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One
Stapler Leads To A Dark Story
By
KEVIN CANFIELD
The
Hartford Courant
June 27,
2001
Laird
Hunt found his muse in the work of French novelist Georges
Perec - and in the supermarket.
Reading
the famously difficult work of Perec and his inventive
American counterpart, Harry Matthews, Hunt decided 31⁄2
years ago to take a chance: He would write a novel.
And he would do it in an unusual way.
"As
I had no idea what I was going to write about, I decided
that the first line of the book would focus on the first
object my eyes fell on. I happened to decide this in
a grocery store," recalled Hunt, 33, a press officer
at the United Nations. "The object, in a school
supply section, was a child's stapler. After that first
line I couldn't seem to stop and wrote for three weeks
solid until the U.N. swallowed me up again."
When
he wasn't writing press releases about U.N. Security
Council and General Assembly meetings, Hunt was working
on the manuscript that became "The Impossibly," a first novel that is as dark and mysterious as its
title. It will be released in September by Coffee House
Press.
True
to his word, Hunt's book opens with a scene involving
a stapler before wending its way through a world of
international crime and shadowy characters. The novel's
unnamed and unreliable narrator explains it all - quotidian
and dramatic details alike - in a deadpan manner. Here,
for example, he discusses dumping a body in a river: "Fortunately, the body had not floated. They do
sometimes. Despite your best efforts. Or of those of
your colleagues. Most, however, do not float. This one,
as I say, did not."
Hunt
says he did not set out to write such a dark novel -
it just happened.
"The
book started as a love story," he says. "It
just kept getting darker and darker and darker.
"I
love noir film and the books of [Raymond] Chandler and
[Dashiell] Hammett and Jim Thompson and like the narrative
infrastructure and pallet of dark shadings the genre
can bring to a work. But I'd like to think the book
allows itself to resonate - even if it's just through
its deep emphasis on uncertainty, on the absolute impossibility
of `wrapping things up' - more than those supreme examples
of the narrative mechanism are allowed to. There are
also elements of a ghost story and of science fiction
and fantasy in the book, so I suppose you could call
it a dark hybrid."
As
he readies to take a leave of absence from the U.N.
to promote the book, Hunt has several other projects
in the works.
"I'm working on three novels, actually," he
says. "One is a sequel to `The Impossibly,' a kind
of annex recounting earlier assignments. Another is
a noir set in the East Village of Manhattan and features
a man who is convinced that he is Aris Kindt, who serves
as the dead centerpiece for Rembrandt's `The Anatomy
Lesson.' The last is a novel set in Indiana. So, I'm
pretty busy."
Also available by this author:
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