I am a book guy, for lack of a better term. When I bought my
new house, the first major project I started on was remodeling the basement,
with built in bookshelves on which to stack my collected tomes. I have nothing
against e-readers, in fact I own both a Nook and a Kindle (I prefer the Kindle
Fire, quite useful device) but still when I decided to take the leap and read
Ulysses I went with an old hardback version (A US first edition I proudly
managed to pick up at a used book store for the paltry price of $7) even at the
risk of damaging it, rather than simply reading it off the screen.
So I suppose it should not come as a surprise that I would
be fascinated by a book that I had come across at the local Barnes and Noble,
not for its content, in fact I was completely unfamiliar with the author (although
not the creator, more on that later) or the subject of the book, but by its physical
appearance.
There it was, lying on the table in a cardboard sleeve and
shrinkwrapped, the story S, created by noted film and television director J. J.
Abrams, and written by relative unknown college professor Doug Dorst. I could
make out the format of the book based on the description and what I could see
of this spine, but it was not until I got it home and ripped off the plastic
with my greedy little hands, that I truly saw what I was in for.
S, is the story (as opposed to the actual novel) of a mysterious
character and amnesiac who knows himself only by that initial, and the
mysterious stylized letter that keeps on popping up everywhere. What S consists
of though, is much more complicated, but that is not the book itself. The book
itself is in the form of an old library book, published in 1949, titled the
Ship of Theseus, written by the entirely fictional enigmatic author V. M.
Straka, a world renowned literary legend and contemporary of Ernest Hemingway
and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
OK, following along? Now the story, as opposed to the novel,
is that of Straka, which is taken to the second level by the translator F. X.
Caldeira, who uses the foreword and the footnotes to communicate to both the
original author, and the reader, both overtly and through codes and clues
scattered throughout the text.
But wait, we aren’t done yet! The story, once again as opposed to the novel, begins not with the text of the novel, or the comments of the translator, but with a handwritten note scribbled in the margins in blue pen:
Hey – I found your stuff while I was shelving. (Looks like
you left in a hurry!) I read a few chapters & loved it. Felt bad about
keeping the book from you, though since you obviously need it for your work.
Have to get my own copy!
-Jen
Jen, who we soon find out is an English student at the
fictional Pollard State University then begins communicating with the original
owner of the book, a grad student named Eric. So the book itself, an aged
yellowed and stained library book, complete with stamps bearing the checkout
dates of previous patrons, we discover that Eric swiped it from his high school
library, becomes the medium for the story, not the story itself!
So Eric and Jen communicate their personal stories and
develop a relationship as they analyze the book the Ship of Theseus to discover
more about what the identity of the great literary legend V. M. Straka. As a
result, this work ends up existing on several different levels, not just as a
book, but a tribute to books itself. The book not only contains the story, it
is part of the story itself. It is the book as theater, and its pages are the
stage upon which the play is presented.
Now based on what I have said, it should be no surprise that
I enjoyed it immensely, although by its very nature it is an extremely
complicated read without a clear ending. At some point I am going to have to go
back through it and reread it to see what I missed. I think much of this
intentional, as the story exists in much more than just the text of the novel,
but in the actions of Jen and Eric and the backstory of the author itself.
Another clue to this is that the publisher has also provided other resources to
follow the story, chief among them two websites http://eotvoswheel.com/ and http://www.radiostraka.com/ which
provide even more about Straka. Of course it is no surprise that fan generated
sites have already been created to discuss the secrets of the book and share
insights and discoveries.
The theme of the novel, which is even hinted to in its title
The Ship of Theseus, is that of the nature of identity, which is of course also the subject
of the wider narrative as to the identity of Straka. An even more intriguing point
it raised though, is what is the nature of literature? What defines a great
work of literature and what quality makes up a classic?
As I mentioned earlier, the original concept for this story
was created by J. J. Abrams who apparently being too busy making Star Trek and
Star Wars movies then had his production company Bad Robot search for an author
to bring his concept to life. They found Doug Dorst, a writing teacher at Texas
State University – San Marcos, known mostly for a comedic ghost story called
Alive in Necropolis. Now Dorst seems like a reasonably talented writer,
although I have not read his previous work, but Abrams obviously had a rather
difficult challenge in front of him in casting his author.
A quick aside – I am a big fan of the HBO show Entourage, a
series about a movie star named Vincent Chase and his childhood friends who
make up the show’s title. A few years ago I watched one of those “making of”
specials where they discussed the difficulties they had casting the young stars
in the show (the only really established actor being the super agent Ari Gold,
played by Jeremy Piven). The main problem being, who do you cast to
realistically play a movie star, who isn’t already a movie star? The show’s
producers ended up going with the completely unknown Adrian Grenier, an actor
with movie star looks, if limited acting ability, which is indicated by the fact
that despite the popularity of this award winning show, he has appeared in
little else.
So Abrams was left with a similar dilemma, how do have
someone pull off writing a classic novel written by a literary genius, without
having a classic literary genius to write it in the first place? This also
brings us to the more basic question, as to what defines a classic work of literature
in the first place?
Now this is a subject I can hardly answer in one short
essay, and this review is getting too long to begin with, but I would argue
that it would consist of three things.
1.
The use of prose in a sophisticated and
stylistic manner.
2.
Thematic depth which goes beyond just the
storyline.
3.
A book which is appreciated over time and not
just by one generation.
Now the collaborators of this work certainly can’t directly
address the third point, since they won’t know the lasting effect of this book
for quite some time. As enjoyable as I thought it was it may just be a flash in
the pan, all but forgotten in a few years and relegated to the clearance bins
of history. The first two are where they seemed to have focused their effort.
First of all, the style, while this is entirely subjective
of course, and hardly universal, nobody would argue that James Joyce and Ernest
Hemingway write in similar styles, literary fiction is generally regarded to
have been written in some unique and well thought-out style, not just generic
prose as one would find in a newspaper column. Dorst addresses this through the
use of flowery, period specific vocabulary, and almost Kafkaesque imagery. For example from the text on page 274:
He is swimming in a mountain lake, and she is waiting for
him on the far bank. They are at high elevation: the flora consists solely of
twisted krumm-holz formations, and the moon, fat and gold, takes up an eighth
of the night sky. He strokes and kicks through ink-dark water but gets no
closer to her. She waves, calls out something that might be his name, and he
strokes faster, kicks harder, but gets no closer – he might even be drifting
backward- and this is when he feels tiny punctures breaking the skin of his
belly, thighs, feet and legs as leeches begin feeding on him, and the dread
that grips him has nothing to do with losing blood or realizing he has become
some other creature’s prey but rather has to do with fear of what he will look
like to her when he gets out of the water, and he wonders whether perhaps it
isn’t better to drown-
The second point, the use of multiple layers of
meaning, I have already addressed, which
of course exist in this story even one layer deeper through the further story
of the author and Jen and Eric. So does the author create the illusion of a
classical work of literature through this? This is entirely subjective of
course, but I would argue yes. Like any book it has its weak points, some
strained metaphors and awkwardly worded passages, but it at least gives the
impression of a novel which could have been considered a classic at some point
in time.
Now this doesn’t necessarily mean that what we perceive as “literary
classics” are the most successful novels, but that they fit into a certain
perceived class, as opposed to the controversial taxonomy of what is often
referred to as “genre fiction”. One can certainly have an incredibly popular
and well received novel and not have it considered literary. Consider the works
of John LeCarre and Tom Clancy. They both wrote spy thrillers, but the former
is considered literary, while even rabid Clancy fans would not consider him a
writer of literary fiction, even though as far as thriller writers go he was
arguably much more successful.
This is of course an argument with no true boundaries or
solutions, but that is what I found most intriguing about this work, S, it is a
tribute to the book, in its physical form, worn and tattered pages yellowed and
smelling faintly of mold and mildew, and it is also a tribute to the written
word in general, great writers in all of their eccentricities, and the never
ending question of what great art truly is. As such, it succeeds in existing
beyond mere printed words on a page.
