Like an ancient Buddhist master, Brent Robison is fond of mind benders, and his restless spirit never tires of questioning reality. In his new novel, A Book with No Author (Recital Publishing, 223 pages), Robison’s wicked inquisitiveness is on display out of the gate. In a preface disclaiming Robison’s authorship of the book, he writes, “I, Brent Robison, am not the author of the fragmented story that follows.” Yet, plainly, the book cover bears his name, and the copyright is in place. The hall-of-mirrors never stop from there.

A.J. Campbell discovers a short story in an obscure literary journal that changes his world. But the change is not welcome, because the fiction is based on his life.  He has no idea how the writer could know so much about him, or why he would be the subject of the stories. Worse, his life is messy; divorce, and painful rebuilding. Incensed by invasion of his privacy, he embarks of a difficult task of finding the author who “stole” his life story, and his life.

Yet while the echo-chamber storyline could derail, it always rights itself through the constraints of a gothic detective-thriller plot. We find the narrator earnestly on the trail of his persecutor

The next morning was Saturday. A.J. pulled the hood up on his rain jacket and walked a few blocks though a thin drizzle to the Jefferson Market Library. The building had once been a courthouse with an adjacent women’s prison. The gothic brickwork and multiple arches and soaring clocktower, alternately ominous and beautiful, were a perfect match for the low, dripping sky and the dark mood that brought him here.

The narrative is complex but, to Robison’s great credit, he keeps it from overwhelming the reader through clear, poetic prose. We are in the hands of a seasoned stylist.

There are fabulous moments when is Robison his having fun with the nature of writing. This is especially evident in a “short story” by the mystery author about a former lover singing Bob Dylan tunes. However, there is a playful “meta” gag going on, too. Since the Dylan lyrics are copyrighted, and the cost of reproducing them prohibitive, the page is filled with inked redactions where lyrics should be:

She would sing along with passion, “xxxx xxx xx xxxx ? xxxx xxx xx xxxx ? xx xx xx xxxx xxxx , xxx xx xxxxxxx ,” on the chorus of Like a Rolling Stone. That’s a sentiment she understood.

The passage is so funny on so many levels, to me at any rate; the redacted words, an assumption of knowing (or not knowing) the redacted words, and the assertion that the absent words were “a sentiment she understood…” As if a lacuna spoke volumes—which, in this case, it does… Maybe? You don’t have to have memorized Dylan’s lyrics to appreciate hilarity bordering on the sublime.

Robison’s preoccupation is reminiscent of a discussion between Dr. Johnson and James Boswell about the philosophy of Bishop Berkeley. Berkely held that everything one perceived was appearance; there was no “behind” behind anything. Boswell recounts in The Life of Samuel Johnson:

…we [Boswell and Johnson] stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley’s ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that everything in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I shall never forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, “I refute it thus.”

Johnson was big, awkward, and overweight, and his kick was forceful enough to knock him off balance. While the action might seem to show a tautology, Johnson was an early figure in the Enlightenment. If he kicked the stone to prove objective reality, it was consistent when the spirit of the age and its reliance on independent experience and judgement revealing universal laws. Boswell would recognize the common experience of physical obstruction, if not pain. The cosmic buck has to stop somewhere.

But A Book with No Author seems to insist otherwise. It is as if Bishop Berkely looked on Johnson kicking the stone, remarking, “That stone and the pain you feel kicking it are merely appearances of appearances, ad infinitum. Maybe Boswell is right.”

One-third sleuth story, two-thirds philosophical expedition, A Book with No Author aims to worry the threads of appearance. The novel is a meditation on paradox. We are in no doubt about the literary influences behind the book because A.J. Campbell (or is it, Brent Robison?) leaves breadcrumbs along the way, including homages to Borges, Paul Auster, Poe, Heisenberg, and a host of other metaphysical tricksters. A quotation at the start of A Book with No Author delightfully captures the riddling heart of the story. It is from the Lankavatra Sutra, a central Buddhist text: “Things are not as they appear. Nor are they otherwise.”

Precisely.

– Vic Peterson, author of The Berserkers, 2022