Sam Pulsifer made me furious. Pulsifer, the narrator of Clarke’s thoroughly engaging novel An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England, simply refuses to act according to common sense when he encounters life-changing events. The two biggies–getting kicked out of his house and finding his parents in an “interesting” state–should have allowed the wronged Pulsifer to correct his mistake-riddled life. Alas, he doesn’t do so, and I’m left at times comparing Pulsifer to Thomas Covenant, the weak-kneed character from Stephen R. Donaldson’s sci/fi series. Couple this character trait with inexplicable circumstances–particularly involving Thomas Coleman, the orphan I wanted to punch–and I’m left scratching my head. But perhaps these elements are what make the novel so engaging and funny.
Yes, that’s right, funny. What’s not to laugh about a book that begins with Emily Dickinson’s house burning down–as long as we know it didn’t really happen. [If the arsonist went after Hawthorne's Old Manse, I would have jumped through the pages to stop it, but that speaks more to my own neurosis.] Clarke performs an amazing feat here: he takes a horrific set of circumstances, pushes us back for a different view, and allows us to see the silliness of it all. After Pulsifer destroys Dickinson’s house and is released from prison, we follow him through a bizarre path that allows him to both create and destroy his life. Now that’s comedy. At its best, Clarke’s writing echoes the strength of other writers–the gallows humor of T. C. Boyle, the funny academic caricature of Richard Russo, the Dupin-esque detective work of Poe, if Dupin were more of a bumbler.
Beyond the plot, though, Clarke has much to say about storytelling itself, and it is through these moments–even if they are far too few for my taste–that Clarke really shines. The central question Pulsifer draws from his experiences is, What is the effect of a story? That is, does a story directly affect a reader? At one point, he concludes, “Of course a story could produce a direct effect. Why would anyone tell one if it didn’t?” And at another moment, a reader tells him that she likes the memoir she is reading because “It’s so useful,” a statement that sends him past the pitiful fiction-section of a bookstore to the memoirs, only to put one of these books back with sadness: “I was grateful to the books for teaching me . . . that there were people in the world more desperate, more self-absorbed, more boring than I was.” What then is the effect of a story? Perhaps, he later notes, people read “not so that they would feel less lonely, but so that other people would think they looked less lonely with a book in their hands and therefore not pity them and leave them alone.” That’s a sad claim I should think about the next time I find myself perusing the customers at a coffee shop. While not the metafiction of, say, John Barth, these moments certainly beg us to ask ourselves why we read and why we write. Clarke never offers a direct answer, but the questions continue to resonate even after I turned the last page.
