The New Manifesto: Or The Slow Eroding of Time

by Sam Ernst

Arthur B. Johnson had always heard that a first novel is the easiest one to write. If that’s true, THE NEW MANIFESTO may well be his last. In fact, assuming you’re brave enough to open these pages, he’ll be happy to tell you why.

After all, The New Manifesto is a book about writing The New Manifesto. Metafiction, as it were. But it is also a made-up memoir, a future history, a dream journal, and an interactive adventure story. No matter how many tricks he tried, whatever our author wrote always ended up becoming The New Manifesto. Certain themes and images are inescapable, it seems. Writers may view themselves as foxes, but all too often, they turn out to be hedgehogs.

At times riotous, at times contemplative, The New Manifesto delights in mocking its own author as he tries in vain to escape his own voice. Whether you ultimately come to see voice as a boon or hindrance, as worthy of celebration or worthy of revilement, The New Manifesto makes clear that voice is always and inevitably present.

364 pages, Paperback

First published September 14, 2021

About the author

Sam Ernst was born in Pennsylvania in 1981. He trained as a naval architect, but after being chased through the port of Perama by a drunken, bottle-wielding communist, he abandoned the nautical life to sell bread in a landlocked bakery. At some point, Sam grew tired of slinging dough and moved on to answer telephones for a billionaire, write a rock opera about the life of Isaac Babel, and publish a thesis detailing the rhetorical tactics of online music critics. Sam lives in Fort Collins, Colorado with his wife and son and works at Colorado State University as a grant writer. The New Manifesto is his first novel.

Reviews

[Starr TEAGUE · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a delightful reading experience: full of surprises, clever, witty, entertaining, and, at the same time, thought provoking.

[Kat Ernst · Rating 5 out of 5]

This clever and creative novel weaves together four short stories that at times reveal surprising connections, and largely share a similar voice. Each section has something unique, whether it’s the style, setting, or format, and there are many nuggets of the author’s life scattered throughout. Although I don’t typically enjoy collections of short stories, these were cohesive enough to read as a novel for me. At times I was chuckling, at times I was concerned for our world, and at times I was concerned for the protagonist! This is Sam’s first novel, but it’s not the first time he has written, and you can tell he is extremely careful about word choice. Full disclosure, I’m the author’s wife, and occasionally his harshest critic, so hopefully my opinion here means something.

[Jacqui Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting concept for a novel,the wriring of a first book was the underlying theme. Very much a disjointed dream sequence where the imagination has run riot and time is unimportant. It moves at a very fast pace the reader is propelled from present and futuristic catastrophic scenarios of earth shattering proportions. It is vividly imaginative but lacks anything to get a grip on, which often happens when you wake from a dream. The reader is pulled in and at times asked to make choices at different points in the narrative, choosing one of two paths. This provides an intriguing dilemna as to what would happen had you chosen a different path. Quite a philosophical view making us aware that life is always a choice dictated by circumstances. Excellent prose and vocabulary , the author obviously enjoyed words, many of which required dictionary references.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This slightly surreal book combines several story lines into a book that felt fairly disjointed but then more and more coherent. What was at first confusing became a thoroughly enjoyable read! Thought-provoking, clever, and times very funny.

(I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.)

[Shelby Sack · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to reread this book again with a highlighter as the author has so many insightful and incredibly articulate observations about people, places and issues. It is intelligent, thought provoking and well crafted. The part of the story that I enjoyed the most was the ironic sequence of events following the next ice age. The author's creativity and sarcasm was brilliant. I heard rumors of a sequel. Count me in!

[VT Dorchester · Rating 3 out of 5]

If it were permitted by the powers that be, I would designate this read as a 3.5 out of 5.

I found this book a bit frustrating. I realize that it is "experimental" and clever - perhaps it fails for me because it's a bit too clever or precious on occasion, for my personal comfort, and perhaps because I didn't quite "get it." This happens not that infrequently between me and less mainstream narratives. I enjoy them at the same time as I feel like I'm being left out on their ins.

I almost stopped reading this book very early on, but I was encouraged to continue by the language. This book delights in language, and descriptions. I especially appreciated the descriptions of snow and other recognizable geographical and climatological phenomena - I learned and was reminded of facts from some such descriptions, example - the reason for the hue of certain mountain waters is the existence of glacial flour. There were a few words that were greek to me - such as stoichiometry.

The tall tales of adventure which comprised the majority of the volume were the most delightful aspect of the journey - amusing and engaging.

The imagination behind some of the more obviously future speculative fiction stories included was evident. I was especially intrigued by the idea of a return to star-and-currents-based ocean navigation post-fairly-minor-as-these-things-go-apocalypse - I would be interested in reading a full-length novel set in that world, where satellites have been knocked from orbit but intercontinental trade continues and technological knowledge is not lost, but shifts to the tasks newly at hand, and not one but at least two Cascadias emerge as new nations.

Bonus points for including a reference to the Quebec separatists.

The author writing about writing will, I think appeal to fewer people, even as a writer myself, while finding some of the asides amusing, and certainly well written, I found myself a little tired of them after a time. It could be that I have a sufficient number of conversations with myself and friends about the frustrations of writing that I don't need to converse with another on the topic through a novel.

By the time we reached the dream sequence section of the book I was growing a bit tired of the experimental shiftings between narratives.

There was considerable quiet humour in this book, which I did appreciate - you have to pay attention to see it, I think, but I did see it more than once.

There was a certain irony in reading a defence of the written and printed word included in this novel as I read this novel as a digital ARC.

Because I was reading this book in e-book format, and because I'm not really quite a digital native, I had some difficulty and frustration when it came time to follow the links in the choose your own adventure portion of the tale. I'm fairly certain that if I had this book in a book I would have gone and back and picked through all the paths until I'd read through them all, but as an e-book I did not. I also did not read all the footnotes due to digital despair. Those that I did read seemed to be written in both an informative and humorous vein.

The care in language is evident, as is imagination, but bourgeois me would really have preferred something a bit more straight forward in a collection of interconnected stories.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're the kind of review-reader who likes to think in forced metaphors, think of The New Manifesto as "Being John Malkovitch" meets "The Sirens of Titan." Except Sam Ernst is neither a cloying bald actor nor a decaying literary icon sputtering across the finish line confusing his memoir with futurist tales of whimsy. Never mind that. If you're the kind of reader who picks their next read on the basis of contrived comparisons, The New Manifesto ain't for you. Go pick up a novel about, say, pirates, reality television or whatever.

If you're still around after that literary whipsaw of the previous hundred words, you’ll definitely be ready for this novel.

A collection of somewhat overlapping tales that run the gamut from boisterous adventure yarns stuck midway between Baron Munchausen and “Big Fish” to a choose your own adven– (we’ll avoid that particular trademark here), The New Manifesto explores the struggles of authordom. From literal dream-state tales to full-blown apocalypse, Ernst presents snapshots of tales that challenge the concept of traditional narrative to creep into places fiction doesn’t often land. While it’s not for the faint of heart, the book alternatively tears down the fourth wall and wraps itself in layers of false biographies and histories as it looks at what it means to be a reader, a writer or a thinker.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

So as I read further and deeper I thought "is it me?" I was quite lost. The consciousness streaming of the protagonist at once followed a defined path, then just as quickly veered of his path. The further I read, the more I couldn't stop. I became immersed in this 'biographical' journey and it was an addiction, I needed more. It wasn't just this invented journey, which felt so real, it was the writing of Mr. Ernst/Mr. Johnson? that helped to create this world. His use of language and phrasing is poetry. Some brilliant examples.. 'a peal of thunder found the resonant frequency of my chest cavity' and 'we are all swept up in the great whirlpools of humanity, waiting to be pulverized and polished into perfect indivisible spheres....'

Beautiful. At some point I will read this book again. Something I rarely do. Thank you for the opportunity to be one of the early readers of this clever and entertaining book.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Nicole Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

*excited dancing* I know this author! I felt so fancy to receive an advance copy for review.

Here’s the scoop: a story-within-a-story-(within-a-story?), a travel narrative, an insight into the challenges of the writing and publishing process, unreliable narrators, a futuristic,sardonic look at the effects of climate change...oh, and remember those Choose Your Own Adventure stories from when we were kids? One of those, too.

All in all, an enjoyable read, filled with excellent word choices and a wry sense of humor (I laughed out loud a few times).

P.S. the author says that snippets of his biographical information are woven through the narrative - it was fun picking those out while reading, and trying to decipher fact from fiction.

[Paul Hooper · Rating 5 out of 5]

I imagine the NYTimes review to go something along the lines of: "The New Manifesto. The half-remembered lovechild of David Foster Wallace and David Mitchell's weekend abroad. Defiantly deep, recurrently self-mocking. Traverses continents of narrative, separated by eons of perspectival drift, connected by wry biblical non sequitur. To be soaked in and savored."

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very interesting read! It's a different approach to a novel than I've really seen before, but it's that very approach that made it intriguing and kept me wanting to read more. I found myself constantly longing for the next chance to continue reading and trying to guess what was next or would be revealed throughout the book. I really enjoyed it!

[Kurt · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars