Triptych

• Main Author: Virzi, Samuel
• Format: Others
• Published: ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst 2021
• Subjects: Fiction
• Online Access: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/englmfa_theses/152; https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1171&context=englmfa_theses

This is a triptych of three novellas. Ideally it is a summoning ritual for revolutionary consciousness, a banishing ritual for depersonalization, nightmares, cops, realtors, the onrush of global fascism, the great, clawing dread of thinking rationally about things yet to come. It is a mythopoesis. Its subject is the transmigration of souls. Loverboy Under The Knife was inspired by “Not I” by Samuel Beckett, The Politics of Experience by R. D. Laing, and a nervous breakdown I survived in the fall of 2014. Paterson Farm was inspired by Paterson by William Carlos Williams, Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, and Stardew Valley, a popular video game by Eric Barone. I Saw The Deep was inspired by the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Revelation to John, and the YouTube videos of John Plant. Parts of this manuscript were written at Stephen Jones’s house in Shutesbury, Massachusetts. I was talking with him about the Chyernyshevsky novel, What Is To Be Done?, and Stephen said the damndest thing. He said Chyernyshevsky really believed in the future, which is something almost nobody does anymore. If somebody believed in the future, what kind of novel would they write today? That is the conversation I want to have with you all. I believe it’s the conversation I’m going to be having with my craft moving forward.