Fiction

Review

Ara 13′s delightfully absurdist Fiction is what results when Alice in Wonderland and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead leave a train station in Peoria at 7:00 PM going 301 mph headed towards Heart of Darkness while, at the same time, Gravity’s Rainbow and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy leave a train station in Cleveland at 8:00 PM going 498 mph headed towards Breakfast of Champions and they somehow manage to collide along the way. It’s as chaotic as the preceeding ridiculous sentence implies, but also just as deliriously enjoyable.

Following the misadventures of Father Daniel and his idealistic pursuit of a ficticious, cannibalistic tribe to convert, Fiction inverts the traditional, outdated archetypes of the “noble savage” and “heroic missionary.” Unable to find the Oquanato he seeks, he accidently happens upon a society of highly articulate, intellectual natives. With hilarious irony, the tribe assumes a perspective of their supposed savior more commonly reserved for colonists and missionaries, placing Father Daniel in an entirely opposite role than the one he expects. In doing so, Ara 13 raises insightful questions regarding the subjectivity of religion and colonialism with garrote-sharp wit and appropriately cheeky metaficticious constructs. It’s a work of contemporary postmodernism revealing his potential to perhaps one day stand amongst the greats of the genre.

Metafiction and postmodernism tend to be subservient to crackling prose clipping along at a steady pace, most especially when humor is employed as one of the most visible literary devices. Any lags compromise the energy and overall effectiveness of the story. Fiction begins on the slow side, and the sudden shifts in narrator sometimes spark confusion. But once the story and characters both hit their stride, the novel shoots forward with befittingly breakneck intensity. The introduction of MillardFillmore and Quan – two joyous, bumbling natives highly reminiscent of Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern – marked the beginning of Fiction‘s feverish hilarity for me. Their circular, absurd, and thoroughly enjoyable exchanges commenting on the book’s internal logic are sterling examples of metafictious self-awareness done right.

Fiction will be available for purchase in March of 2009. More information on the book’s release can be found at Ara13.com.

Bibliographic Information

Ara 13. Fiction. Galveston, Texas: Covington Moore, 2009.

Further Reading

Almost all of the books mentioned in the introduction either paved the way for the postmodernist and metafiction movements or perfected and defined them. Father Daniel’s exploits share parallels with Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as well as Tom Stoppard’s epic Shakespearean fanfiction Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Ara 13′s revolving cast of increasingly absurd yet provocative characters recalls the works of Thomas Pynchon, most especially Gravity’s Rainbow and Mason & Dixon, but does so in a considerably less laborious, more accessible manner. And his occasional humorous asides and playful manipulation of the English language bring Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions and Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series to mind.

~Riot