It wasn’t real; it was a stage set

I fell in love with three men and two women last week. If you read my blog (shameless plug: hendersonhouseofcards.wordpress.com) or follow my Twitter (shameless plug 2: @avesdad) you know how easily I fall in and out love. Tell me you love me after nine weeks and you’re out. Let me sit with my back to a wall instead of to a crowd of people in a restaurant, and you’re in, at least until you tell me you love me after nine weeks, and then you’re out.

You’ve probably never heard of these three men and two women with whom I have fallen in love, which is a shame because I bet if, given the chance, you’d fall in love with the Family Fang – Caleb and Camille, and their children, Annie and Buster – and their progenitor, Kevin Wilson, too.

The Fangs are artists. They (strive to) inspire flashmobs (free chicken sandwiches!) and incestuous kisses (Romeo and Juliet, a story of forbidden love, being played by a brother and sister, how exciting!) and even stage attempts at love (engagements at 70,000 feet; weddings in front of judgmental Vegas witnesses), but their greatest achievement – Annie and Buster (Child A and Child B) who participated in the Fang’s performances (I lack a better word) and grew into artists in their own right – movie star and author, respectively.

Annie flashes her tits, abandons her screenwriter boyfriend, loses a plum part in a movie franchise, and returns home. Buster has one well-reviewed and award-winning novel under his belt and a not-so-well-reviewed novel under his belt, gets shot with a potato gun, and returns home. Caleb and Camille welcome home their offspring open-armed, and then promptly vanish.

Has the Fangs been kidnapped and killed (unlikely, believes Annie) or have they simply staged another attempt at causing a commotion (probably, but, who can say) and, if so, or if not, what next for the artists formerly known as Child A and Child B? And is this entire situation simply one last attempt to make a splash in an art field that has sprinted past the Fangs (anything for self-promotion, shameless or not)?

Which is when I started falling in love with the clan.

Kevin Wilson is unassuming, and I thought, listening to him read last week at Harvard Bookstore, that he is almost unaware of the world he has created and populated with mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters that I wish were members of my family.

My family is odd (which surprises no one who knows or reads me; looking for a way to do either? See above) and I am odd and my brother is odd (though not odd like I am odd; odd in his own way) and my relationship with the mother of my children is odd and my children are odd and I like that my children are odd and that their mother and I are odd and have an odd relationship – because, seriously, if you’re not odd, then you’re boring. And I hate boring people more than I hate boring books.

Are you boring? If you have to think about your answer – say yes, and you know I’ll hate you; say no, and I’ll probably call you a liar – then you’re probably boring. And I’m boring for even asking you, or suggesting you owe me an answer. Odd is odd is odd is odd. Let me paraphrase here (and 10 points if you know the source): But every family is fucking odd in its own fucking way.

Lately, I’ve come to enjoy the word fuck. This enjoyment will more than likely pass. Thanks for indulging me.

Boring sucks, and the Fangs, despite their flaws and foibles, and anything but boring. So get to know them. You won’t be disappointed.

You know how I know Wilson has done something remarkable with The Family Fang – not only do I love the book (I’ve been in a book funk, though I’m emerging from it thanks to the crop of books currently on my nightstand) but the woman in front of me had seven copies signed and dated, no personalization.

So many copies, Wilson said. Are you sure I can’t sign one of these to you.

No, the woman said. I work at a home for the mentally ill. They’re going to love these books.

In other words, a woman who planned to put the books on a resale site, upping the price because Wilson has touched and signed the book – and dated, don’t forget the date, because if the book wins an award, books signed pre-award are theoretically worth more than books signed post-award because, post-award, everyone will know who Wilson is.

And I fell in love with Wilson when I encountered this passage: Art, if you loved it, was worth any amount of unhappiness and pain. If you had to hurt someone to achieve those ends, so be it. If the outcome was beautiful enough, strange enough, memorable enough, it did not matter. It was worth it.

(I would have loved him a bit more had he refused to sign the books for the woman claiming to work at a home for the mentally ill. Nope, not going to do it. That’s what I wish he had said. And if she works at a home for the mentally ill, God bless her.)

I agree with Wilson, which might be why I love him a little, and I live like the Fangs, which might be why I love them (no, I do not include my children – both Child As, come to think about it –
in my artistic endeavors), and I believe (as does Annie) that life, if lived right, is very much like a movie, and you don’t get to read the screenplay, but you know one exists, which is how you know your ending will be happy.

And not boring.