Erased by Jim Kursoe

 



Eccentric egghead oddball.

Does the above description hold appeal? If so, then you will surely take delight in Erased, a short novel by Jim Krusoe where the contemporary American author explores, in ways flaky in the extreme, the transition from this world to the next.

How flaky? Jim Krusoe told an interviewer, "I call my fiction meta-realism, which means nothing to anybody but me. But what I mean is the world of my fiction is a real world that also includes the unlikely, delusions, and dreams. My intent is to explore and challenge conventional boundaries: between life and death, dream and waking, past and present, artifice and natural, desire and limitation, good and bad, comic and tragic.”

Push those boundaries, Jim! In the opening pages of Erased, the tale's narrator, Theodore Bellefontaine, receives a telephone call from his mother. She tells her son she was looking out the window when a stranger in a heavy, brown overcoat and carrying a dark leather bag stopped beneath her window, raised his head, stared right at her and asked if it ever occurred to her if she might not even be alive. "Yes," he continued, "despite your having a strong pulse and steady heartbeat, has it ever occurred to you for even one single moment that you might be dead, because not only for the living but also for the dead anything is possible."

The strangeness accelerates: the next morning, Theodore calls his mother to see if she’s all right. No answer. He travels across the town of St. Nils (more on the name of this town below) to check on her in person. No furniture, no note, no mom - she’s vanished.

Some weeks later, Theodore receives a newspaper clipping from Cleveland: his mother is dead, perished while out fishing on a lake. Big sigh – actually he hardly knows his mom since she turned him over to another young woman who raised him.

Months pass and then the impossible: two post cards from his now dead mother, postcards with scenes from Cleveland. No question, he must investigate in person – Theodore is off to Cleveland.

Upon arrival, walking the streets of what he terms "the city of Noble Foreheads" (ubiquitous physical characteristic of all he encounters), our adventurous narrator can perceive Cleveland is a kind of paradise on earth, a blissful combination of ancient Athens and modern Amsterdam, a place where women, men and even schoolchildren value philosophic inquiry, embrace progress and technology and pursue at least one of the fine arts.

No sooner does Theodore find an apartment to serve as home base than he must deal with a flock of oddities. How odd? As the Bard so eloquently opined: “But this eternal blazon must not be to ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O list!” So, here goes: a list of peculiar, far-out funky tics:

Black Leather Biker Chick- Theodore gets into the spirit of Cleveland as cultural Mecca by taking art classes in sculpture and partaking of a favorite local delicacy: supersized donuts. But his hunt for dead or alive Mom is going nowhere fast - until he teams up with rough and ready Uleene on her Harley-Davidson decorated in Day of the Dead motif. Uleene claims to know exactly the place where her new friend can find Helen (his mom). Theodore trusts this biker lass since, after all, Uleene joined a bunch of other inmates back when she served time in prison to form a community outreach group: Satan's Samaritans.

Clubs - Uleene convinces Theodore to accompany her at a secret all-women club, combination Lions Club/Rotary. There's a keynote speaker, a woman in robe and shiny silver turban from the Fellowship of the Open Door who explains the hereafter, "the hereafter is not at all what you may think. Neither, for that matter, is the past, nor the here and now." Madam doesn't have time to finish as a brawl breaks out between two groups of women. Theodore makes his escape but not before several blows to his head. He didn't see Helen anywhere but no matter - Uleene whisks him off to another club and then another. Likewise more bad news: no mom.



Deadly Garden Tools: - Theodore earns his living by importing and selling exotic garden implements. But Thanatos rears its ugly head: newscasts alert Theodore a number of his clients have been using his hoes and trowels to commit murder. Fortunately, there's also good news: Thanatos intertwined with Eros - all the publicity triggers a boom in business, alas, the general public has fallen in love with those unique instruments of death.

Pernicious Pests – So happens, Cleveland has its ugly underbelly: an infestation of rats. But no need to run away - Theodore’s art teacher, a gal by the name of Sunshine, is from Eastern European stock. She hands her sculpture student a baseball bat and leads the charge with her own hefty cudgel during the city’s official Kill the Rats Day. Bam! Bam! Bam! Sunshine the Hungarian barbarian to the rescue. The local papers liken the event to Running of the Bulls in Pamplona.

Classic Cleveland – In addition to an outing to watch the Indians at Progressive Field, the dutiful son’s search leads him to an extraordinary bowling alley (after all, were talking about THE most magnificent American city), a bowling alley featuring 500 lanes (500!!), exquisite ethnic food and a jazz trio, a gypsy violinist and a mariachi band – bowling alley as psychedelic Garden of Earthly Delights (only the middle panel of Bosch’s triptych, fortunately). Then the unexpected.

Tapes - Helen has earned her bread transcribing tape recordings of radio interviews. Eight of these recordings are sprinkled between chapters where all eight guests speak of their near-death experience.

Recall I mentioned Theodore resides in St. Nils. Where in the US is St. Nils? I failed to locate such a town, which prompted me to do a bit of research. I discovered Nils is the name of a young boy setting out on a quest after he's been turned into an elf in Selma Lagerlöf's The Wonderful Adventure of Nils Holgersson. Reading an overview of this tale, I can detect some connection with Theodore.

Fanciful link or not, I've taken to Jim Krusoe and plan to read his other five novels. I suggest you begin with Erased. Perhaps you will likewise fall in love with his quirky storytelling.


American novelist Jim Krusoe, born 1942