Andy Moore
Bob Kann, left, and Jim Good.
Bob Kann, left, and Jim Good had fun with inventing tales for Madison’s lost gargoyles.
The Gallery of Lost Gargoyles is a real and imagined romp through architectural Madison for the seriously unserious. Two local retired guys with feverish imaginations put the book together. Retired historian, author and comic Bob Kann composed the narrative that accompanies colorful gargoyle lithographs created by retired architect Jim Good.
Talking with Kann and Good about the book is like trying to get a straight answer out of Penn and Teller. Example: When asked what the goal was in writing the book, Good replies, “to make it thick enough to fit both our names on the spine.” The book’s subtitle foreshadows the fantasy within: “A Laugh Out Loud, Too Good to Be True History of Madison’s Art, Architecture, and Nonsense Mixed in a Blender and Served Hot.”
Friends for decades, Good and Kann come across like a happily married couple during a conversation in Good’s east-side art studio. To be sure, their individual professional experience informs the facts in the book, facts about iconic Madison buildings. However their sense of humor and ability to lie to your face drives the fiction. Why let the truth get in the way of a good story, right?
Gargoyles is irresistibly disinformative from the start. Kann and Good’s account of Madison’s missing gargoyles is based on groundwork laid by professor Evelyn Chronos (no such person) who, as explained in the introduction, handed her Madison research off to the pair when she was called to a new project overseas. “So,” explains Good, “we took it upon ourselves to take the material given to us by Dr. Chronos and recreate the image of what these gargoyles looked like in their places.”
What places? Twenty-one Madison places in all. Each chapter shows a recent photo of a familiar Madison structure that focuses on the location where a gargoyle once sat but is now gone. Kann’s narrative describes the (real) history of the building then cooks up the tale of the building’s gargoyle and the mystery of its disappearance. Good’s lithographs show the gargoyle in its original place on the building.
Take the chapter on the Quisling Clinic at the corner of Gorham Street and Wisconsin Avenue — a medical facility founded in 1932 by the Quisling brothers and converted to apartments in 2000 (true). There, a stethoscope-wearing physician gargoyle made of steel bars, mesh and plaster was added to the structure in 1946 and disappeared in 2000 when a crane accident sent the head careening down Wisconsin Avenue straight off the Edgewater pier into Lake Mendota (you be the judge).
Then there’s the story of “Patsy” the horned, warthoggy-looking gargoyle that was part of the 1856 sandstone work above the entrance to Myles Teddywedgers at the top of State Street. After Teddywedgers founder Miles Allen passed away in 2009 (true), the gargoyle was taken down and shipped to collectors in Paris in 2010 (untrue).
How much can readers learn about Madison buildings from the book? A lot. Each chapter comes in four parts: background on the structure (all true), information about building’s missing gargoyle (super not true), “memories and local lore” (both true and made up), and the story of the gargoyle’s disappearance (100% B.S.).
Gargoyles includes a handy walking tour map that Good and Kann say takes a little over three hours. A grown-up reading from the book would be a torch to the imagination of any young child following along on a family field trip. A child loves to be fooled but is even more stimulated when they’re not sure the fooling is real.
The Gallery of Lost Gargoyles can be purchased online at jimgoodgallery.com. Copies can also be found at the Middleton and Madison libraries. In the non-fiction section (true).
Andy Moore will speak with Bob Kann and Jim Good on WORT’s The Friday Eight O’Clock Buzz on Sept. 12.
