Dec
2009

Glimpses in a Fun-House Mirror (excerpts)

“It is Reason that engenders self-love, and reflection that strengthens it; it is reason that makes man shrink into himself; it is Reason that makes him keep aloof from everything that can trouble or affect him: it is philosophy that destroys his connections with other men; it is in consequence of her dictates that he mutters to himself at the sight of another in distress. You may perish for aught I care, nothing can hurt me.”

-“On the Inequality of Man”

Rousseau

Preface-Glimpses in a Fun-House Mirror

A Novel by Michael Ryan

What is this story about? Am I the chronicler of these events? Or has the other taken hold at last and I’ve become ancillary? Has the burden of so many stones of pain and regret weighed me down so that I cannot move?

There is something wrong with the mirror in my room. The reflection could not be mine… The eyes are wild, vacant. The face is one I do not recognize. I think it is one of those carnival fun-house mirrors. I don’t think it is very funny.

I am sick and I can’t say why. All I can remember of my life is in the distant past while yesterday or last week is dimly lit and will not yield to the light of my recollections. I need help and this pronouncement alone is enough to cause terror…

A dream…I can remember roads that appear and disappear on some mistaken drunken map; towns turning to dust; grasslands burning out of control before a north wind…lover’s scream at each other for an hour in a house next to a freeway, then make love for 10 minutes to the sounds of garbage trucks and machine guns. Their nerve endings repaired for future destruction, the couple strips the bed and washes the sheets. The woman retires to a barely functional living room and begins to read all the back issues of National Geographic. She studies the maps of exotic places as though this is the first time and not the hundredth. Her husband, an unemployed bricklayer, cracks open his 24^th beer of the day and switches on the god box, preparing for the reading of the gospel according to General Mills. He is happy because he knows that soon he will be able to catch up on the ongoing drama of other mannequin lives in this Prime Time American Dream.

And ultimately I know that they are comfortable here in their highway house on the edge of the sun…and I remember this was a fine time but it was it my memory…This I cannot tell.

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This is an excerpt from the Preface of my “Great American Novel,” Glimpses in a Fun-House Mirror. I will be posting other pieces of this self-proclaimed brilliant work of fiction written after the style of Dostoevsky and Nabokov, 2 of my Literary Gods…stay tuned if you are as bored as I!