Spring
2002
Szmonhfu
Hertzan Chimera (Mike Philbin)
Fountain Hills: Eraserhead Press
278 pp. $16.95
Purchase information available at www.eraserheadpress.com
In Szmonhfu, Hertzan Chimera
(AKA Mike Philbin) has boldly attempted to revise the underpinnings of literary
structure and convention. Layering his work with coat upon coat of intensely
active metaphor, varying focal characters, a decidedly cheeky punctuation style
and a nearly subterranean plot line, Chimera/Philbin has in effect painted a
piece of dense abstract art on a picture window. We would perhaps not object to
this at all if he had allowed the barest hint of light through to help us
decipher the work. In literary/experimental fiction, it is hardly necessary for
the writer to make things transparent for the reader, but a writer must allow
some degree of translucency or risk accusations of literary onanism. Sadly,
Chimera allows almost none. Much of the work’s frustrating opacity must be
attributed to the fact that Szmonhfu was 13 years in the making. One can
almost hear the throng of darlings from Chimera’s literary youth screaming to
be slaughtered for the greater good of the work. A prudent slashing of a quarter
to a third of the book would have helped it significantly.
The story (if it can be called such)
follows a woman named Jane Templeton Rice. Or Jane Reiman. Or Jane Louixis. And
a rock star/god/alien named James and/or Crap Elvis. Or it follows Carl or Rich
or Simon or Paul or Kenji. Occasionally. Perhaps. Or not at all. Jane and others
may (or may not) be transmutational beings who may (or may not) be able to turn
into strange otherworldly creatures when they have (or don’t have) sex,
killing other people by accident (or while hypnotized or on purpose) because of
some other-dimensional beings from a place/planet/dimension called Szmonhfu, who
may (or may not) be destroying the Earth including Memphis, Nottingham, and
Paris, France (which has mysteriously become a fascist state called Angers,
Galimatia, where the king likes dolphins). Dizzy yet?
You get the picture, which is: there
is no perceivable picture. And no clear language, no clear characters, no clear
plot and no clear message. Mr. Chimera would doubtless say that clarity was not
his aim, but in such defensiveness he would be missing the point. Fiction must
have some level of clarity; otherwise, the writer is not communicating
with the reader. Literature does not have to be perfectly obvious (in our
opinion, it never should be) but it must communicate something. Trust us:
William Burroughs would have been left scratching his after reading Szmonhfu.
Even given the numerous missteps in
this work, one should not hasten to dismiss Chimera/Philbin too lightly. His
literary gifts are many and point to a bright future¾with
a modicum of navel-gazing and craftwork. Chimera’s problem is not lack of
talent, intelligence, or ambition but rather a surfeit of all three without the
filter of literary common sense. By experimenting on too many fronts, he
practically guaranteed a muddy result. Had he held focus on one character
throughout, the work might have held together as some kind of surreal
rollercoaster ride; had he suspended the gouts of free form imagery in favor of
a more straightforward language use, we might have been able to follow the
incomprehensible character and plot twists; had he followed a more linear
narrative path, we would have been more disposed to enjoy the often brilliant
excesses of his language; had he used a more standard punctuation style to set
the dialogue apart and had he employed some painfully absent commas,
question marks, and/or semi-colons, the work might still have allowed some basic
level of comprehension. (SIDE NOTE: The copy editor for this work should be run
out of town on a rail splattered with liquid nitrogen.) By failing to give
the reader the barest lifeline to hang onto, the author has set the reader
adrift in a choppy, incomprehensible sea, and I fear that few readers will be
willing to make the arduous journey to its far side.
While we admire Philbin/Chimera’s
shoot-for-the-stars moxie, his product shows a fatal lack of editorial distance
and acumen. Someone at some point should have stood up and mentioned that the
emperor was wearing too many clothes in too many different styles, fabrics,
colors and contexts. Having seen the promise of some of Chimera’s more recent
work¾we
were this close to accepting one of his shorts for this issue and can
thus attest to an improved degree of salience¾when
we say “Better luck next time,” we say it with a mix of disappointment
and a significant sense of expectation.
– CAW –
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