#170- The Human Fly- T.C. Boyle
With a name like the Human Fly, you’d expect Metamorphosis,
and then when you get a Kafka quote at the head of the story, its from The
Hunger Artist. Then you start reading it and it’s about a circus performer
pushing the boundaries of his daring and you think about First Sorrow and the
trapeze artist that wants to stay on his trapeze a all times. Cleary this is
literary tribute to Franz Kafka.
This homage comes in the form of an inside look at the world
of a low-level entertainment agent. At this moment, he had three clients: “A
nasally infected twelve year-old with pushy parents…a comic with a harelip that
did only harelip jokes; and a soft rock band called Mu, who believed they were
reincarnated court musicians from the lost continent of Atlantis.”
That was until a man dressed in a red cape with a swim cap
walked into his small back office. The man was Zoltan Mindszenty aka. La Mosca
Humana, the Human Fly. He wanted to be famous. He had already gotten press for
his public climbing stunts in Mexico, but wanted exposure here. He began by
hanging himself 21 stories above the street in a sack.
“As it turned out he, stayed there, aloft for two weeks. And
for some reason—because he was intractable, absurd, mad beyond hope or
redemption—the press couldn’t get enough of it.”
Sounds like a familiar mix of modern reality TV and David
Blaine. He survived the stunt, and a few more before taking one step too far.
But he did become famous. Boyle, like many writers seem to have a love/hate
thing for entertainment agencies. They can be
“…a mercenary, a huckster who’d watch a man die for ten
percent of the action.”
While they always disdain the agency or the business, the
agent themselves seem to be written with a more gentler pen, be it respect,
empathy or just pity, who knows?
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