Dead Magician

by Evelin Sullivan

In this dazzling debut, Evelin E. Sullivan has written a novel in the form of a literary biography that will permanently color the way we read biographies. Charles Butler, a smug and slightly comical Professor of English, sets out to write the life of novelist Gregory Horace Bodamien: his poverty stricken childhood in England, his formative years at a Southern university, his eventual literary (and sexual) successes, and the grisly crime that brings his career to a halt. Interviewing Bodamien in his prison cell, Butler learns of Gregory's English father, hounded by failure into insanity; his strong American mother, who kept the family together; his older brother Adam, a talented but heartless surgeon; Elizabeth, whom Gregory courts only to lose her to Adam; and Lizzy, the daughter, claimed by both brothers, whose untimely end precipitates the final crisis. While vividly unfolding this fascinating life, Butler indulges in occasional autobiographical digressions, brief and apt at first but gradually revealing a tormented soul whose "objective" account of Bodamien's life must therefore be reconsidered by the reader. Yet another account of that life is offered by the manuscript Gregory leaves behind, "The Case of the Dead Magician." Begun as a parody of the detective novel, the tantalizing fragment shows stylistic incongruities that track the author's attempt to tell his own version of his troubled end. In addition to exploring in his story his brother's murder and reinventing the past, the novelist also makes outrageous use of his biographer, with hilarious and disturbing consequences.

315 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1989

About the author

Born 1947.

Reviews

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

The title makes it sound like a Thriller, doesn't it? And it is. But first what you get, and what you mostly get, is the biography of a fictional highly=successful novelist, although the biography is rather a bit interrupted by the biographer working through his own shit. This novelist guy, this supposed protag of this bio, killed his highly=successful doctor brother with a knife. Bloody mess. And too the writer is now dead. But what you read is this biographer interview our writer in his jail cell, etc. And then at the end you get this unfinished manuscript of this writer more or less working through his murdering his brother via a final novel. I wouldn't bother reading that novel. Unless it were stitched onto the bio which precedes it, which it is.* And the result is another lovely genre=rich metafictional romp by this very happy discovery, Evelin Sullivan. I recommend you just read all of her books.



* yes, just a tad reminder of Stew.

[Erich C · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded down. The interest is that it is a tale told by an unreliable biographer about an unreliable biographee. So, what is the truth about a life or the things that happen in it?

The trope of the editor/narrator inserting him/herself into the text, trying to manipulate the reader's response, has existed since the beginnings of the novel. Robinson Crusoe's narrator repeatedly comments on the role of God/Providence in his adventure/survival story; Samuel Richardson wants to be sure that the reader doesn't admire Lovelace; how to even begin with The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman?

The resentful academic/writer attempting to take down his/her subject or puff up his/her importance is fun, but it also has been done better than here. This book reminded me here of Pale Fire and Charles Butler, the "author" of this text, is Evelin Sullivan's Charles Kinbote.

The unique quality of the novel is that G H Bodamien doesn't like or respect Butler, so he feeds him lines of bull that Butler incorporates into the biography along with his personal digressions. The description for the book promises "hilarious and disturbing consequences" to Butler's deception, but it is instead mildly amusing (Bodamien tells Butler that what drew him to Elizabeth Friar was her clean and unpolished fingernails = not really very hilarious).

The unfinished novel from Bodamien that is included in the last section, after the biography proper, demonstrates how writers incorporate elements from life and the people they know into their stories (W. Somerset Maugham was notorious for this). However, in this case the novel is mostly bad, with a private gumshoe narrator dropping sentences like, "Call me a callous bastard. I can't afford to get mushy around corpses; in my line of work, blubbering over stiffs produces negative cash flow. A kind heart and weepy disposition don't feed the bullfrog."

To sum up, I would have enjoyed the book more as a straightforward story by an omniscient narrator.