The idea of the “encyclopedic novel” stuck with me after a colleague doing his dissertation on it explained many of its facets to me. He mostly referred, as does the Wikipedia article to which I’ve linked the term, to twentieth-century doorstop novels such as Ulysses and Gravity’s Rainbow, the latter of which I adore and the former of which I begrudgingly appreciate. True encyclopedic ambition never seized me, but I always rather liked the idea of coming up with a narrative occasion to range over whatever subjects occupied my mind, lots and lots of them without regard for traditional expectations for focus in fiction.
A kind of specialized encyclopedia of my intellectual and artistic concerns.
Did I know I was writing such a thing when I wrote Noir Falling? Not at all. That I didn’t know strikes me as strange because the novel is pretty overdetermined and overwrought, with the story and structure and morphing repetitions planned, sometimes down to the sentence level, before I drafted. I don’t mean to say I didn’t have delightful moments of improvisation while drafting, especially during the action sequences, the surprisingly many chases that I never tired of writing, which I hope means readers won’t tire of reading them, and the explosions of fantastic animation and color. The book shows that “obsessively uninhibited” is a possible state of being.
So, if you haven’t figured it out yet, Noir Falling isn’t light beach reading, as although it does have a plot a reader can follow–Daniel Lowe’s bewildering and transformative journey as he tries to unravel the conspiracy threatening a beautiful woman, students at the university where he at least seems to hang out, and perhaps all art and humanity–it doesn’t hesitate to play with heavy concepts both on the surface and elsewhere. I personally think characters get silly as they try to talk deep, so readers don’t have to take it all so seriously, but, well, readers will react as they do (or don’t, if the big words put them off early).
While Noir Falling may have a conceptual kitchen sink quality, it does have some focus. It focuses on atypical mental states, mental illness in particular, and I’ve claimed that, though the word never appears, one of the things it’s about, if it’s about anything, is schizophrenia. More broadly, in that it’s about mental states that defy normative reason, it’s also about art that defies normative reason, and thus it pays particular attention to Piranesi (on the cover) and Kandinsky but also El Greco, Goya, and others. It’s about humanism and anti-humanism, democracy and fascism, identity and oblivion. Meaning’s creation, meaning’s absence.
So, if you’re not into that kind of…thing… along with events and images that are plain freaking weird, then don’t read Noir Falling. But if that all sounds like it could be fun… and I promise, Daniel’s bizarre journey is fun, if you can handle it… give it a try… https://mybook.to/noirfalling
Available February 8. Pre-order now. Feed your head.
