwaway line that keeps the tale moving and offers surprising treats along the way. Thinking about it now, I suspect most of my highlighting would have come in the first half of the book. But that was quite enough.

(Please note that I received a free ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

Stanley has come to Prague at the invitation of his uncle, to flat-sit for a few days. He’s fleeing his life in Chicago, hoping that a new place, a new context, might give him a valuable new perspective on his troubles. And yet this isn’t exactly a holiday. From the moment he arrives, Stanley is defensive and on-edge, because his uncle’s invitation isn’t as benign as it appears. His uncle Lech is an artist, the guiding light of a group of eccentric performance artists, and the mastermind of a series of immersive works that frequently slip across the ethical borderline into exploitation and humiliation. In coming to Prague, Stanley has agreed to act as the lynchpin for a new, daring work that will push his uncle’s work ever further into the grey area between art and life. For the next three days, Stanley knows that Lech’s troupe of misfits will be targeting him: seeking ways to draw him into their story; trying to shape his experience and force his actions into the line of their plot. Needless to say, Stanley has other intentions. From the moment he meets the first of his uncle’s ‘representatives’ at the airport, he does all he can to ignore the whole wretched circus. But are we really capable of choosing to be non-participants in a plot which revolves around us?

Scapellato’s book presents itself as ‘absurdist noir’, and could be summarised, reductively, as Kafka with mimes. Everywhere Stanley goes, his uncle’s cronies are on his tail, setting up awkward encounters, confronting him with performances of episodes from his own life, taking on the roles of his family and friends, and leaving disturbing chalk outlines of those he loves in the foyer of his apartment. He’s surrounded by things that he knows to be absurd, but which seem to appear normal to everyone else. As Stanley tries harder and harder to avoid this artwork based on his own existence, he finds himself forced into ever more extreme behaviour. Is there an element of the old saying: that you can never outrun yourself? Certainly, there’s a correlation between the discombobulation of Stanley’s experiences in Prague and the gradual disintegration of his sense of self – but is his uncle’s plan causing this disintegration or revealing it?

At first, Stanley is pretty confident that he knows who he is: his self-knowledge is strong enough to identify a disturbing void at the centre of himself that is not ‘him’. But what is it? As we follow Stanley through his time in Prague, and through the ruminations it inspires, we see that in fact he has been dancing on the edge of disintegration for some time. He has a series of failed relationships; he has subconsciously sabotaged his chosen career as an archaeologist. It turns out that he would have been better off trying to excavate his own psyche. He has spent his whole life trying to force himself into a mould that doesn’t quite fit, inventing himself. Indeed, Stanley’s ‘self’ seems to be just as unconvincing a creation as the roles taken on by his uncle’s artist friends in Prague. Everyone is playing a role. Some are just more conscious of it than others. And has Stanley’s uncle set up this Prague art project in order to humiliate his confused, flailing nephew, or to free him? To allow him, through the chaos of the absurd, to finally perceive something true about life – something that might just give Stanley the chance to discover who he is?

I enjoyed the idea behind the book, and the frequent homages to film noir (in fact, I thought it might work well as a film itself), but elements of the execution jarred with me. The story is structured in chapters of varying length, whose headings – which loyally describe Stanley’s actions in the third person – are sometimes longer and more involved than the chapter itself. They have an air of wallowing in their own cleverness. The ending is abrupt and, to me at least, rather unsatisfying, but perhaps that’s what I should have expected from a book in this genre. The characterisation isn’t all that strong, and what we do learn about the characters doesn’t make them particularly engaging. Even supposedly important characters – such as Stanley’s (ex?) girlfriend T – are never developed beyond mere sketches, though I suppose you could argue that this underlines the solipsistic nature of Stanley’s existence. Is he so lost in himself that he’s unable truly to perceive anyone else except as an extension of his own experience? I feel that there are interesting points for discussion here. Maybe this is better as a book-club book rather than something to read by yourself, at a time which in many ways is more absurd than anything an author could create?

If you have the patience for something along the lines of ‘Kafka with mimes in Prague’, then by all means have a go at this. Although it didn’t quite hit the mark with me, I can’t shake off the feeling that that’s the fault of the reader rather than the author. It has flair and creativity, and I wish I’d known about it when I went to Prague a couple of years ago, because it would certainly have given that trip a quirky literary flavour. But unfortunately, at this particular moment in time, it was more of a task than a pleasure to read.

For the review, please see my blog:
https://theidlewoman.net/2020/10/25/the-made-up-man-joseph-scapellato/#more-54656

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in return for a honest review.

The premise of this book was very intriguing.
Stanley, an archaeology graduate dropout, decided to take his uncle Lech's offer to apartment-sit for him at Prague knowing that he will be the main star of his uncle's next performance art project.
I can't bring myself to like this book or any of the characters. The decisions and actions Stanley made throughout the book were very confusing and baseless. He just seems depressed and angry all the time. The structure of the book with the titles is different, but it didn't really add anything for me. The art project itself was also very aimless and its purpose was not very clear.
Maybe this genre is not for me.

Scapellato's novel is a conversation on finding one's identity in today's vast pool of choices. It is a novel also about art and its relation to reality. Scapellato creates a main character that even though may not be everyone's cup of tea, has enough fragility that finds one irresistibly rooting for; Stanley is a flawed, self-deprecating, even funny persona and his views on the world he lives in and those who live it with him make for insightful musings and worldly truths.
A book I'd highly recommend for anyone wanting to step out their comfort zone to try something new.

Performance art isn’t everyone’s idea of a good time, and a novel based on an extended act of such art similarly divides the sheep from the lambs. If your taste is for juvenile humor threaded with psychiatric and philosophical insights of an abstract nature, larded with absurdity and repetition, this one may be for you. Me, I found boredom setting in fairly rapidly, aided by a disengaged central character of limited appeal. Maybe one for the boys?

I enjoyed The Made-up Man to begin with, but it didn't really deliver. There was no satisfying resolution so I ended up feeling really frustrated. It had so much potential, but in the endit was a game where nobody won.

The Made-up Man is a disjointed work of fiction in the genre existential noir. The protagonist Stanley is a confused and depressed individual who decides to take a break from his current meaningless life. The Made-up Man is Joseph Scapellato’s debut novel.

Stanley is a 29-year-old Polish-American who drops out of grad school in archaeology. He is having difficulty with his girlfriend T to whom he proposes and she says no. Stanley now feels lost, so he accepts an offer from his uncle Lech to travel to Prague, to apartment sit for him, and to unknowingly take part in one of his uncle’s performance art projects. What follows is a strange self-discovery exercise organized through a series of actors performing in a bizarre noir-like art project that is too close to Stanley's reality.

I do not like this book. The storyline makes no sense initially and as it starts to approach clarity it becomes mundane. I admit I rarely read books or watch films in this genre so I am probably missing the essence of what the author is trying to say.

I find this book novel and humorous in parts, but confusing. Structurally the book is unique, but the lengthy titles and short chapters result in a lot of white space. Non-acting characters are well developed for the most part, but I am confused by the progression of the art project. It is disjointed and non-ending.

I cannot recommend the book because I now realise that this genre is of no interest to me. I rate it as a 2 on 5. However, those that go into this work with an open mind for this genre may find it enjoyable. I want to thank NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with a pre-published digital version of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

In many ways, Scapellato's debut novel isn't unlike "The Third Hotel", but while Van den Berg meditates about impulse, intuition and the subconscious, this author walks the line between art and the artifical. Our narrator is a 29-year-old Polish-American named Stanley who just dropped out of grad school for archaeology and is "on a break" with his mysteriously named girlfriend T after he proposed to her and she said no. While he has obviously never been the most determined human being there is, Stanley now feels completely lost, so he accepts an offer from his uncle to travel to Prague and take part in one of his performace art projects.

So just like in "The Third Hotel", loss, disorientation, alienation and travel feature heavily, but while Van den Berg finds the biggest mysteries inside the gloomy abyss that his her main character's subconsciousness, Scapellato sets out to investigate whether there is anything at all at the core of Stanley, and he does so by mirroring him in his story. He is a failed archaeologist who tried to literally dig up history: "...you discovered a little at a time, you worked to figure out how it fit, you stepped back to study the big picture." The connection to himself though is not the insight he gained, but that he knew he would never be able to fully comprehend the artefacts, as T, an actress, points out, explaining: "...that's what you love about anthropology....The same thing I love about acting: guessing at how to be good at being somebody else."

The rather pretentious performance art Stanley's eccentric uncle comes up with and in which our protagonist seems to be the artistic equivalent of a lab rat accordingly features all kinds of drawings, riddles, theater-like installations, messages etc. in which Stanley's life is mirrored. Not only is there a connection between art and artefact, but even the contemporary art does not give any conclusive evidence regarding who Stanley is, because of, as Stanley puts it, "a space at the center of myself that wasn't me." Stanley does not fully know and understand himself, but frankly, in how far is knowing oneself even possible? This raises the question "if archaeologists were secret artists or if artists were secret archaelogists."

And what's the role of the writer as a particular kind of artist in all this? This book doesn't have a table of contents, but a "List of Scenes". The descriptions of "noir" and "absurd" in the blurb are certainly apt, but the novel is less gritty than it is highly constructed and artificial, which of course makes sense if you look at the topic of the story. Still, I have to admit that the charme of the distinct voice lessened in the second half of the book, because by then I had heard all the rhetoric shticks. Due to the concept, I felt like the book was lacking urgency and power.

Still, this debut novelist had lots of clever ideas and the whole story is certainly way out there, which I appreciate.