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Jessica Herman on Christopher Miller's
The Cardboard Universe
The Stop Smiling Review
(Harper Perennial)
Monday, June 29, 2009
The Cardboard Universe
By Christopher Miller
(Harper Perennial)
Reviewed by Jessica Herman
If nothing else, Christopher Miller's The Cardboard Universe, which centers on the fictional science-fiction writer Phoebus Dank, deserves a pat on the spine for its unconventional storytelling form. Told in alternating chapters by William Boswell, a fiction professor and Dank's former housemate, and Owen Hirt, Dank's vicious literary critic, the book details the writer's art, life and philosophical musings by way of a biographical encyclopedia.
That said, as any good reader or writer knows, no piece of art can rest on the laurels of innovative style alone. While Miller's out-of-the-box structure provides an interesting hook, the novelty fades over the course of 500-plus pages of failed marriages, suicide attempts and absurd book ideas. In fact, it's hard not to find the details of Dank's life frivolous (and rather superfluous) when it comes to arriving at the greater meaning of Miller's novel. Translation: You may find yourself tempted to jump around, if not skip chunks of the book altogether. Unfortunately, in doing so you may well miss important strands to unravel the mystery behind Dank's eventual murder.
From the get-go, we learn that the book's protagonist bears a striking resemblance to science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. Indeed, a quick Wikipedia primer on Dick's oeuvre suffices to help connect the dots between Dank and Dick. But, from the perspective of a Dick novice, it's impossible not to suspect that important references are passing you by.
It's all very meta. Like Nathaniel Rich's The Mayor's Tongue or Vladimir Nabakov’s Pale Fire, Miller's Cardboard Universe opens the door to a dimension of people and places collapsing in on themselves. Fail to recognize that Dank is a satirization of Dick (himself a satirist), and you might be fooled into believing that Dank and his biographers actually exist. Miller goes so far as to frame the book with a preface introducing his fictional protagonist and close with a provocative conversation in which he informs Dank that he is in fact a figment of Miller's imagination. By the same token, Miller touches on Dickian themes — namely the question of what constitutes reality — just as the title of the book suggests. For some readers, Miller's absurdist humor may provide all the motivation you need to charge through the chapters; others may find the endless encyclopedic entries simply tedious.
While it seems that Miller is striving to comment on hierarchies in art and hack versus genius in the world of literature (and cleverly succeeds to so at times), the book doesn't necessarily provoke as much as it merely entertains. If anyone questioned Miller's dedication to Dick, 500 pages later no one will any more.
Click here to read another take on Christopher Miller's The Cardboard Universe, reviewed by Nathan Martin