Alex Rose writes with precise undulations of imagination and intelligence, creating brilliantly invented but perfectly believable historical phenomena in his book The Musical Illusionist. Masquerading as a guide book to a subterranean museum called “The Library of Tangents”, each chapter in this book describes a different exhibit in the library, all of which document advances and explorations in human thought and perception, lost now to mankind above-ground but still available to visitors to the library. The introduction (induction into the museum) and the interludes between the chapters (exhibits) are presented in eye-teasing two-page spreads of italicized words that draw you through the museum and set you up for the next exhibit, enticing you forward in your exploration through time, numbers, sound, language, narrative, delusional cases, visual and auditory experience, and microbes (yes, microbes!).
The introduction and interludes are written with romantic twists of words. From the intro: “You proceed in darkness. A gust of cool air slides over your cheeks. A distant rattle is heard echoing through the passage ahead. You slip the token into the slot and pass through the turnstile.“ Yes, eagerly. From the interludes: “At certain points, it becomes difficult to distinguish between the natural and the industrial, and often too little information is provided to make a reasonable judgment. The colorful swirls of minereal compounds, for example, can be mistaken for the bed of an old landfill, just as the heavy sludge of chemical waste might be confused with a tress of molten alkalines. Though some are disturbed by this eccentric interchangeability, it is precisely the sense of ambiguous estrangement, the rift between clarity and wonder, that the Library strives to evoke. Consider, for instance, the subject of the next exhibition….”
In contrast, the chapters are written so firmly that I doubted at times I was reading a book of fiction. Rose mixes in real characters from history (Aristotle, Anaximander of Miletus, Zeno of Ilia, the Corinthians, Etienne-Jules Marey, etc.) with ones that he has imagined so perfectly ( Diophanes of Ionia, Hassan al Jafar, the Locrinthians, Phelix Lamark, etc. ), their work and their discoveries seemed perfectly plausible and quite exciting. Rose adds in myths and fables that are charming and quite plausibly from the time he has described in that exhibit (chapter). An exhibit on al-Jafar, “a 9th century algorist determined put an end to all ‘accursed insolubles””, ends with the tale of a young prince who is “given a puzzle for his 18th birthday by a distant relative, but soon becomes so enchanted with the game that he forgets to age. Ironically, while the youth is bestowed with eternal life, his is deprived of the vial moments of which it is composed.”
Rose also imagines incredible places, such as Oaxaxghana (pronounced “wah-ha-ZHON-uh”), described thus: “Skies in this region are jaundiced from successive waves of rising radioactive gas. Vegetation is scarce: Trees are leafless and wiry and low to the ground, the ferns are of a fried-looking, brownish-purple variety, the narrow spectrum of edible fruits have a disconcertingly malty aftertaste. Air is almost sulfuric — stale and tangy and overwarm, like the breath of a flu-ridden child” and the fifth Island of Japan, Nyogima, where, following a cataclysmic tsunami that destroyed everything, a new language developed, a communication based solely on “intricate phonemic strings….a system of metric and notational values.”
The pseudo-medical cases Rose describes are equally compelling and believable, for example the woman who replaced all her own memories with memories she took from books, commercials, soap operas, and movies, and whose case her physician compared to a (real) painting by William Wegman made up of found postcards and an interlacing oil-paint landscape (reproduced for our perusal: there are many graphics accompanying the chapters of this book, enhancing its scholarly tone). Another example is the man who was completely deaf to a certain piece by Chopin; when he died, a tiny hematoma was discovered in his brain that could have been the cause of his targeted deafness, versus the accepted Freudian diagnosis that he was thwarted by a “narcissistic mother.”
Although the tone of the book is scholarly and serious, Rose can be quite funny, as when he describes the Island of Santanzes. This island was feared by the Spanish and others as hell on earth, a place ruled by Satan. It turns out the poor Santanzese were cursed after a great epidemic in the late 16th century with “an incapacitating acuity of memory. Or, more accurately, an inability to forget.“ Every single detail of every single day never to be forgotten? Yes, hell on earth; Satan’s curse indeed.
For all its sparkling attributes, its intelligence, charm, stretching of imaginations and possibilities, The Musical Illusionist lacks a heartbeat. It is brilliant and provoking and mind-bending but it is cold. The humanity is presented clinically, even through various heartbreaks of genius denied, breakthroughs in thought lost forever, and discoveries buried or burned or drowned away. My brain was fully engaged by this novel novel, but I would have liked to have had a few heartstrings plucked as well. For pure imagination and skill in writing (his sentences are perfectly timed, rich and satisfying, and his descriptions are mind-expanding), Rose cannot be beat; I ask only that he add in some blood to create a living work that moves both brain and soul. Neverthless, this is a collection well-worth reading.
