Review - Hall of Best Knowledge by Ray Fenwick
Imagine the old classic scene in which a hero is tied up and placed underneath a giant pendulum that is going to swing down and bisect him through a slow and arduous process. The reason the process is poky has a lot to do with the villain who has rigged up the death machine. A quick death to the hero would solve his problem more immediately, but the villain needs more than merely to get rid of a problem — he needs to explain himself.
And so while the pendulum creeps ever forward to the hero, the villain takes this opportunity to talk — and talk, and talk, and talk and talk — and explain everything he thinks about everything, to point out to the hero what a superior intellect he is. The villain takes this opportunity to validate himself and state his argument for that validation loudly and clearly.
That’s really what reading “Hall of Best Knowledge” is like.
Written and designed by Ray Fenwick, “Hall of Best Knowledge” is a unique novel that unfolds in a series of brief but hysterical utterances laid out in a graphical style beset by decorations and typeface embellishments. The identity of the narrator is a mystery to the reader, but we are assured that he may well be the ultimate genius in the world and these little missives are his gift to humanity. He makes it plain that we should all be very thrilled that he is taking a moment to jot down his merest thoughts — always profound — for the rest of us to take in, filled with awe as we are of the masterful brain in our presence.
“I will walk boldly through the grim bone-yard of the fallen intellectual elite,” our narrator promises, “kicking aside their worm-eaten skulls to clear a path of a learning. Yes, the stench of previous failures will threaten to overwhelm, but I will push forward through this gruesome scene!”
When not imparting profound knowledge, the author displays displeasure in several directions, most notably his brother, babies (charging that they can “sense fear” and use this against others), people who hold parties without him and stupid people (that is, everyone else). What begins to build is not only the empty platform upon which the narrator hoists his accrued wisdom but also the little irritations that chip away at his disguise. By the end of the book, his over the top, sneering and highly dramatic platitudes are revealed for what they really are, but the journey to that point will have you snickering at the narrator’s words even as you consider what a massive prat he is.
Given that each missive is designed — the words fit in as part of a visual presentation rather than merely printed words on a page accompanying an illustration — the narrator’s persona is wrapped up in the typeface and other aspects of the page. This adds a lot and helps paint a clearer picture of not just the shield behind which the author hides but the heart of the person cowering back there.
In this day and age of MySpace pages and avatars representing ourselves to the world — facades through which our real selves threaten to break — Fenwick is directly on target with this book. Nowadays, almost everyone hides behind typeface, but few of us stand out from it in quite the same way as the narrator of “Hall of Best Knowledge” does.
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