The Museum of Eterna's Novel

HOW, IN THE END, THE PERFECT NOVEL IS POSSIBLE

We are now able to present the model novel, thanks to a curious upheaval in the circulation among the literati of the character named John Mountainclimber, who as everyone knows — even Socrates, who didn’t know anything, and even those who only know what he said— has appeared in literature for two or three thousand years, since the days of Greek and Roman literature, and in every truly sensational, modern novel which resembles no other, not even in having Mountainclimber as a character.

This protagonist has always been known for his invariable position, which makes him afflictingly interesting: John Mountainclimber, driven by love to a life of adventure, on a mountaintop with novelistically opportune precipices, has fallen several meters from one of the same, something that’s always a pity, and even more so in those moments when the story can’t be put off; proof of this is that the story begins by describing his accident, which serves as the impetus for the novel and as the imperilment of the life of Mountainclimber, and for the reader as a way of maintaining suspense and worry, and in the story to move things along: it’s the only effective contrivance for confounding the skip-around reader.

Mountainclimber is at a great height and in great danger, but the story continues, like those crime serials that need something to happen in order to get going; and Mountainclimber’s enthusiastic mountain-climbing only begins to enthuse the reader and the author when they see him miss a step and incur great danger. He’s holding on by a twig, toes clinging to some tiny outcropping of insecure rock, mortally exhausting himself, struggling and shouting at thirty or more unknown meters from the bottom of what we must already begin to call the abyss.

The whole novel happens while he’s in this bind, I’ll leave the reader to decide how he was rescued in the end. I can’t think of a novelistic device that can more assuredly hold the reader until the end in suspense and uninterrupted interest, there’s no novelistic procedure that yields a better value per page; even if the book were blank between the first and last pages and the promise of others— which are almost always as follows: plot, denouement, characters, unity and congruity— were not kept, the reader wouldn’t skip a single one. Therefore, there’s nobody like this John Mountainclimber for a model novel that is unlike any other; he’s all characters in one, since he’s plot personified: beginning and end without anything in the middle to unravel, or wrap up with a simulated solution.

Suspended in the air as he is, the attention of every reader cleaves to him; I needed him for the hardest part, the beginning of a novel, where the reader begins his task. It may be because Mountainclimber successfully procures both of these difficult beginnings — though the reader thinks his is the most difficult — or it may be because he’s made us believe these things are difficult. With him, author and reader together take up their respective burdens on uncertain ground.

Uncertain ground and suspensions in the air helped in this case. When the Newcomer entered, he hung up his dog on the hook in the vestibule; the workers at Ford hang up their hats, which according to Ford is a type of movement as slight as the ones that later make up the day’s work in the factory; I hang up a borrowed character and I fetch him on my way out so I can return him, but in the interim he grips the reader with such intense interest that he regrets any Skipping Around in the future. Any future author will be grateful for this method.