The World Is a Narrow Bridge by Aaron Thier

Published by Bloomsbury on July 3, 2018

The World Is a Narrow Bridge is surprising, funny, and a delight to read. The story is bizarre, the surrealistic stuff of fantasy, yet it is told in such a matter-of-fact style and follows such charming characters (if you don’t count Yahweh) that it all seems very real. In the 21st century, the book teaches, we take our prophets where we can find them, although most of us only listen to the prophets who tell us what we already believe.

Murphy and Eva live in Miami and have no prospect of finding real jobs.  Eva is a secular humanist and ill-suited for visits by Yahweh, who wants her to travel around saying the Lord’s name and persuading others to do the same. Eva declines until, seeing Yahweh behind the wheel of a Lamborghini, she realizes she needs a break. A road novel follows. In fact, the story discusses other road novels, including On the Road and Huckleberry Finn and (rather improbably) Moby-Dick. The path Murphy and Eva follow (dictated by Yahweh) seems aimless and drifting, which Eva regards as a metaphor for the life she shares with Murphy.

The road trip yields a long string of funny moments, including Murphy’s realization that he and Eva have decided to have a baby, although he can’t quite recall making that decision, and knows he will eventually recall, not the moment that the decision was made, but “the moment when he realized that he didn’t notice the moment when they decided to have a baby.” I also enjoyed Eva’s observation of how models walk with “head and face absolutely still, chin lifted, eyes closed, lips pressed together in a rictus of neutral sensuality.” During the road trip, Eve and Murphy explore “the geography of hope” (Wallace Stegnar’s phrase), as opposed to “the geography of realistic expectations.” Those examples give a flavor of the humor and clever prose that pervades The World Is a Narrow Bridge.

Yahweh apparently has no policy goal beyond recognition as the one true God. Satan, on the other hand (who bears a striking resemblance to Salman Rushdie) is all about undermining Yahweh. Murphy and Eva aren’t sure which one is preferable, although the get a bundle of money from Yahweh that they are supposed to use to acquire a trash mountain and convert it into a temple of worship.

The World Is a Narrow Bridge is a novel of digressions. Eva and Murphy visit Eva’s family in North Carolina (no questions are asked in the family home “because everyone knows that if you ask questions, you’re likely to get answers that upset you”), but after that, their trip is a long meander. Their conversations are the same. One topic leads to another and then another. The story is full of factoids about buffalo and Bible verses and movie plots and the decay of small Midwestern towns and precipitation averages in semiarid climates. Murphy and Eva made frequent observations about the sameness of life as they make their road trip — the same Super 8 rooms that might just be a memory of the last Super 8 rooms; the same sports clichés echoed by basketball players before each playoff game — but they also ponder the “huge intractable Why of it all” and other mysteries of life: Is Heaven a place beyond the memory horizon, where new memories are not formed, but each moment is “a sweet memory of itself”? If God exists, how does one live a good life, despite all the evil God creates or tolerates? Is goodness in the service of a divine being (as opposed to goodness for its own sake) a form of moral abdication?

The book makes note of profound questions of free will and accountability — if free will exists, we are responsible for our own awfulness, making it more comforting to blame God for making us in His violent image — but it recognizes that the questions are unanswerable, or at least that no answer is capable of proof, making this whole business of living and thinking a frustrating exercise. Ultimately, trying to understand the big picture, or even most small pictures, is futile, because we lack sufficient verifiable data to permit rational conclusions. And while it is often said that everyone is entitled to their opinion, the book suggests that opinions are based on the responsible consideration of available facts, and that opinions based on prejudice or poor information are not opinions at all. “When in doubt, laugh” is the healthy message I take from The World Is a Narrow Bridge.

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Mr. Eternity by Aaron Thier

Published by Bloomsbury USA on August 9, 2016

“The truth is what happens. The world is only what it is.” So says Maria, a character in Mr. Eternity. But understanding the truth, understanding what happens (or what happened in the past, or what will happen in the future) is the problem. History cycles -- nations die and rebuild, slavery comes and goes -- but what we learn from the past is even less than what we learn from the present, hampering our ability to build a better future. That’s one of many lessons that might be taken from Mr. Eternity, an odd, sprawling, very funny account of a very long life.

Mr. Eternity takes place in several time periods. The story that unfolds in each period is related by a different narrator, each with a distinct voice. Although a few characters seem to appear in more than one period, one man links the stories. He is known by several similar names, including Daniel Defoe. He may or may not be the same Daniel Defoe who wrote Robinson Crusoe, although he has been in many shipwrecks. Defoe searches through the centuries for the treasure of Anakitos and for his lost love, Anna Gloria. It is a quest worthy of Don Quixote, to whom the novel expressly alludes.

The story in 1560 is narrated by Maria, an indigenous woman in the Amazon rainforest. Maria is thought to be from El Dorado, the legendary city of gold. Daniel de Fo plans an expedition to find El Dorado, taking Maria along as translator. He is accompanied by Spanish soldiers on a mission to conquer the land for Spain. Maria describes her observations of the explorers, and her own adventures, with wry detachment.

The narrator in 1750, an old man using the name John Green, adds a good measure of humor to the stories he tells. The stories generally concern Dr. Dan, who practices a kind of fraudulent medicine on a plantation in the Bahamas.

Equally engaging is the narrator in 2200, who works as Old Dan’s helper in exploring life in the parts of the United States that aren’t underwater. A number of vague disasters caused half the world to end between 2016 and 2200. The narrator is enthralled by Old Dan’s stories of snow and antibiotics and “streamy media” other relics of the past that the narrator doesn’t quite understand.

In 2500, the narrator is a woman whose father has declared a five year remodernization plan for St. Louis, which will henceforth be known as the Reunited States. Her father makes Daniel Defoe the Vice-Secretary of Remodernization, since Defoe “carried in his mind the whole accumulated knowledge of history.” Unfortunately, that knowledge is a bit scrambled.

The narrator in 2016 is a former graduate student who travels with a friend to Key West on the pretext of making a documentary about an old sailor who lives in a boat that was blown inland during a storm. The batty old sailor, of course, is Defoe, a/k/a “the ancient mariner.”

Defoe’s claim to have lived “in a town called La Mancha” suggests that he has something in common with Don Quixote, particularly in the confusion of reality and fantasy. As he ages, Defoe’s memories become increasingly twisted, making his stories all the more amusing. He often describes killing Magellan in the Battle of Mactan. He asserts that there were there were herds of wild camels in St. Louis when the Lewis and Clark expedition began, but he is probably confusing those with the specially bred dairy camels that went wild in later years.

Mr. Eternity might be read as an allegory of aging (nobody remembers how they got old, Defoe says, it just happens). It can also be read as a parable about finding things of value when everything is falling apart (including sunsets and pineapples), of beginning a new life in defiance of a world that always seems to be ending. Or as a lesson in living as the person you are, rather than the person you are not. It might best be read as a story about stories, including love stories, a reminder that love can be confusing and difficult to recognize but that it is worth pursuing, even when mankind is standing on an eternal precipice of disaster.

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