Frank

by R.M. Berry

Fiction. FRANK is an "unwriting" of Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN, the story of Frank Stein, distant cousin of Gertrude, who, in revolt against southern racism, succumbs to the siren song of linguistics, inventing from language a life of his own. But in creating a new life, Frank revives an old plot, giving birth to monstrography. Frank's undoing is narrated by New Yorker Rob Lawton whose literary aspirations have gone south, all the way to the Everglades, where he has encountered Frank lying senseless in a johnboat. Their story within a story uncovers a more literally untamed America than either could have foretold, a horroglyphic creation of mad weirdploy and hybrid TV-speak which exacts a violent revenge. Only by making an end of Frank's creation can Rob hope to escape the conclusion plotted against him one hundred eighty years earlier by an eighteen-year-old girl. "A genuinely aesthetic blockbuster"-American Book Review.

214 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2005

About the author

Ralph M. Berry, Professor, Ph.D., MFA Iowa (1985), specializes in twentieth century literature, critical theory, and creative writing (fiction). In 1985, he served as a Fulbright lecturer at the University of Tours in France. R. M. Berry is the author of the novels Frank (2005), "an unwriting of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein," and Leonardo's Horse, a New York Times "notable book" of 1998. His first collection of short fictions, Plane Geometry and Other Affairs of the Heart, was chosen by Robert Coover as winner of the 1985 Fiction Collective prize, and his second, Dictionary of Modern Anguish (2000), was described by the Buffalo News as "a collection of widely disparate narratives inspired...by the spirit of Ludwig Wittgenstein." Berry's essays on experimental fiction and philosophy have appeared in Symploke, Narrative, Philosophy and Literature, Soundings, American Book Review, Context, and numerous critical anthologies. With Jeffrey Di Leo he has edited the essay collection, Fiction's Present: Situating Narrative Innovation, (SUNY Press: 2007). From 1999 through 2007 he was publisher of Fiction Collective Two. He is currently chair of the English Department of Florida

Reviews

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

i will always be resistant to r.m. berry. even these three stars are given begrudgingly. i don't know why. he's just so smug.
that's why.

[Ken Titt · Rating 1 out of 5]

Brings to mind what Truman Capote once said about Jack Kerouac: That's not writing, that's typing. What a waste of time!