“The Infinite Future” by Tim Wirkus
What just happened? That’s the end?
I mean, I think it was brilliant…or crazy? As in, crazy like a fox? I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m supposed to think. I was glued to the story–the stories–because they’re good, and then after writing 40-odd stories within stories, suddenly Tim Wirkus decides to…drop his narrative mid-beat? I don’t know what he’s trying to do and maybe I need to think about it more…or maybe I’m just not sophisticated and deep enough.
Okay, let me back up. If I was Wirkus, or Danny, or Harriet, or Sergio, or any number of other characters, I would tell you in detail how I found the book, who handed it to me, and how I forgot to read it because I was rushing to work, but then I stumbled upon it later, and as I began to read became absorbed in the mysticism of the tale. And the fact is, I very much enjoyed “The Infinite Future.” It’s one of those story-within-a-story-within-a-story stories, and Wirkus spins out story after story as each person has to tell every other person “what happened” with a perfectly constructed tale, not the quick off-the-cuff type stories you and I tell around the water coolers, but the kind that you only find in a novel, complete with descriptions of the environment, clothes, emotions, etc. But it works. Wirkus is a fantastic and creative storyteller.
Interwoven into the story are elements of the LDS faith, the Book of Mormon, and the culture and religion of the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It seems like Wirkus is grappling with the faith–maybe his faith?–and the contradictions and trials of faith that modern members of the LDS Church have to deal with. What’s less clear, and perhaps this is part of his point, is whether Wirkus has a conclusion. To boot, the book is as much a look at the creative life, at writers, and at the conflict between pursuing one’s passion and pursuing a solid and stable career, and I’m not sure if it’s an ancillary theme, or intentionally woven in with the religious themes.
Whatever the intent, Wirkus tells compelling and interesting stories, each one worthy on its own. I was often reminded of a quote from Orson Scott Card when responding to a question about where he finds story ideas: “Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.” Wirkus is capturing a few more than the five or six that a good writer finds. He just can’t settle on any one particular story. He wants to tell them all, and he wants to weave into all of them the same narrative.
And then, with all those great stories, Wirkus suddenly spins to a narrative denouement and drops the whole thing mid-beat, ending the story, the novel, the whole thing, in the middle of a story. It’s a bit unnerving and unexpected (I was listening to it–it’s a great audiobook), and I went back and checked three times that I hadn’t accidentally missed something. But no, it had ended unexpectedly and somewhat unsatisfyingly.
Maybe this is the whole point, to leave the reader with a sense of the incomplete nature of many of life’s questions. I don’t know. I am still unsure what to think, but maybe that’s what metafiction is all about, right?
The Infinite Future
Science fiction
Penguin Press
January 16, 2018
400
The Infinite Future is a mindbending novel that melds two page-turning tales in one. In the first, we meet three broken people, joined by an obsession with a forgotten Brazilian science-fiction author named Salgado-MacKenzie. There's Danny, a writer who's been scammed by a shady literary award committee; Sergio, journalist turned sub-librarian in São Paulo; and Harriet, an excommunicated Mormon historian in Salt Lake City, who years ago corresponded with the reclusive Brazilian writer. The motley trio sets off to discover his identity, and whether his fabled masterpiece--never published--actually exists. Did his inquiries into the true nature of the universe yield something so enormous that his mind was blown for good?
In the second half, Wirkus gives us the lost masterpiece itself--the actual text of The Infinite Future, Salgado-MacKenzie's wonderfully weird magnum opus. The two stories merge in surprising and profound ways. Part science-fiction, part academic satire, and part book-lover's quest, this wholly original novel captures the heady way that stories inform and mirror our lives.
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