Outsider

Grief over the death of his twelve year old daughter stalls Nathan Learner. Stagnating as an artist, having little emotional energy for his wife, and barely able to maintain his apartment building across the street, Nate just gets by. Somehow, he manages to help Herman Viereck, his destitute, long-time, eccentric tenant, into a cab to the Little Sisters to live out his final days.

Left to dispose of Herman's goods in the vacated apartment, Nate discovers a pack rat's... trash or treasure? Balls of string, small to gargantuan, little identical blue bottles, retrieved from the trash and meticulously labeled with some method. But when he opens one volume of Herman's 15,847 page, hand typed, richly illustrated story of the Vivian Girls, Nate realizes what a trove has fallen into his hands.

As he brings the Outsider's drawings to eyes of Chicago's art world, Nate feels compelled to learn what created the creator. Who was Herman Viereck? What upbringing influenced his choice of subjects? What drove him to draw those always cheerful little girls surrounded by death, destruction and terror?

In Outsider, Stephen Tobias deftly weaves two stories back and forth. Investigating Herman's past life and while discovering more secrets than he ever expected, Nate begins to move forward with his own life. Confronting death on several levels--his daughter's, the near death of his wife, Herman's and others--and laying some to rest, Nate once again makes room for his own creative muse.

Outsider is loosely based on the life of Henry Darger, a reclusive hospital janitor who created the longest work of fiction ever created and illustrated it in a unique style that has captured the imagination of serious art collectors and museum curators the world over. While some bare facts about Darger's appalling and tortured early life are known, many of the details that might explain his obsessions and awe-inspiring creative energy can only be answered by speculation and by visiting the realms of the unreal!