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Anne Elliott
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The Artstars (Blue Light Books) Kindle Edition

by Anne Elliott (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
5.0 out of 5 stars 12 ratings

These stories about struggling artists are “a fierce and funny exploration of creation and its discontents” (Steve Almond, author of My Life in Heavy Metal).
 
Set in various creative communities—an art school, an illegal loft studio, a guerrilla street performance troupe—where teamwork and professional jealousy mix, these interconnected short stories by prizewinning author Anne Elliot follow artists as they grapple with economic realities and evolving expectations.
 
A middle-aged poet, reeling from 9/11, fights homesickness, writer’s block, and ladybugs at an artist’s colony. A new empty-nester finds a creative outlet in her community garden, but gets tangled up in garden politics. As the characters pass through each other’s stories, making messes and helping mop them up, some find inspiration in accidents and others are ready to quit art completely. Together, they stumble through the creative process, struggling to make art and find the spark of something new and original within themselves. In a world where the odds of becoming a star are nearly impossible, The Artstars tells the darkly humorous yet moving stories of those who dare to dream.

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  1. Print length
    188 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Indiana University Press
  4. Publication date
    October 1, 2019
  5. File size
    5.2 MB
  6. Page Flip
    Enabled
  7. Word Wise
    Enabled
  8. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"These stories are so visceral, you can almost smell the oil paint, see the light coming out of a horse's ass, as one of her characters observes. A real treat to read. And they're funny too!"―Sonia Pilcer, author of The Last Hotel: A Novel in Suites

"I love these interconnected portraits―elegant, funny, fond―of artists struggling to realize a vision in the face of indifference, misunderstanding, and being very, very broke. They are heroes, deliciously human ones. The Artstarscrackles with irresistible energy and smarts."―Pamela Erens, author of Eleven Hours

"The Artstars is a fierce and funny exploration of creation and its discontents. Anne Elliott's stories are, like the up-and-comer sculptors and poets and fabric artists who populate them, droll, ambitious, and hungry for meaning. They are about the struggle to make art, to outlast your doubts and debts, and to find love, which is to say they are about the human heart revealing itself. A gorgeous collection."―Steve Almond, author of My Life in Heavy Metal and God Bless America

"The Artstars is about what people are willing to do – have always been willing to do, really – to be artists: take meaningless day jobs, endure writer's block, weather bad reviews, live in substandard housing, and collect rejection letters while friends collect accolades."―Portland Press Herald

Review

The Artstars is a fierce and funny exploration of creation and its discontents. Anne Elliott's stories are, like the up-and-comer sculptors and poets and fabric artists who populate them, droll, ambitious, and hungry for meaning. They are about the struggle to make art, to outlast your doubts and debts, and to find love, which is to say they are about the human heart revealing itself. A gorgeous collection.

-- Steve Almond, author of My Life in Heavy Metal and God Bless America

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07V9QY45M
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Indiana University Press (October 1, 2019)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 1, 2019
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 5.2 MB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 188 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    5.0 out of 5 stars 12 ratings

About the author

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Anne Elliott

Anne Elliott

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Anne Elliott is the author of The Artstars (Blue Light Books/Indiana University Press, 2019) and The Beginning of the End of the Beginning (Ploughshares Solos, 2014). Her short stories can be found in A Public Space, Crab Orchard Review, Witness, Hobart, Bellevue Literary Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Fugue, The Normal School, and elsewhere. Honors include fellowships from the Table 4 Writers Foundation and Vermont Studio Center. In addition to writing fiction, Elliott has been a performance poet, ukulelist, Wall Street analyst, database programmer, and publisher of tiny books. She lives in Southern Maine with her husband and many pets.

Learn more at www.anneelliottstories.com.

Customer reviews

5 out of 5 stars
12 global ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

  • clem paulsen
    5.0 out of 5 stars Artistic Comings-of-Age
    Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2019
    Verified Purchase
    Being a fan of artist biographies, I had read some Elliott somewhere else and was interested in a particular genre to which I've always been attracted, the artistic coming-of-age. My interest is New York School - so what.

    Unlike 'normal' people (joking) an artist reaches maturity only after some conscious struggle. Cheese Monkeys, characters from Balzac, the prototype of the artist-in-garret, there's a lot of messy experimentation by these characters, often resulting in nothing but a bunch o projects kept in the basement until you decide to attend nursing school. Or whatever.

    The first story Light from a Horse's Ass adds a twist -- it's a coming of age within the current academic 'training' of culture workers. Following process while secretly trying to annihilate it.

    And the freaking thing is written in second person singular!! It's like the 'on' in French or the Mann in German. 'One does.' 'One thinks.' It's like an Everyman kind of thing.

    Going on too long here. The first and last stories are the most successful. The last, 'Beginning the End of Beginning' is a story with an interesting structure -- the lives of an artist manque intersecting with the life of a 'responsible citizen manque. The rigor of one a mystery to one as it is to the other.

    Worth it, particularly if you are an artist or interested in artistic process/chaos.
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  • Cynthia
    5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific collection
    Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2021
    Verified Purchase
    This is a collection of short stories (and one novella), in which a single cast of characters drift in and out of the narratives. Each story features one particular protagonist in a given landscape, which changes to suit the needs of plot dynamics. Five-stars for Ms. Elliott!
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  • Laura Berry
    5.0 out of 5 stars Best book I’ve read in a long while. Recommend!!
    Reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2020
    Verified Purchase
    An amazing read following the thread of artists whose lives took me away from the COVID 19 pandemic like nothing else I tried. I loved the characters, each so unique but all so lovable and imperfect and real!! So we’ll written I felt like the author was sitting in the room telling the story. I liked this better than Disappearing Earth, which was similar in style. Read this book!! I loved it.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Andy Johnson
    5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended
    Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2020
    These 9 stories are a pleasure to read. The mechanics of writing are solid and never get in the way. The writing flows comfortaby, never bogged down by anything awkward or difficult to understand.
    Each story focuses on one character, mostly artists who are struggling with their lives in relation to their art and/or in relation to other people. There is a wide variety of characters and situations. Yet all of the stories give a sense of being written by someone who has experienced what she is writing about. The couple of characters and situations that I have experienced personally (such as the middle-aged woman dealing with her daughters growing up and leaving home) I felt were emotionally spot-on. The vocabulary and outlook of a wide variety of artists - photographers, trapeze artists, performance artists etc were very believable.
    There are some quirky characters and people do not always behave well, but the stories are sympathetic. The author understands and cares about her characters.
    The stories are not light-hearted, but they are told with humor - humorous turns of phrases, humorous observations, and humorous situations. The humor falls flat sometimes but I have to admit I chuckled a many times and laughed aloud twice.
    Some of the endings seem forced. It feels like the author thought that there needed to be well-defined conclusions. Since these stories are more about people than plot, I don't think they really need definitive conclusions.
    Characters in one story often appear as minor characters in another story. Mostly that seems like an unnecessary and rather awkward device to tie the stories together. It made me struggle to remember names and events that ultimately I didn't really need to remember. However, a couple of times it seemed like a useful device. For example in one story a character quotes from sessions with her therapist and you realize that you met that therapist as the husband of a character in a previous story. In that case, it was useful because it was unnesseary for the author to explain the type of therapy and therapist.
    These stories share a humorous and very kind observation of quirky people. They delight in the offbeat. I start many books and finish few of them because most are just not worth reading (not well written, contrived, humorless). I was startled to find how much I enjoyed these stories. I actually read this book two times to be sure that I wanted to recommend it. And I recommend it highly.
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