The Haircutter

March 12, 2018
In 1993, Jonathan Reilly, the narrator of Thompson’s quirky, satirical first novel, leaves Ten Sleep, Wyo., for New York City after committing what he misleadingly calls a murder. Eight years later, he’s alone and friendless, working at a menial job in the basement of a Manhattan law firm. His only activity outside the office is cutting off locks of hair from strangers without their knowledge, taking the hair home, and mounting the locks on a board. Then an acquaintance who works at a bookstore refers him to an art gallery owner, Leslie Christmas, who needs someone to return a wolf, taken from the wild and used as part of an active art exhibition, to the mountains of Wyoming. Jonathan accepts this mission and drives the wolf to Wyoming, where he reunites with Carol, the woman he left behind. Carol returns with Jonathan to New York City, where Leslie, learning of his hair board, turns him into the latest sought-after artist: the Haircutter. Another, more serious death raises the stakes. Thompson explores how fame and wealth change Jonathan, while taking pokes at the modern art world and the society people who support it. Only some vulgarity (“We left Christmas’s museum with bellies gurgling the dregs of mostly peed-out wine”)strikes an awkward note in this enjoyable farce. Agent: Noah Ballard, Curtis Brown (U.K.).