The State of the Artist: O' How They Limbo

In many ways, The Fate of the Artist leaves me confused, unfulfilled, and grasping at straws. Yet, at the same time, I think these reactions help me accept what's at the heart of the novel - that is, that the "artist" lives in an unfulfilled state of confusion that keeps him or her grasping at straws. The sense that Campbell is a perfectionist and inventor who lives life through failure after failure is well established. And as most scenes end on a note of failure, the scenes that end on a slightly uplifting note or that convey sparks of hope in the narrative (for example, the playfulness of the Honeybee strip on 53 or the humor in the monument to chaos on 38-39) become much more powerful in contrast. In this way, the novel progresses to show us how an artist lives in a state of failure that is only sometimes interrupted with small successes.

This portrayal of an artist's state of mind is further explored in scenes that seem to be disjointed from the novel's underlying narrative of Campbell's disappearance. Scenes depicting Mozart or Schobert or Fowler appear for the same the reason that the Honeybee strips are set earlier in the twentieth century and that the last story is an adaptation of O. Henry. Through his appeals to the past, Campbell demonstrates how the artist consistently judges his own work and looks for connectivity and inspiration in standards that predate his or her own work. Campbell asserts that in the act of creating art, the artist inevitably invokes the spirit of art that already exists (an idea that further implies that "original" art doesn't exist). For Campbell, this idea continues further still as he continuously suggests that life is art and art is life (again, the monument to chaos on 38-39 or the preparations for a trip on 55-57). The fate of the artist then, according to Campbell, is entrapment in between the realistic and fictional world.

To make this last point clearly, Campbell takes his character of Eddie Campbell in The Fate of the Artist to exactly where his character must go - to the point of blurring the two worlds of reality and fiction so intensely that Campbell is said to "wander around in a state of despair...[smelling] a distinctive smell that reminds him of a very old book he once owned." (59) Again, it's no accident here that Campbell is reaching to past art for inspiration, and it's certainly no accident that the character's body is then found in a library. But, as Hayley Campbell points out, "he only really started going mad when his imaginary friends stopped calling." (80) The 2 pages following this comment from Campbell's daughter unravel in a very bizarre and chaotic manner: the pages lack form and borders, and the images add up to nothing substantial. Although Campbell's breakdown in the narrative was predictable in many ways, the reader sees Campbell's undoing on the page in a fresh way. And while The Fate of the Artist could have stopped here to make this point resonate, I think Campbell continues on to solidify the chaotic mind of the "artist" in full.