Hongrie-Hollywood Express

In a more truncated way, Plamondon seems to be about a similar business. But what differentiates him—what makes him a wikipedic rather than encyclopedic novelist, as it were—is the sense one gets in Express that coherence is an accident. Even the most cynical encyclopedic novel gives the impression of a unified, logical world, even if that world is hellish. Not so in Express, where facts show more are connected without being related to each other in any meaningful sense. We learn, for example, that Johnny Weissmuller, like millions of other Americans, arrived in the US via Ellis Island; we learn that this is next to the Statue of Liberty, which was a gift from France to the US in celebration of its first centennial; we learn that Bartholdi originally designed it for the Khedive Isma’il Pasha of Egypt. In placing all of these different facts in proximity to each other without providing any real narrative frame, Plamondon establishes connections but not relationships. We are left, like conspiracy theorists with a ball of red yarn, trying to discern a pattern that might not be there. show less