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
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