Colors Insulting to Nature

Colors Insulting to Nature
Author Cintra Wilson
Country United States
Language English
Genre Fiction
Publisher Harper Perennial
Publication date
2004
Media type Print
Pages 368
ISBN 0-00-715460-7
OCLC 52459920
813/.6 21
LC Class PS3573.I45685 C65 2004

Colors Insulting To Nature is the fictional follow-up novel to Cintra Wilson's previous collection of non-fiction essays in A Massive Swelling. Within the novel, Wilson takes the central theme of her essays, which is America's obsession with celebrity culture, and makes it the starting point for her narration, focusing on the Normal Family, in particular, the aspirations of 13-year-old, Liza.

Plot

Set in the early 1980s, Liza Normal goes on numerous theater and commercial auditions, at the behest of her mother Peppy, who costumes the child in a strapless evening gowns, heavy make-up, and false eyelashes. Humiliations repeat for Liza, as she and her family encounter endless degradation, after opening a dinner theater in Marin County, California. Throughout the first half of the novel, Liza is forced to perform in a dilapidated firehouse, which functions as the theater, as well as the family's home, attend school where she is constantly ridiculed and tormented, and at one point, raped. After this, Liza undergoes several phases, the first of which is a gravitation toward the punk rock aesthetic, specifically embracing and cultivating the look of Plasmatics performer, Wendy O. Williams. Liza eventually becomes involved with a drug pusher, and at one point becomes addicted herself during her stint at "Elf House," which Wilson describes as a commune of hippies who have a fetish with elves and speaking in "Quenya, the J.R.R. Tolkien version of High Elf language." It is during this time, that Liza, while working for Centaur Productions—a company that creates and distributes Slash fiction, that she concocts an "alter ego, Venal de Minus,[1] into a phone sex phenomenon and Las Vegas stage act,"[2] achieving a new definition of success that is a spin-off of the earlier theater ambitions initially sought by her mother.

Reception

References

  1. "USATODAY.com - 'Colors' paints fame as a strange obsession | USA Today, 2004". usatoday.com. Retrieved 2015-08-23.
  2. " San Francisco Chronicle, 2004
  3. "Book Reviews - The New York Times". topics.nytimes.com. Retrieved 2015-08-23.
  4. Library Journal; 5/15/2004, Vol. 129 Issue 9, p117-117, 1/6p
  5. "Color her Cintra / Bay Area's wild child dissects demons, takes on Manhattan - SFGate". articles.sfgate.com. Retrieved 2015-08-23.
  6. Kirkus Reviews, 5/15/2004, Vol. 72 Issue 10, p470-470, 1/3p
  7. Publishers Weekly; 5/31/2004, Vol. 251 Issue 22, p46-46, 1/5p
  8. Wilson, C. (2005). Colors Insulting to Nature: A Novel. HarperCollins. ISBN 9780007154579. Retrieved 2015-08-23.

See also

Montgomery McFate

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