Arts
Ibid
By Mark Dunn
(Harcourt, 253 pp., $13)
In Ibid1 , Mark Dunn2 presents a sidesplitting academic farce that is one part Vladimir Nabokov3 and two parts Woody Allen.4 The novel purports to be the footnotes5 of a biography of a three-legged deodorant magnate6 written by Mark Dunn.7 After the sole copy of the manuscript is accidentally destroyed8, Dunn's publisher agrees to bring out the surviving notes as a stand-alone volume. Through a series of comic encounters with oddball characters and more celebrities than rubbed elbows with Forrest Gump9, the footnotes of Jonathan Blasshette's life stagger three-leggedly out of the 19th century and through the first six decades of the 20th. Along the way, Dunn lampoons every aspect of American life with subtle—and sometimes not so subtle—political and literary subtexts.
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Each of Ibid's notes is the literary equivalent of a Reese's Piece.10 There may be no lasting nutritional or literary value in any of them, but collectively they beg to be scooped by the handful. Who could pass up Calvin Coolidge discussing an inflamed bovine teat upon being sworn in as president11, or a frank discussion of a religious tract, published by a small Christian sect in the 1950s, entitled Our Holy Savior and His Dog?12
—Michael Ray Taylor
1 Ibid (Latin, short for "ibidem," "the same place") is the term used to provide an endnote or footnote citation for a source that was cited in the last endnote or footnote. It is also abbreviated "Ib." in legal documents. It is similar in meaning to "idem," abbreviated "Id." Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibid
2 A Memphis native, Dunn is author of two previous novels, Ella Minnow Pea and Welcome to Higby.
3 Especially Pale Fire, which may be the best-known example of a novel in the guise of spurious scholarship.
4 In his acknowledgements, Dunn cites Allen's early New Yorker parodies as an inspiration; reading Ibid is like watching Take the Money and Run, Sleeper or any of the other films Allen made back when he was funny.
5 To be precise, the novel purports to be endnotes, rather than footnotes, as is the more common practice in biographies. But "Endnote Tomfoolery" just doesn't have the same ring to it for the title of a pithy little review.
6 One Jonathan Blashette, of Pettiville, Ark.
7 Dunn becomes a fictional character himself in the book, as he explains "sources" of information, describing (bizarre) personal interviews and his discovery of (unlikely) original documents.
8 Toddler, bathtub.
9 The reference here is to the novel by Winston Groom, as opposed to the popular Tom Hanks film. While the movie was fraught with emotional depth and warmth and chocolate, the novel upon which it was based was a lighter, more strictly comic effort. Such is the case with Ibid.
10 ™ The Hershey Company. This analogy is the reviewer's own, and is in no way endorsed by The Hershey Company, its subsidiaries or the Scene.
11 Ibid, 114.
12 Ibid, 226-227.