Chiasmus Press, 2005 $12

The promotional blurb on the back of R.M. Berry’s new book, Frank, describes it as the author’s “‘unwriting’ of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” with Shelley’s protagonist Victor Frankenstein replaced by Frank Stein, “distant cousin of Gertrude.” This Gertrude is, of course, the Grand Dame of experimental writing, Gertrude Stein, and before we even open the book we are launched into the post modern universe of R. M. Berry, one of America’s leading contemporary experimental writers. Not only does Berry usurp Shelley’s epistolary narrative to comic effect, but he mimics her high-literary tone with perfect pitch: “So strange an event has befallen me that I can’t forbear relating it, although in my present disordered state my words may want sense.” The fact that he projects these tones through the voices of two protagonists, both modern-day writers, lambastes the whole enterprise of creative writing, thus poking the ribs of those most likely to fully appreciate this book. In fact, it seems that Berry has the chops, the intelligence, and the welcome audacity to mimic and lambaste any target he turns his gaze upon. His willingness to push his readers’ hot-buttons on everything from race to sexual orientation to literary fixation put me in mind of Terry Southern minus the twin crutches of sex and drugs. This is unorthodoxy you can sink your brain into.

R.M. Berry reads on Wednesday (March 22) at 7pm at the Library at Huber Hall at Medaille College (18 Agassiz Circle) as part of the Write Thing Reading Series.