Mark Dunn's early forays into the novel, Ella Minnow Pea and Welcome to Higby, were praised by critics and relished by bibliophiles for their linguistic gamesmanship. But Ibid: A Life easily outdoes its predecessors for literary audacity. The novel purports to be not a novel at all, but the endnotes of a biography. The main text of the supposed life of Jonathan Bashette was destroyed by a careless editor, and, as the wearied author reports in the letters which begin the book, his publisher has decided that the notes can stand alone.
At first, the conceit makes for difficult reading, but Dunn does a remarkable job of slowly revealing three-legged Jonathan Blashette and his odd world without ever departing from the footnote form. Readers learn that Blashette, born in Pettiville, Arkansas, in 1888, was doomed by his extra leg to become a sideshow attraction. But the boy escapes the circus to become a soldier in World War I. There, in the trenches, he first glimpses (or smells) his future calling: male underarm deodorants. Upon his return to the States, he launches the Dandy-de-odor-o Corporation and marries several times (each wife meeting a bizarre end in the cursed city of Boston). Though rocked by adversity, the fictional Blashette lives a rich life full of encounters with the writers, politicians, artists, and celebrities that marked the 20th Century.
Rather than being a limitation in this quirky Horatio Alger story, the notes offer Dunn freedom to explore the diversity of his imagination with brief sketches and "back-story" that are, in fact, all the story there is. The novel becomes a pastiche of parodies of famous documents, speeches, and poems. Dunn includes the "full text" of Lou Gehrig's farewell speech at Yankee Stadium (which includes thanks for a "'Waldorf' Wardrobe Trunk with vulcanized fiber binding and built-in shoe pockets!") and an alternate version of the Alcoholics Anonymous 12 steps, complete with consideration of Dolores Del Rio as a "power greater than ourselves." Throughout, Dunn references one obscure fictional book after another, from Ringleader: A Life in Circus Management, with a Foreword by the Bastard Ringling Brother "Skippy" to a collection of letters sent to a urologist, Confessions to a Pee Pee Doctor.
Ibid's humor, an odd mix of Monty Pythonesque potty jokes and highbrow political and literary satire, may not be for everyone. But Dunn's deft contortion of the usual elements of storytelling into this odd formal experiment proves to be a perfect showcase for his unique wit and intellect. Ibid may not be the Great American Novel, but it is certainly the cleverest American endnotes ever to see print. --Patrick O'Kelley
While not quite the phenomenal success as his debut novel, "Ella Minnow Pea," "Ibid" again dazzles us with Mr. Dunn's originality and wordplay. The book has more laugh-out-loud moments than any other I've read in a long time. While the book also tells an interesting and moving story, the structure of the book -- i.e., telling the story through the footnotes to a lost biography of the protagonist -- does keep the reader at a bit of a distance, so that the story is not quite as involving as it might otherwise have been. Nevertheless, "Ibid" is a treat that I would recommend highly to anyone who enjoys a good laugh and an unusual story about quirky characters and situations.
I adored Ella Minnow Pea. It was witty, well-paced, inventive, funny and endearing. It is rare that a comic novel packs such a serious message.
Ibid., the story of three-legged Jonathan Bleshette, carried solely through "endnotes" because the manuscript was lost in a bathtub, is another self-conscious attempt by Dunn to reinvent the novel. I would like to think that he succeeded, and indeed about 20 pages into the book I thought he'd succeeded admirably.
Unfortunately, as the book goes on, it seems more and more like a one-note piano. Bleshette is, again quite consciously, like Zelig (or the uncredited Forrest Gump); he meets numerous famous people in his life, often in unusual ways. There is a constant theme of the women in his life meeting their end in Boston, until his great love, the prostitute Great Jane, breaks the "Boston curse". But so what. Despite his ability as a novelist to invent any source he wants, from transcripts of conversations to the notes Bleshette and the future Rudolph Valentino scribbled for stage names for the latter and a deodorant brand for the former, Dunn fails to make either Bleshette or the other characters come alive. The last two-thirds of the novel are rather boring, and little comes of the possibilities that the first bits promised.
Great Jane, for instance, seems at first to have possibilities, and although she ends up as Lady Jane, and tries to save prostitutes from that life, we never get to know her much, or see her plying her trade. The various hangers-on at the deodorant factory have fewer possibilities (the running joke of "she's the one" "no, she's not" is okay but gets tiresome) and Jonathan's relatives seem to come and go without much purpose, the only exception being his father who comes to learn Yiddish after spending his whole life in Arkansas before Jonathan moved him to New York.
But the real problem is the possibilities for Jonathan himself that are not explored in sufficient detail. You'd think a man with three legs would have a set of interesting encounters with tailors; nope. Jonathan goes to war; how were his uniforms made? Can he use three legs as a tripod and hold a machine gun better? No idea. Are there rules to sports that can be gotten around if you have three legs (e.g., catching a football in-bounds)? A possibility not exploited.
The endnote thing is similarly unexploited. If you read endnotes (and I do) one thing you notice is a lot of vituperativeness toward prior biographers. Dunn creates the prior biography ("Three Legs, One Heart") but doesn't take it far enough. Give us a diatribe, Mark, something totally outlandish. Pick on the guy's commas or something, or a perpetual misspelling with endless "sic's".
I'm glad we have authors like Dunn who experiment with the novel; this one just didn't work. At the end he notes his admiration for Woody Allen, and one wonders if he's a fan of the later, unfunny films. This book is a lot like them. A great premise with too few jokes and not enough character.
Three-legged Jonathan Blashette was the founder of a successful deodorant company and a forward-looking humanitarian of the early 1900s. Although he was not a particularly extraordinary man, his extra limb notwithstanding, the interest in this story lies not in the fictional biography of Blashette himself as much as in the minutiae at the margins of his life. Author Mark Dunn, who wrote the whimsical word-play novel "Ella Minnow Pea," has pushed the boundaries of fiction even farther with "Ibid." As Dunn states in the acknowledgments, he sought to "step wide of the narrative box" by crafting a story solely through the use of footnotes. As constrained as the idea sounds, it actually works.
Through the footnotes with their interviews, excerpts from articles and diaries, and accounts of historical events, the reader becomes acquainted not only with Blashette, but also with his family, his friends, and society at large. Blashette managed to rub elbows with such celebrities as Rudolph Valentino, Lou Gehrig, and Dylan Thomas. He was placed at the scene of numerous historical events, both well known and obscure. Thus, Dunn asserts, "History can be more fun than dry facts and dates."
The silly-sounding names and titles cited in the footnotes, as well as selections of atrociously composed poems, songs, and essays, spoof their more dry and scholarly real-life counterparts. The tongue-in-cheek details go off on bizarre tangents. In a parody of Wilde's Dorian Gray, an account is given of Blashette having commissioned his deceased true love's portrait and then having it modified every year to age her appearance. In another reference, a description is given of a friend's membership in a small Christian sect that believed Jesus had a dog that accompanied Him as He preached. There is an amusing account of a devastating squirrel migration in 1826 that destroyed crops. Another humorous segue is a court deposition, recorded during a lawsuit against Blashette's deodorant company, that is written in the form of a play script,
Where Dunn will go from here is anyone's guess. Will he perhaps try a palindromic novel, or one written without any letter "e"? Time will tell. In the meanwhile, enjoy this playful story.
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