The Fabrications

by Baret Magarian

  “A joyous embrace of the absurd....In this rich, inventive and very funny novel Magarian mercilessly eviscerates the worlds of art, PR and media....His literary ambition is clear from the first sentence of The Fabrications, and the core theme is fiction itself. “Without you I think I’d cease to exist,” Babel says to Bloch, while the demonic Rees insists, “There is no reality anymore; reality is what you choose to make up.” Magarian may agree, but this book beautifully distils the dangers of too willing a participation in illusion.” –The Times Literary Supplement

  “The Fabrications is big, bold...entertaining, Faustian...it captures the absurdity of contemporary culture and society.” –The New Statesman

  “There is so much going on in this book that I feel like I need to read it a few more times. There are plenty of questions about art and the process of making art, the cost to the artist, and the questions of authenticity.... Smart, witty, and honest, The Fabrications is a book that will leave you thinking about it for a long time after you have put it down.” –The San Francisco Book Review

  “In this sparkling, darkly humorous novel, Magarian explores the intersection of creativity, romance, and the schizophrenic media that both idolize and destroy. Oscar’s messianic ascent is entertaining (think Stravinsky’s riotous 1913 work The Rite of Spring), but Lilliana’s adventures are nearly as captivating. In a sumptuous illustration of Oscar’s message, she helps a miserable man she’s only just met come out to his parents. By the end, Oscar magically siphons nearly all of the mental and spiritual energy from Daniel, but not without both characters facing grand epiphanies....A resplendent tale.” –Kirkus

  “As well as funny and stinging lampoons of corporate ad-speak and the aesthetics of the publicity stunt, Magarian makes intermittent postmodern flourishes with The Fabrications by visually aping the format and presentation of newspapers, press releases, and webpages, and periodically makes astute critical observations on works of art and media which do not exist outside the world of the novel. The effect is to couch the deliberately ridiculous in the utterly plausible.” –Necessary Fiction

  “Magarian’s authentic poetic voice is strangely addictive, articulated with a shamelessly exotic accent....A mind-bending debut...a profound engagement with words and ideas...” –Review 31

  “The Fabrications explores one writer’s ability to spin fiction into reality as he weaves a suddenly fantastic life for his otherwise boring friend, though, it appears, at the expense of his own sanity. Anglo-Armenian novelist Baret Magarian uses satire and surrealism to foreground some of the pressing issues of our times, including the power of celebrity, madness, and alternative truths that increasingly plague our society.” –World Literature Today

  “As funny as the novel is, its real strength is its use of language. Again and again, Mr. Magarian finds the exact right detail to render his scenes incredibly lifelike. Silences between characters grow weighty ‘like clay hardening and setting,’ and a man’s snores sound like ‘the noise made by the final swirls of water as they are sucked down a drain’....Using this vivid realism to ground the novel’s more surreal moments works remarkably well. By using absurdity to heighten reality, the novel actually succeeds in burrowing beneath it, searching out what’s just below the surface.” –Seattle Book Review

  “Most of the novel’s action is outrageous, and only becomes more outrageous as the narrative proceeds (including a public orgy set piece), so that the book’s satirical effect inescapably comes to predominate over any other ambitions the author may have had for the novel—a work of metafiction, a horror fiction of sorts, even a study of psychological disintegration in its portrayal of Daniel Bloch’s ultimate descent into an existential despair so thoroughgoing it becomes pathological....The novel’s conceptual untidiness is finally one of the features that makes it both appealing and memorable.” –Full Stop

  “Unique, original, deftly crafted, The Fabrications reveals author Baret Magarian’s genuine flair for deftly created and memorable characters for a novel laced throughout with humor and the unexpected. An absorbing, entertaining, read from cover to cover.” –Mid West Review

  “The Fabrications is a brilliant achievement. The novel is extremely original, ambitious and accomplished....Magarian uses his fiction to pose some of the biggest, most complex questions about life. How does one live with the passage of time, the transience of things? Can our desires ever be satisfied? How can one live a complete, meaningful life? Like all the best writers and thinkers, Magarian knows that you cannot paint an accurate portrait of the world without recognising its essential, desperate absurdi-ty....The Fabrications aims high, unblushingly seeking out the company of the modern European masters.” –Jonathan Coe, author of Number Eleven, The Winshaw Legacy and The House of Sleep.

  “Never more prescient than in our post-fact world – in which reality TV show figures who never read books but watch endless hours of television hold the highest political offices in the land, The Fabrications’ satire is spot on...a tour de force....A wondrous novel both cleverly satirical of our spectacle-based society and philosophically profound, a rare accomplishment.” –Lee Foust, The Florence News

  “This is not just a novel like a hundred other safe, middle-class novels. Baret Magarian really goes for it, he reaches for the stars.” –Cary D. Tennis, writing coach and ex-columnist for Salon.com

  “I was hugely impressed. Magarian writes very, very well indeed.” –Andrew Kidd, co-founder of the Folio Prize

  Copyright © 2017 by Baret Magarian

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN 978-0-912887-47-0

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016957090

  Cover design by Caroline Teagle Johnson

  Interior formatting & collage by Lauren Grosskopf

  Pleasure Boat Studio books are available through your favorite bookstore and through the following:

  SPD (Small Press Distribution) Tel. 800-869-7553

  Baker & Taylor 800-775-1100

  Ingram Tel 615-793-5000

  Amazon.com and bn.com

  and through

  PLEASURE BOAT STUDIO: A LITERARY PRESS

  www.pleasureboatstudio.com

  Seattle, Washington

  Contact Lauren Grosskopf, Publisher

  Email: pleasboatpublishing@gmail.com

  For Boghos, Ayko, and for Margarete

  “You’re a writer?” the poet asked with interest.

  The guest’s face darkened and he threatened Ivan with his fist, then said:

  “I am a master.” He grew stern and took from the pocket of his dressing-gown a completely greasy black cap with the letter ‘M’ embroidered on it in yellow silk. He put this cap on and showed himself to Ivan both in profile and full face, to prove that he was a master. “She sewed it for me with her own hands,” he added mysteriously.

  “And what is your name?”

  “I no longer have a name,” the strange guest answered with gloomy disdain. “I renounced it, as I generally did everything in life. Let’s forget it.”

  from The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

  I

  THE GURU IDEA

  1

  Day was breaking, giving rise to the rumor of purity. For a few seconds the light might have been that of creation. Then, in that blinking which separates the final moments of night from day, the faint outline of the moon was hidden and the sky became a universal infusion of blue. High up from his study window a man stood watching, waiting for the city to wake. Indistinct sounds of life were reaching him and flooding his mind with memories. Particles of dust twirled lazily in the shafts of sunlight. He thought that London resembled the mind, and that its streets, avenues, sewers, and tunnels suggested parts of the brain, that London’s grid-l
ike complexity corresponded to the complexity of memory and thought. Having glimpsed the dawn, he sat at his desk and typed some words out hastily.

  21 May. Still no new ideas. Will Barny start hounding me?

  The centerpiece of the study was a magnificent mahogany desk. The only thing on it was an old Underwood typewriter. He hated computers and he sought to avoid contact with technology as far as possible and considered himself appealingly old-fashioned. The wooden floor was littered with pens, books, sheets of paper. Below, he could see a small boy delivering papers, and a lady walking her poodle. Further down a man was struggling with the padlock of a fish market. He studied them for a few more moments.

  No more popular junk. Time for something else. Barny can hound me but I shall not dance. I danced too long for Natalie. And five years ago I threw my dad off the dance floor when he joined her there. Old lech.

  *

  Eggs. He had a sudden longing for eggs. He passed through to the kitchen, found some, cracked them with a chef’s precision and watched as they gurgled and popped in the oil of his battered frying pan. A teapot was unearthed from the wreckage of a cupboard and a plate and cutlery were laid out carefully. As the toast got under way the telephone started ringing. It was still far too early for a phone call.

  ‘Did I wake you?’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I can’t talk about it over the phone. I’ve been up all night. Can we meet? I need to see you. Really.’

  ‘Well, when? Not now?’

  ‘Say in a couple of hours? Can you come to the cinema? I’m here now. We could talk in the projection room. I have to see you.’

  ‘At the cinema? Do you ever actually leave that place? All right. Around eight, then. Is there a bell or something? Do I knock? What do I do?’

  ‘I’ll leave the back door open. Just walk in.’

  ‘Does this door have any distinguishing features?’

  ‘No. It’s just black and rusty.’

  Daniel Bloch returned the phone to its cradle, and ate his breakfast. It already seemed as if the day’s promise had been ruined.

  *

  Oscar Babel was the projectionist of the Eureka, a dilapidated Camden cinema, and one of the few left in London that still used an old-style projector linked up to giant, slowly revolving film reels. It sometimes felt to Daniel Bloch as though he were Oscar’s surrogate father, offering him advice, buying him dinner, introducing him to influential people. They had met a decade ago, when Bloch had spotted him waddling out of a pub, decimated by alcohol. As he monitored this striking and yet shadowy figure Bloch thought of a pram that has somehow ended up on a race track, turning this way and that uncertainly, looking painfully vulnerable. He dispatched Oscar into a taxi, and gave the driver a twenty-pound note. In the morning he received a call from Oscar, thanking him. But Bloch didn’t remember giving him his number. When they eventually met for a drink, Oscar presented Bloch with a small gift – an ivory music box – perhaps the only thing Oscar owned which he actually valued. Bloch allowed Oscar to enter his life. He began to think he had met him for a reason, and so the matter was closed. Meanwhile, Oscar considered his new friend to be a source of sophistication and light in an otherwise atrophying life. Once a decidedly promising painter, he now found himself earning his living by projecting films, the most invisible of professions he reflected, having dropped his painting, despite his obvious talent for it. Bloch sometimes imagined him as a big fish floating through the clouds of the sea, gazing at the giant vegetation, feeling the wonder of the beauty that ebbed past, but finally sinking, deeper and deeper into the seabed. An oblivion he did not seek would always find him.

  After an artery-severing shave, Bloch decided to walk to the cinema via Regent’s Park.

  *

  The morning was shedding the shells of its birth and people were emerging from their homes, steeling themselves for the punishing journeys to work. Those in collars and ties were already looking flustered, foreheads coated in films of sweat.

  He was surprised to find, after he had slipped through the gates of the park, that a few people were sunbathing. Despite the earliness of the hour people were already jabbering incongruously into their cellular phones. It was by now quite hot – and seemed as if it always would be. Walking incredibly rapidly it didn’t take him long to reach the other end of the park. He gave himself a second to savor the abundant clusters of trees before emerging onto a road a few moments later. As he began to cross, an emission of sunlight struck dusty, dirty buildings of neglect like a laser. Reality seemed to be ablaze, a beautiful inferno. But then the sun was hidden and everything plunged back once more into urban decline.

  The Eureka Cinema stood battered and obsolete. He peered through the windows to see if anyone was inside. Not a soul. Cinemas don’t have a life in the morning, he thought. He ambled around to the back and found the door open, as Oscar said it would be.

  Inside it was very black. The change from light to dark made spots dance in front of him. He found himself in a small room where an iron table and chair sat in respective states of decay. A newspaper had been carefully folded out on the table. A sliding door stood open. He walked through, calling out Oscar’s name. Now he was in a little chamber full of tools and work tops, a dirty-looking table lamp shedding arthritic light. Oscar wasn’t there. He could hear the heavy sound of the projector running, and the noise of this combined with the muted light and the black wall created an oppressive texture. He trotted down some steps, finally reaching what must have been the projection room. There, two large metal platters about a yard across were turning slowly. On them rested the reels of film, feeding into the projector. There was something relentless about the movement of the film as it spun around, sustaining the flickering image discernible through a small opening in the wall, playing to an empty auditorium. Bloch watched the film as it hovered in front of him, but with all sound severed. A woman with translucent blonde hair was framed in close-up, her lips moving. She looked stricken, pleading for some unknown cause. When he turned away colors and faces faded into a vague impression that nestled on his retina. As he was thinking he felt a hand touch him lightly on the shoulder. He jumped around, his face brushing against Oscar’s.

  ‘Oh God, you scared me,’ Bloch mumbled.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. Let’s go through, it’s less noisy.’

  Bloch looked up at him, surprised as if for the first time by his height. He stood well over six feet. For an instant he envied his youthful, handsome face. It still bore the insignia of innocence, blue eyes widening in mute inquiry. They passed through into the outer room, and sat down. The sound of the projector persisted but at a lower level, the intervening door, which Oscar heaved to, creating a muffling effect.

  ‘Why are you running a film at this hour?’ Bloch asked.

  ‘I find it comforting. Do you mind?’

  Bloch shook his head slowly. Oscar looked sleepy and troubled. There was something about him that suggested an abnormal existence: he had a perpetually cauterized look.

  ‘Do you want to tell me what the problem is now?’ Bloch asked. Oscar addressed the wall as he spoke in a soft voice.

  ‘Well. Now that you’ve trudged all the way over here, I feel kind of shitty. It’s nothing as concrete as a specific problem. That’s to say, no doctor has diagnosed me with a rare disease. And I haven’t just had my heart broken. I wish I had something...something juicy. Like, “I am being blackmailed” or, “I’ve been burgled, they smashed my Ming vase, nailed my priceless stamps to the toilet.” But I have no Ming vase, you see, that’s the problem. Not that I particularly want a Ming vase. What I mean is...the real problem is...I have no life. I’m no one. I’m sick of watching the same film three times a day and not doing anything except changing reels and sitting in a dark room. And I can’t paint anymore. But apart from that everything’s rosy.’

  ‘Why can’t you paint anymore?’

  Oscar turned to Bloch and made eye contact – an uneasy
development.

  ‘I’m sorry to have to do this to you, drag you out on this May morning...’

  ‘Oscar, what’s stopping you from painting?’

  ‘What’s the point, success seems so far away, I don’t have the energy. I want a change but I haven’t got the strength. I was hoping you could change things for me.’

  ‘Me? How?’

  ‘I don’t know, perhaps you could introduce me to a big cheese.’

  ‘I’ve done that in the past. I’ve introduced you to art dealers and you haven’t exactly obliged them. You told Demian Small he was a charlatan. Maybe you need to think about another job; or perhaps you could go back into something educational, or charity work, or something that draws on your knowledge of art.’ Bloch threw out these suggestions in the way in which a man offers sweets to a child to stop it from crying; he knew they were completely untenable.

  ‘I don’t want to draw on my knowledge of art, as I don’t think I have any, and the prospect of an educational institution is nauseating.’ He took a couple of deep breaths. ‘I just don’t want to be a blank space all my life. I want to be someone.’

  ‘Well, be someone then. Do something. Take some action.’

  ‘I can’t. I’m crippled. I can’t seem to...actually...make that first step. Last week I turned twenty-nine, but I already feel as if I’ve died. I mean, what’s wrong with me? Do you think I’m aging prematurely?’

  ‘No, I don’t think you’re aging prematurely. I should be the one who’s moaning. I’m forty-eight, over the hill, divorced, childless, and regarded by the literary establishment as a joke. True, I’ve sold books in droves and never courted the critics but after a while one longs to be read by people other than secretaries and accountants. Look, can we get out of this pit? I’m finding it hard to use my brain in here.’