The “wrong head” that generates the right stories
. A RABBIT WAS a defining symbol in the early work of visual artist Joseph Boyce. In 1965, through his performance piece “how to explain the images in a dead rabbit,” he aimed to highlight the vast gap between art theory and the act of living, showcasing how words can often seem superfluous in the face of life’s infinite energy. Similarly, he once melted Ivan the Terrible’s golden crown to create an impactful image of a peace-seeking rabbit. This association springs to mind when you see Jeff Bush – a composite of artist and politician names – appear in Lina Roku’s new novel, embodying the unpredictability birthed from the author’s “wrong head.”
Indeed, this is true for all the peculiar creatures that spring from Roku’s imagination: from an odd cat named after a mouse, the red-eyed Alice, and the enigmatic Marino Pantofla, the doctor, to the writer duo Paul M and Karina, who have committed to crafting a unique story together. To achieve this, they decide to cohabitate, with him being an established writer and her having penned only one book. They navigate a state of alternating inspiration and overstimulation, confidence and self-doubt, vitality and illness, a state that could even lead them to death. This is, in essence, the state every writer finds themselves in when they channel all the world’s creatures and manifestations into their ‘wrong head’, ready to present them as products of their imagination and reflections of their real life.
Roku, who challenges the rules of the writing game, a game with an unpredictable end, perhaps because no writer ever holds the unique position of being both the victim and the perpetrator.
Within the dynamic entropy that Roku orchestrates, there isn’t a conventional narrative. As in her previous book, “The End of Hunger,” the story doesn’t follow a linear path. This is primarily because one can never predict the beginning or end of a story, which tends to be self-contained or sufficiently autonomous, much like the writer’s imagined creatures. Writing, after all, transports you to a different time and space, where the imagined supersedes the real through continuous interaction with the freedom offered by the playful aspect of writing; “because we would play by writing and write by playing,” as Carina posits at one point in the book.
Roku seems to be grappling anew with this underlying and fundamental aspect of writing. She poses questions about the unpredictable nature of the writing process, possibly because no writer can simultaneously be both the oppressed and the oppressor.
Once more, the writing duo Paul M and Karina subvert the traditional roles of mentor and muse, rejecting the clichéd implications these roles often carry. They become the driving force in a scenario where the primary figures are not the authors of the story, but the spectral entities that pervade it. Particularly, those who appear as secondary characters, threatening to seize control. Stories have a way of drawing you in, much like a colossal, enchanting vacuum cleaner that absorbs expectations, repulsions, and memories to birth something new that negates the concepts of mortality and authorial independence. More often than not, these fresh figments of imagination eliminate the beginnings and endings of things. This is because the beginning is fraught with perilous entities that “have sharp teeth that sink into our flesh five minutes before we wake, drenching the sheets with sweat, because the sweat of sleep is nothing but transparent blood. They have eyebrows, though they lack eyes. They are eyeless because we shut them when we were scared, we strained our eyelids and they receded and vanished.” By the time they fully morph into human form, these entities engaged in writing will have journeyed their own endless miles, absorbing illusions, authoritarian dominations, and denials deeply entwined with human existence. However, Roku subtly yet firmly suggests that the vindication of eternity comes not from these experiences, but from love – from the realization that you continue to exist because someone, out of affection, remembered you and breathed life back into you through words. This could possibly be the unwritten mantra that Lina Roku wrestles with in her contemporary allegorical tale, interpreted as an existential thriller.
