The Petting Zoo

September 20, 2010
Basketball Diaries author Carroll's slightly rough posthumous novel about a famous painter's breakdown begins as painter Billy Wolfram has a psychotic episode, wanders about the Central Park petting zoo, threatens strangers, and is picked up and committed to a mental hospital for observation. Upon his release, Billy returns home and goes into "reclusion," brooding on events in his past (such as his mother's death), watching old TV shows, and receiving visits from a Central Park zoo raven who talks to Billy about the flood (the raven was on Noah's ark), art, and the emptiness in Billy's life. Other than his assistant, Marta, Billy's only real visitor is his childhood friend, rock star Denny, leaving him plenty of time for introspection that leads back to Kennedy's assassination, which coincided with Billy's mother catching him masturbating. Since then, Billy has frozen out his sexual feelings, and, as it turns out, Marta would love to thaw them. Although Carroll's prose is uneven—clever and profound sentences jostle awkwardly with lumbering, bathos-soaked platitudes—and the narrative tension is rather slack, this is a heartfelt portrait of a New York original by a New York original.

October 15, 2010

Author of the cult classic The Basketball Diaries, poet and punk musician Carroll was just wrapping up this novel when he died at age 60 in September 2009. But it's still a young man's work. An unassailably hot artist on the late-1980s New York scene, protagonist Billy Wolfram is nevertheless gently naive, unaware, and sexually repressed. While attending a Velazquez exhibition, he suffers a spiritual crisis and ends up in the Central Park petting zoo (closed for renovations), where he frantically begins questioning his art--and hearing voices. From there, it's a quick step to observation at a psychiatric hospital. After his release, Billy fires all his assistants save the long-suffering Marta, who manages his life; he then holes up, watching old TV shows and reflecting on his past while asking the big questions about art and life, often guided by an ancient black crow that drops in to assure us that Billy is either crazy or spiritually blessed or both. VERDICT Sometimes talky and self-conscious, this novel also has the heart-plunging freshness and conviction of, yes, a young writer--as told by an older soul who's been through the mill. For anyone who wants a novel of ideas without the world-weariness. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 7/10.]--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2010
Carrolls first novel is, unfortunately, his last. A poet, memoirist, and punk rocker, Carroll died in 2009. His poetry was published in the Paris Review, and his journal entries, collected in The Basketball Diaries (1978) and Forced Entries (1987), chronicled his experiences as basketball player, addict, and street hustler, along with his encounters with Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, and William S. Burroughs. An incendiary single, People Who Died, established his bona fides in the rock world with a gut-wrenching account of friends who were casualties of the street culture. Billy Wolfram, the young, famous, and talented artist of The Petting Zoo, draws heavily on Carrolls own experiences. While attending a reception for a Velzquez exhibition at the Met, Billy undergoes an anxiety attack that calls into question his own artistic abilities, his identity, and his sanity. As Billys crisis begins to threaten the completion of new works for a forthcoming show, hes visited by a talking raven who claims to have been on Noahs ark. Introspective, observant, and, at times, quite hilarious, this is a fitting culmination of Carrolls lifes work.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)