The Book of A Deed

From Plastic Tub

Stimso Adid's "Colossal Novel" (Turnipseed, 1997), written just after the period in which he served in the marines during World War II. The work, which examines the similarity of the North African campaign to Moby Dick and The Egyptian Book of the Dead, is extensive, exhaustive and exemplary. Stimso's great undertaking took the better part of a decade to create and the uglier part of a year to read. The novel is a fanciful experiment in style and patience.

Stimes Addisson's lengthy skeleton treatment of Adid's masterpiece was destroyed in a fire at Addisson's Mexico retreat just before it was to be sent to his editor in New York. Scholars agree that the literary world may have lost the Rosetta Stone to this incredible work. It is rumoured that Addisson, Adid's one-time best friend and two-time worst enemy (and Rumoured Best Man if a wedding were to break out) sat on an apple crate beneath a mango tree and drunk himself silly from dawn to dusk, sobbing uncontrollably.

The novel is historical in scope, fantastically lyrical and famous for its inpenetrable mid-section. The story begins during the morning coffee break of the Big Bang and unravels through time towards the final battle between the insignificant and the unexceptional while winding down the rivers Nile and "Ole Mississip," conquering mountains both Olympus and Ararat, destroying cities from Babylon to Babylon and generally raising all kinds of hell in between.

The New York Times Book Review called it "bewildering balderdash" with such amused aplomb that at the last minute Adid reconsidered and cancelled the hit he had placed upon the inconsiderate critic of his masterpiece.