Codex, metatext, and the novel approach
Books are often separated into genres. There's serious literature, commercial fiction, nonfiction, thrillers, the odiously named chick lit, humor, and a hundred other labels. But what takes a tale out of its specified category and makes it into something wonderfully different? How do you make jaded readers suddenly take new interest in a particular kind of book? Sometimes the medium, the way form is played with, is indeed the message.
I admit thrillers aren't usually teetering at the top of my to-be-read pile, but Lev Grossman, Time magazine's book critic, turns the genre into something eerie and literate in his fabulously entertaining novel ''Codex" (Harcourt, $24). Welcome to the world of Edward Wozny, a quiet, spit-shiny New York investment banker, headed further up the corporate ladder to a new gig in England. All's right in his ordinary world until he's hired by the shadowy duke and duchess of Bowmry to catalog their library and find a codex -- a rare 14th-century book by Gervase of Langford that prophesies the end of the world and could reveal some dangerously dirty royal laundry. No one's sure the book even exists, including Margaret, the young graduate student Edward hires to help him in his quest, but Edward finds himself growing more and more obsessed by the hunt.
Ah, but that's just the first of the Chinese puzzle boxes Grossman constructs. Edward's not gripped only by rare books. He becomes equally addicted to an underground computer game, MOMUS, which plunges him deeper and deeper into a terrifying game of time and space that's strangely similar to his search for the codex. Gradually these two threads -- the trancelike obsession for a game and the addictive pleasures of rare books -- converge, and Edward transforms, discovering hidden passions in himself he never imagined possible. I guessed a few character motivations and a final plot twist long before they were revealed, but these are tiny quibbles in a book so inventive, so jaw-droppingly interesting, that I felt enthralled.
What is so exhilarating about ''Codex" is the way Grossman links the revolutionary beginnings of reading for pleasure in the 14th century with the rise of modern computer-game society, how he couples the advent of fiction with the blossoming of virtual realities. The book's full of wonderful arcane facts -- rare books have to be frozen to kill the parasitic ''bookworms," and if that doesn't work, the books are put in a partial vacuum so insects are smothered; computer games may have ''Easter eggs," hidden messages programmers build in for those who know where to look. ''Codex" is by turns fascinating, compelling, and deliciously disturbing. It's an intelligent thriller that truly is just that: intelligently thrilling.
How many ways are there to tell -- or contort -- a story? Metafiction is really fiction about the way in which a story reveals itself. ''Ibid: A Life -- A Novel in Footnotes" (MacAdam/Cage, $22), by Mark Dunn, starts off with the premise that Dunn's editor has lost his manuscript and offers to publish the only remaining pieces of the work: the footnotes. (Come on, what writer wouldn't have at least 17 backup copies of his or her novel?) The idea, of course, is that regular, plain old narration isn't the only means necessary to tell a tale, that footnotes can do the job. But can less traditional storytelling really be more? Can a life lived in the margins be rich enough to sustain our interest?
''Ibid" chronicles the life and times of Jonathan Blashette, a three-legged man who is first a member of a traveling circus and Wild West show and later a CEO of the Dandy-de-odor-o men's deodorant company. It's delicious reading at first, and Blashette's rise and fall is quintessential ''Forrest Gump," taking us on a historical roller-coaster ride from the 1880s through the 1960s, where he meets Nelson Rockefeller, takes a cab with Rudolph Valentino, and has his company bankrolled by J. P. Morgan, whom he'd met in his circus days.
The writing's playful and witty, and there's a good bit of inventive silliness to the tale. Young Jonathan misinterprets a wink as a sign that a young girl likes him, when actually it's a spasm. There's a wry running joke that all the loves of Jonathan's life are killed in freak Boston accidents, including the Great Molasses Flood. It's all sometimes dazzling fun, but the truth is, I wasn't lost in the book the way I wanted to be. I was always aware of the writer's sprightly mind at work here, when what I wanted was the feeling that his characters were real, that they might knock on my door any second and ask for a cup of tea -- and that I might be so charmed I'd want to fresh-brew it for them. ''Ibid" is like the scaffolding of a novel, or an inspired blueprint, but what I wanted was the whole lived-in house. While ''Codex" gives us breathing characters, ''Ibid" hands us craft and games and wordplay, and however brilliantly done, the heart of Jonathan's story is still somehow hidden. Can we ever really know someone? Maybe. Maybe not. But shouldn't novels help us try?
What do we want from our books? Of course it depends on the reader, but personally, I think that new shouldn't just be novelty. Heart should override mind. And always, always, the characters -- be they investment lawyer or circus attraction -- should let us into their souls.
Caroline Leavitt's latest novel is ''Girls in Trouble." She can be reached at the website www.carolineleavitt.com.
