I've read Torture the Artist a few times now, and every time I find something different in it. It's just one of those books that is so poignant and well-written, you can't help but visit it again and again. ( )

This book is a bit like Fight Club without the violence. It's as much a comment on adolecence as it is on the fruitlessness of pop culture. ( )

"Torture the Reader" would have been more apt. I can't believe the NPR librarian suggested this. Trying awkwardly to be a comment on pop culture and the state of art in modern America, Goebel's book just comes off as self-indulgent and whiney. The basic idea had promise: Operating under the idea that to create great art an artist must suffer, a wealthy media mogul hires individuals to "torture" (mentally, emotionally) promising young writers, musicians, actors, etc. But the book reads like Goebel's (heavy handed and unoriginal) diatribe on why everything sucks. A truly awful read that I only finished because I (fruitlessly) kept hoping it would get better somehow. It didn't.

If artists are driven by the conflict in their lives to create great works, then it would follow that eventually someone would try to capitalize on this and cause the situations which would result in great art. The main character in this novel is assigned to a child with great potential, to be his manager and torture him into creativity. An interesting story with a somewhat unsatisfying outcome. ( )