mark monday's Reviews > I Am The Bird

synopsis: the man is two men in one man and he lives with himself, by himself. these men overlap and they talk the same way and they talk to, at, and across each other. they watch each other carefully because they are enemies, or at least antagonistic roommates. headmates?

précis: the man has a bird and the bird is the man and the man loves the bird and the man wants to kill the bird who is himself. the bird talks too much, knows too much. there is a history of murders, or accidents; a car tampered with, a wife fell down a well. these are the man's memories. there is a bad smell in the house, something is rotting. is it a memory? that neighbor downstairs better watch herself, else she become another of the man's memories.

summary: the man watches the street and sees them: the interlopers. he catalogues them. are they coming to get him? the reader is an interloper as well, sorting through the man and his memories, by turns confused, dismayed, amused, intrigued, annoyed, appreciative. at least this reader, this interloper felt this way, thought this way, eager to create both connection and distance between himself and the man in the book who is two men and a bird, much like the reader is also two men but with a cat but no longer. I miss that cat.

abstract: the writer is T.M. Wright and after leaving pulp horror behind, paperbacks from hell full of strange ambiguity and shifting identities, he wrote 4 experimental novels, at the twilight of his life, experimental novels full of strange ambiguity and shifting identities. these narratives aren't stable. but they have their patterns, a logic model. I wish T.M. Wright were still around, creating unstable narratives and strange identities. I miss that T.M. Wright.