March 18 - "Pop Art"

“Pop Art”
by Joe Hill
20th Century Ghosts (2007)

* * * * * (Excellent) Fantasy

A boy and his inflatable best friend, Arthur Roth, are forced to deal with bullies, apathetic and overprotective parents, and Happy, a dog out for his piece of inflatable boy. Through all of this a friendship is cemented, and the questions of mortality become more immediate and momentous.

Over the course of this story you come to truly care about Art, the inflatable boy. You know his ending will not be kind, or deserved, and that painful awareness grows with each scrap of information you collect, written down in crayon on the tablet the mute Art wears around his neck. His loneliness, his fear, his dreams of becoming an astronaut; all of these convince us of Art’s humanity, his heart, even if he is just four ounces of air in a plastic container. That is an impressive feat of writing. The ability to take a concept as silly as this and transform it into a powerful piece of writing shows a skill for story that makes me hunger for more. Two stories from Hill in a day is not nearly enough.