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    The Petting Zoo: A Novel
    The Petting Zoo: A Novel
    The Petting Zoo: A Novel
    Audiobook13 hours

    The Petting Zoo: A Novel

    Written by Jim Carroll

    Narrated by Scott Brick

    3/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    When poet, musician, and diarist Jim Carroll died in September 2009, he was putting the finishing touches on a potent work of fiction. The Petting Zoo tells the story of Billy Wolfram, an enigmatic thirty-eight-year-old artist who has become a hot star in the late 1980s New York art scene. As the novel opens, Billy, after viewing a show of VelAzquez paintings, is so humbled and awed by their spiritual power that he suffers an emotional breakdown and withdraws to his Chelsea loft. In seclusion, Billy searches for the divine spark in his own work and life.

    Carroll's novel moves back and forth in time to present emblematic moments from Billy's life (his Irish Catholic upbringing, his teenage escapades, his evolution as an artist and meteoric rise to fame) and sharply etched portraits of the characters who mattered most to him, including his childhood friend Denny MacAbee, now a famous rock musician; his mentor, the unforgettable art dealer Max Bernbaum; and one extraordinary black bird. Marked by Carroll's sharp wit, hallucinatory imagery, and street-smart style, The Petting Zoo is a frank, haunting examination of one artist's personal and professional struggles.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateNov 4, 2010
    ISBN9781400188772
    The Petting Zoo: A Novel
    Author

    Jim Carroll

    JIM CARROLL published technical articles in the diagnostic-medical field and the children’s picture book, Dusty the Wanna-be Cat. He is an amateur watercolorist and resides in East Hanover, NJ.

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    Reviews for The Petting Zoo

    3/5

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    • 2/5
      Billy Wolfram's art has shot him into the dazzling New York limelight. As the story opens, he has just viewed a Velasquez painting and is so overwhelmed that he experiences an emotional breakdown. The upshot is a few days confinement in a mental hospital, courtesy of the police department, followed by weeks of reclusive soul-searching and reflection.Jim Carroll has written a story that is atmospheric and entertaining in a poignant sort of way. I sympathize with Billy and there are a few times when I can almost - but not quite - understand what he is thinking. Although Billy's offbeat life is described with inventive imagery, events are so disjointed that the story does not flow easily. And I have to admit that I did not fully understand the role of the illusory talking raven. My take on the raven was purely guesswork.The Petting Zoo is written in the third person, producing the odd effect of a memoir written by someone other than the subject. The story wanders and creeps along in places. I'd like to think that if Jim Carroll had lived to finish the book to his satisfaction, it would have been substantially different. Disappointing.
    • 3/5
      Carroll's only novel published posthumously. There are some great moments in this somewhat autobiographical story when Carroll's characteristic humor and wit shine through. He died before completing the final revisions which may account for why the last third of narrative seems a bit muddled.
    • 4/5
      “O great creator of being/grant us one more hour to/perform our art/& perfect our lives” An American Prayer, Jim Morrison“The Petting Zoo” is a poet’s look back, not only at his life, but the art, celebrity, and the ideas that guided him. “The Petting Zoo” was Jim Carroll’s first and last novel, he died shortly before putting the finishing edits on the book. For those fans of Carroll’s or books with a poetic bent, “The Petting Zoo” is a must read.Most people are aware of Jim Carroll through “The Basketball Diaries” either the 1978 book or the 1995 movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Carroll also fronted The Jim Carroll Band which released one album “Catholic Boy.” But Carroll was foremost a poet, and had his poems published and lauded while still in his teens (“Living at the Movies”). I’ve been a fan of Carroll’s work since The Jim Carroll Band, and have read most of his poetry. When I ran across “The Petting Zoo” I was a little hesitant because sometimes poets don’t come across well when they move to the novel. The esoteric ideas that work well in poems just don’t translate that well to fiction. But I over came that objection and let curiosity and my liking of Carroll’s earlier work to sway me, and I bought it, and I was glad I did.“The Petting Zoo” is an artists look backwards at his life. Carroll’s character surrogate is Billy Wolfram a New York painter who at mid-life is suffering a crisis of just about every order from insecurity in his work, to women problems, and even the lack of spirituality in his work. During an opening, Billy is driven into the New York night by these newly manifested demons where he meets a crow that talks to him. Billy is then taken to a mental hospital for observation. Upon his release Billy reassess every area of his life with the occasional guiding insight from the crow, a crow that is older and has a much more complicated relationship with humanity than it at first seems. “The Petting Zoo” isn’t “The Basketball Diaries” the middle aged years. If anything, it reminds me more of Patti Smith’s “Just Kids,” it has the same feel. Maybe that shouldn’t be too surprising, New York as a locale is a highlight of both books, as well the artists looking back at their careers, Smith non-fictionally at the early, optimistic years she shared with Robert Mapplethorpe, and Carroll at the whole career of an artist and aspects of a career that Smith in “Just Kids” would have considered their wildest dreams.Writers have cast themselves or their fictional alter egos as artists before, Hemingway and Vonnegut to name a couple. It seems a good simile for a writer especially a poet to identify with. Poets have to use words thickly like the painter’s colors, words thick with meaning, and Carroll doesn’t waste any words, each seems carefully chosen. I usually read fast but I found myself slowing down to enjoy the lyricism of Carroll’s writing, enjoying the sensation of Carroll’s words soaking in like a drug. There’s almost a tactile feel to Carroll’s imagery. He remembers sensations and translates that sense memory very ably to the reader. I rarely highlight passages in books or make annotations, but I found myself doing both throughout the book, finding passages either strikingly insightful or poetic. Such as the story of why a baby cries upon being born is mesmerizing and a beautiful perspective. This is a book I didn’t want to finish, not because it was bad but because I wanted to savor, to maximize the ecstatic state the writing put me in.I quoted Jim Morrison at the top of this review because that is how Jim Carroll lived his life, as an artist. He reportedly died at his desk writing until the end trying to get that “one more hour” to perform his art. You can look at “The Petting Zoo” as an attempt to perfect his life. I remember from his poems he wrote of wanting to be “pure” and the thought is the same as Morrison’s to “perfect our lives” with “The Petting Zoo” being an attempt to find that purity or perfection, as if it were a literary ablution.I wonder if Carroll was aware of his imminent mortality, a lot of “The Petting Zoo” seems valedictory. If anyone knows Carroll’s earlier work they know he embraced and struggled with his Catholic upbringing, especially in light of the life he led. A lot of “The Petting Zoo” questions whether we’re blind to our own problems that outsiders can easily see, faith and religion is one of the possible solutions he considered and continued to struggle with, the remnants of that early “Catholic Boy” faith remained with him longer than most and until the end.I know a lot of people won’t “get” this book, there are a few shortcomings like towards the end some of the dialogue all of the sudden comes at you in big chunks, maybe because Carroll died before he had a chance to polish it. There are discussions of aesthetics, I know that usually doesn’t inspire the fiction reader towards a book but Carroll crafted this novel so well, the fluidity and lyricism of the writing is compelling. I hope people give this book a try. We’ve all played the game where we’re asked if we had only one book, one movie, one anything on a deserted island what would that be? I think “The Petting Zoo” would be the book I choose.
    • 4/5
      I had the pleasure of seeing Jim Carroll read at a local college in the 1990s. I was hooked. During that reading, he talked of this idea for a novel about an artist who is caught in a spiritual dilemma and is visited by the raven from Noah’s Ark. He then told the unfortunate events surrounding the artist’s sexual awakening, which was hilarious and shocking. You can hear a very similar telling on the spoken-word recording Praying Mantis. It’s a fascinating premise. That idea is the core of The Petting Zoo.The novel opens with the protagonist, 38-year-old Billy Wolfram, rushing out of a Velázquez art exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Billy is a mysterious star who quickly rose to the top of the New York art world in the 1980s. His work has never really been criticized, and he keeps virtually everyone at a safe emotional distance. He sees some form of spirituality in Velazquez’s paintings that causes him to question his own art and ability. He immediately has an emotional breakdown, which is the beginning of his inner journey to finding his own artistic spirituality.After blindly running from the museum, Billy finds himself at a closed, run-down petting zoo and climbs the fence. There he encounters a talking raven who becomes something akin to Dante’s Virgil. This isn’t just any raven. It’s the raven Noah sent out before the dove, and the bird only shows up at just the right moments to try to guide Billy. Billy is forced to spend a few days in the psychiatric ward of the hospital, and then goes into seclusion in his loft. It is during this seclusion that Billy broods and meditates on his life and his art, and the reader learns what has brought Billy to this point.While the book was in the final stages of editing last year, Carroll died while working at his desk. I’ll be honest. I don’t know that I can truly write an objective review. The novel is so infused with Carroll’s style, voice, and humor that I imagine anyone who already loves Carroll’s work will like the book, flaws and all. The writing is beautiful, as you would aspect from a poet of Carroll’s caliber. It’s full of everything that is infused in his poetry- hallucinatory imagery, artistic intelligence, street smarts; and references to religion, history, and mysticism.Unfortunately, anyone who has never read Carroll will probably dislike the book. The first 80 pages or so of the novel are riveting as a traditional novel, but once Billy goes into seclusion, the book becomes Carroll’s meditation on art and the inner workings of the artist’s mind more than it is a traditional novel. I don’t know if that was his intent or if that would have changed with more editing. Billy’s seclusion is filled with long inner dialogues and memories that serve as characterization but make the narrative seem disjointed. The plot slips away as the novel progresses, and the end feels very unfinished and unsatisfying as a novel.As a fan of Jim Carroll’s writing, those long inner dialogues and seemingly disjointed memories are important. They seem to give insight into Carroll’s own thoughts on the artistic mind and on his own life. If you know anything about Carroll’s life, it’s impossible not to see the biographical elements in his characters. It’s unfortunate that the book bears the flaws of an unfinished novel and will likely not garner much praise from critics or the casual reader, but I’m glad we have it.
    • 3/5
      I'm not sure how I feel about this book. Like 'The Basketball Diaries' this book has a strong element of autobiography running throughout, though the protagonist is a celebrated artist rather than writer. Frightened into a panic attack by a piece of art at an exhibit, he is committed to a hospital's psychiatric ward. His panic attack has led him to flee the art show and end up in a closed petting zoo, only to hear a voice speaking to him, a raven he sees in a tree while in the zoo. In his confused and manic state he ends up at the hospital.Billy spends the novel trying to push through his memories and urges to create his new canvasses for his upcoming show. The raven continues to visit him.Parts of the book were reminiscent of other books. For instance, in dealing with his past he confronts memories reminiscent of Phillip Roth's 'Portnoy's Complaint'. Carroll's language and construction prevents it from seeming derivative or copiest, and his ability to use language to create mental pictures is what keeps this looking fresh and new. He has taken on a huge task with this book, in trying to show the pain and instability of the protagonist, the dark labyrinths of the mind of the artist. I can't picture this as anything other than autobiographical images of his own life.As I said, I don't know how I feel about the book. It took me a while to get to read it. It took me a while to continue to read it. I struggled with it a bit. I found it troubling, somehow, as if I were a voyeur, watching someone's life struggles and pain. While I appreciate his ability with language and image, I can't say that I loved this book. Perhaps it may be more true to say I admire it. Still, I won't likely read it again. I don't usually invite such feelings.
    • 2/5
      The Petting Zoo is the novel that poet and musician Jim Carroll was working on when he died in September 2009. The book starts well. The premise has legs, and the first forty pages are written with promising energy and rich detail. But soon the work begins to struggle.The author makes mistakes that published novelists and writing instructors consistently warn against. All the characters speak in the same voice with a similar lexicon; nothing makes their speech distinctive. A great deal of exposition is written as dialogue, making much of it awkward to the reader's mental ear. The secondary characters lack development, the narrative patterning is cumbersome, and the themes and symbolism are treated ham-fistedly. There is an ambitious vision in this book, but the telling is so flawed by amateurish narrative issues and the writer's hyperbolic infatuation with his main character that the vision cannot be realized. Much more substantive editorial work was required to bring this book to a publishable standard. As a book editor, I know how difficult it is to work with posthumous manuscripts. Having read the book, I believe the decision to publish the manuscript was an error, one that won't add to Jim Carroll's artistic reputation. I doubt an unsigned writer who submitted a manuscript of this calibre would be put under contract, and if he were, the book would not be published until the major flaws were corrected. There are some strong moments, particularly early in the text, but overall this book is unrewarding.
    • 5/5
      This was a very enjoyable novel to read. At times it mesmerized me and at other times I found myself quite concerned about the main character. This is what a novel should do for the reader, not just entertain but rivet the reader's eyes to the page. But then stories of artists and musicians have always interested me. I found that the raven as a character was most interesting. He shows up occasionally to talk to Billy Wolfram, a painter with an international reputation and a lot of personal problems. The raven claims to be immortal and tries to guide Billy on his journey through life and eventually through his death. So while this novel is not perfect, it gave me lots to think about and I didn't want to miss a word. This was Jim Carroll's only novel and for that I am sad.
    • 2/5
      In this sadly disappointing and quite forgettable work of fiction JC lingers about to no avail. In the end, was this 'unfinished' mess of a book churned out by the publishers to simply capitalize on Carroll's death??!!??P.S. His memoir 'The Basketball Diaries' was extremely overrated IMHO
    • 1/5
      Ever since I put my name in to receive books for review, I've been metaphorically dreading this book. There have been books I've received that I disliked, but they were never objectively bad books; they might not be good books, or they just might not be for me, but I'd never have actually called them bad. This one, however, has no other way to describe it.So, a quick plot summary: Billy Wolfram, in his 30s, is a genius painter who has a breakdown at an art show, winds up in a mental ward, and when released tries to figure out just what in his past is troubling him so that he can go back to being a genius painter. Oh yes, and this genius painter is occasionally visited by a mystical talking raven who has been assigned to the genius painter in order to impart cryptic wisdom.Did you get tired of me telling you that Billy Wolfram is a genius painter? If so, then stay away from this book, because if there's one thing it likes doing is telling you how brilliant Billy is, either via the narrator or with faceless characters popping in just long enough to congratulate Billy on being such an artistic genius.But that's a bit of a cheap shot. The old adage is "show, don't tell", and in text it's a bit difficult to show a painting. A slightly more skilled writer, however, would have made the telling slightly less obvious and less abrasive, and that may have had happened had Carroll lived to finish revising the novel. So some of the roughness, perhaps, could be explained by that.On the other, the works numerous other flaws leave me doubting. For starters, there's Carrolls love of adjectives — Billy's "precocious intelligence" is mentioned multiple times, and his "buoyant imagination" makes at least one appearance — leaves the text choppy, disrupting what little flow the turgid prose has. It also results in all the characters becoming personality-free blanks who all speak, generally at length, in the exact same style, which also happens to be the same style as the third-person narration. To illustrate this point: towards the end, in the middle of a pair of lengthy speeches, my eyes missed the spot where the switch between speakers was mentioned. It wasn't until the end of the second speech, when it was indicated that the original speaker then responded, that I realized that it was actually a dialogue as opposed to the lengthy monologue that I had assumed. All of which means that really, whenever the characters (or the narrator) stop to explain something at length, the novel comes off as a bit of an overly long monologue. And expect it to be explained at length, because it's almost as if Carroll is so scared of you not getting it that he's afraid to let anything pass without pedantically explaining every little detail of whatever the theory being expounded or motivation for a character's action is.All of the above is compounded by one final flaw: the plot is nothing but clichés. From the mental asylum scenes, where Billy meets various quirky inmates who mutter cryptic yet profound insights, to the final scene where, while he's dying, the mystic raven once again appears to explain everything in detail, it's a never-ending sequence of clichéd scenes, characters, and events.If I hadn't been sent the book for free I'd have said that I wasted my money. Instead, I just feel that I wasted my time.
    • 3/5
      The late Jim Carroll's The Petting Zoo, which tells the story of Billy Wolfram, a popular artist living in New York City, had potential. The story is interesting enough - Billy suffers a mental breakdown while viewing a Velasquez painting and spends a couple of days in a mental hospital. This breakdown makes him feel as if he has lost his ability to paint and create, and thus he retreats into isolation in his loft. Much of the story details Billy's younger life and what has made him the quirky, creative person he is. I would have like to have seen more development of Denny, Billy's lifelong best friend, and Marta, his live-in assistant. Both of these characters seem like they were very important to Billy's life, yet I've walked away from reading this novel without much of an impression of them. Part of the problem is Carroll's use of extended monologues by all of the characters. There is nothing to distinguish between the speech styles of the different characters. Since Carroll was only putting the finishing touches on this work when he died, it is possible that more refinement of the dialogue was intended.Overall, this book was okay. I enjoyed the overarching story, but the mechanics and the journey to get through the story were unrefined and distracting.
    • 1/5
      I hate to speak ill of the recently dead, and Jim Carroll seems like he was a sincere and decent person, but we have to think about the happiness of the living, and that means it's incumbent upon me to warn the world of this unpleasant sludge of Catholic guilt, cliche-ridden homilies about the New York art world, and constant, constant telling you how it is. In keeping with his ponderous style--making much out of not much, like rolling your gruel around in your mouth to pretend it tastes like something--it takes Carroll 222 pages to write his way around to the point where the book names itself: "Denny didn't want to deflate Billy's enthusiasm by telling him that his ideas were not very original ... [t]he odd thing was that Billy was making all this out to be some big discovery, but these vague theories, which he clearly hoped would make an impression on Denny, were standard arcane trivia that Billy already knew." Billy's problem is also Carroll's problem, and the fact that he worked on this book for 20 years and this was the end result suggests he probably knew it. Like the tedious ass at the party--the guy who was super into, like, punk rock and never, ever moved on, who rolls out the same tired detritus about Walt Disney being cryogenically frozen or which sex scenes in which movies are unsimulated or Jimmy Page doing a girl with a red snapper--and that last one is a great example, because I looked it up on Wikipedia because what was that about again? and it's got a whole page under "Shark episode" and like, we all know exactly as much about that as we ever would want to, or in many cases probably much more, and some guys never got the memo and keep rolling it out, leeringly, as their stab at chitchat. You know? And Carroll isn't leering, but he is pedantically explaining everything to us, and it makes him crazy when people don't behave in the ways that he thinks are rational, and all his characters talk like him--like earnest Catholic boys who grew up in a time of ease and plenty, spent their lives trading on fucking scene cred, been dogmatic when young and stayed immature when old, and never gotten over a grievance against God for not making sure the world made sense. I wish I could've asked Jim Carroll to stop making sense. It would have made this easier to take.Let's go to some random passages: "Later in his life, Billy still saw it as either the worst or the best day of his life, depending on how, why, and where he looked at it." Rambling repetition ("his life")--dude doesn't seem to understand the difference between writing and talking. Total unwillingness to let us connect the dots on our own--obsession with being understood--demand that we follow him closely, with the italics, with the pedantic unnecessariness of that whole last clause. Here, I'll rewrite that sentence: "Billy could never decide whether it was the worst day of his life or the best." Now it's just an egregious cliche. You want to excuse him for being sincere and wanting to communicate, but it's so solipsistic--only his precious thoughts and feelings matter. The garrulity of the failed raconteur.

      I'm trying to avoid dialogue passages because it brings up the character/narrator/author distinction and I don't want to assume--but the fact is that all the characters talk the same, whether they're the Magic Old World Jewish Man or the all-forgiving, all-nurturing love interest or what. But there are SO MANY extended monologues in this book. It's fascinating as a character study, suffused as it is with the fear of aloneness, but how long can you spend being sympathetic before you just want to slap him and tell him to pep up? "'Anyway, it was the cliff that tempted you." This is a wise fucking spirit raven visiting to gloss everything for us and make sure we don't misinterpret Carroll's precious. "you had to test the limits of that shell's strength, as if you were calculating stress factors for a piece of steel sculpture." Totally unnecessary simile, not to mention that the word "calculating" drains all the tension from the scene, renders it bland and comical. (He is torturing a tortoise. The ol' "cruelty to animals as symbol of all that is irrational and terrifying in man" cliche. "The shell was so fragile that, after rushing down the stone face" (oh, thanks for filling us in that he did that. Couldn't we have figured it out on our own? It's like you think nothing happens unless you tell us about it. Creator anxiety. also, a second ago this was a fifteen-foot cliff; now you can rush down it) "you cried as you reached it. It was the same reptile you'd saved less than three hours earlier, and now it was shattered and dead." THANKS FOR THE RECAP, JACK. "You shouldn't feel guilt for doing this, though I see that you do." RAVEN EXPLAINS IT ALL, LIKE AN OLD-FASHIONED NON-PEDOPHILE PRIEST. SAY FIVE HAIL MARYS. "You are experiencing it this moment. But it is the way of all children. It is the way of mankind ... what they have done throughout history." Love those empty totalizing statements.

      "A loud hum was rising from the circular clumps of chattering parvenus." Billy discovers the adjective. Carroll is also obsessed with poseurs, cred, and how things were better in the old days. you know what, man? I'm done. This is pissing me off. This book is shit, and neurotic Irish Catholic boys who just need total transcendent love and acceptance to deal with the incredible pain they feel at having to interact with a world they never made can eat it. I thought I was gonna feel better pulling out some of the most excruciating bits, but now I don't even wanna find them. Time for a walk.Ha ha, oh, the title is stupid too. The petting zoo is where he goes after his freakout. It is symbolic of precisely nothing. Man, this review left me feeling sour. And I've still got the shakes. Time for a little hair of the dog!

    • 3/5
      The Petting Zoo tells the story of Billy Wolfram, a successful 38 year old NY city artist, who is in crisis and searching for more meaning in his work and his life. The story moves back and forth in time from his childhood through the present, introducing us to a myriad of characters including best friend rock musician Denny, mentor art dealer Max, assistant love interest Marta, and a talking raven. Yep, a main part of the dialogue comes from the talking raven.And while the novel holds the seed of brilliance in its pages, overall the writing is uneven. It suffocates under some of the run-on dialogue. This may have to do with the fact that Jim Carroll---artist, poet, punk musician and the author of The Basketball Diaries (later made into a film by the same name)---died in 2009 while apparently "in the midst of putting the finishing touches" on his latest novel. That task then fell to someone else.It's still a book worth reading. Especially if you're a Jim Carroll fan, a lover of art and the mind of the artist, or just someone who appreciates a good story. You'll just have to savor the good and race through the unnecessary.