If the code, “Brent Robison,” were to undergo a random mutation—which in the writing world we call a typo—more likely than not, that “n” in the first name would jump, as even genes sometimes do, to the last name, where, as “Robinson,” it would create a more stable configuration.  And, of course the now isolated and wobbly “t” in “Bret” would likely undergo reduplication—as giraffe vertebrae have done—leaving us with the better reinforced product “Brett Robinson.”

Such are the circumstances that may lead a man to fancy he has a similarly-named double. If he is a writer of excellent literary fiction, he will take that fancy far. If he also moonlights in some other profession, say, as a photographer or videographer, the twinning can take on multiple dimensions.

In the metafictional tradition of Paul Auster, Brent Robison’s, A Book with No Author (Recital Publishing, 223 pages), takes this  conceit about as far as it can go. I see it as a classic, occupying the top of metafiction reading lists.

Metafiction is a writer’s theme. Writing a novel eats up a serious chunk of a person’s life.  He is immersed in it for many months, even years. He is that character, in some respects, metaphorical mostly.  And when the book is done, he reverts to being the writer rather than the written, but he always feels as if he left some part of himself behind—abandoned like a book left in the seatback pocket of a plane.

In this paradoxically-entitled novel, Robison brings together all his many selves, layered like an onion, Russian doll, and Escher drawing at once. The selves are set against each other, not just as fictions, but as real men, jealous of each other, sometimes getting into little fights. These are tropes about the artistic process itself.  Twinning is a form of art: the hero and his foil, the plot and the subplot reflect and refract each other. Here the reflection is so kaleidoscopic it dazzles.

The first double is a writer Robbie Brand, aka Brandt Robaczynski (whose name an Ellis Island clerk would have straightaway simplified to Brent Robinson). He finds A. J. Campbell’s journal in a hotel room. Campbell is a photographer. Brand has a college writing assignment due the next day, so naturally he steals the material.

Brand subconsciously muses, “he felt a whisper of kinship, even brotherhood, with this man he’d never met. At the same time, the thrill of voyeurism was blooming in him like a stain.” Brand set about copying the story into his own hand: “the only way to make this story his own was to live the process of writing it, to set each word upon the page as if he were truly the author. To inhabit by imitation. Like an actor, to take the playwright’s words into his body and send them back out again as his own spontaneous creation.”

And so it begins. An author looks back on the stories he has written, refashioned from some of his own facts, as if he were plagiarizing his own life.

Although the themes are identity, love, and belonging, it is also a mystery: who is the writer who stole the story? and how? And will the thief also take his wife and his life and rewrite them better?

Robbie Brand’s version of A. J. Campbell’s story is better,—deeper, more poetic—than the one presented in A. J.’s chapter later.  Or maybe the lost notebook, the original version that “Jimmy” set down, was better than the one “A.J.” assembled from a less fresh memory later.

Each chapter of A Book with No Author, adds another story within the story, a new connection between real and fictional worlds and another complication, and when that tale ends, the book goes through a series of false closures, as Robison backs out of one frame, then another and another.

The comedy of the multiple frames just kept coming.  The extended ending was my favorite part.

I drew a schema in the margins to keep them straight.

In the fiction world there is:

Angus James Campbell, who goes by Jimmy, until he runs away from that self, at which point he becomes A.J..

A.J. has an alter ego in the “real” world, the world which is occupied by Brent Robison himself (or rather his representation);  his name is C. J. Angus.

Both A.J. and C.J. are photographers/videographers, as is the actual Robison (but not the one in the novel) as well.

In the fictional world of Brandt Robaczynski/Robbie Brand/Brett Robinson, twinned someone (a mutual friend) mails the manuscript—this book I’m reviewing—and “our” author, in the real (fictional) world, and the fictional Brent Robison gets it by mistake.

In the “real” world that frames the fictional one, there is C. J. Angus and Brent Robison who both live in Woodstock.  Robison hasn’t stolen C. J. Angus’ story or his life, but he does have the manuscript that mirrors it and how he came by it seems a bit suspicious.  Because the story mimics C. J.’s life in a distorted way that is nevertheless truthful, it frightens C. J., who says,

“There’s a lot of this book that’s just not true, not even close. But at the same time, it’s all true at sort of a deeper level…. Sort of symbolically, or like a theme in my life, my own struggles…. [T]here are just too goddamn many things, I mean private shit, precise details, my personal history, that are totally true.”

Most of the minor characters all have twins too that create an even greater amount of interference, akin to the two-split experiment in physics.

As engaging as it is playful, A Book with No Author is a fine romp through an artist’s funhouse.

–V. N. Alexander, author of Naked Singularity, 2003