UA WRITER’S NEW NOVEL BREAKS THE RULES OF POLITICS, FICTION

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Arkansas is known for politicians who bend the rules. But the latest novel from University of Arkansas writer Donald Harington features a crew of characters determined not only to break the rules of politics but to break the very rules of fiction.

"13 Albatrosses (or, Falling off the Mountain)" begins when Vernon Ingledew — self-taught genius, entrepreneurial hog farmer and reclusive small-town millionaire — decides to run for governor. In his favor are intelligence, wealth and the waning popularity of incumbent governor Shoat Bradfield. But weighing against Ingledew is a daunting list of personal peccadilloes — thirteen albatrosses, any one of which could sink the campaign and all those on board.

Overcoming Ingledew’s faults will require the finesse of expert campaign advisors, and Ingledew spares no expense. As his candidacy becomes known, a crack team of jaded but skilled ex-politicos assembles around him, dubbing themselves "the Seven Samurai" after Kurosawa’s legendary film. But an Ingledew victory will also require a series of miracles, which — since Ingledew’s an atheist — must be furnished by the author in the form of narrative trickery, fantastical plot twists and the blending of fiction with reality.

"Most of my work is 'metafiction,’ whatever that means," Harington said. "As postmodern art, it is self-reflexive, and often self-referential, full of Moebius Strips and Chinese Boxes — tricks, if you will."

In "13 Albatrosses" real people intermingle with fictional characters, playing a part in the drama that unfolds. Characters embedded in the story itself gain preternatural knowledge of the novel’s progress — as though they had climbed out of readers’ imagination and into their awareness. Time shifts, catapulting the story from past tense to present tense to future. And the ending.well, forget the ending. Harington’s novels may run out of pages, but the stories never end.

"As you ought to know, none of my Author friend’s books ever have endings," Ingledew’s best friend tells him in the novel. "He won’t allow them."

It’s a surreal moment, when the author acknowledges himself through his characters and his characters simultaneously acknowledge the fiction around them, but they make a good point, Harington said.

"I’ve often said I hate endings. Like death, endings are final," he explained. As a means of escaping the end, Harington likes to switch the narrative tense of his novels as they progress. This transition from past tense into future accelerates the reader toward the final pages, but what the reader finds at the novel’s close is not resolution; it’s expectancy — the realization that all that has been described is yet to happen.

Such slight-of-hand is a trademark of Harington’s writing — a brand of magical realism that keeps from tipping into fantasy because he roots it in the plain, true facts of rural life and human nature. Like many of his novels, "13 Albatrosses" is set in the fictional Ozark town of Stay More — a dying village modeled after Drakes Creek, the real-life Arkansas town where Harington spent his childhood summers.

But the web connecting reality to fiction gets more tangled than that in Harington’s novels. For example, two of the main characters in "13 Albatrosses" aren’t actually characters at all — or, at the very least, they challenge what it means to be a character. They’re real people. Archie Schaffer (vice president of Media, Public and Governmental Affairs at Tyson Foods) and Monica Breedlove (a former aid to Bill Clinton during his gubernatorial years) both play significant roles in the novel.

Mixing real people with fictional characters can prove ethically dicey — both Schaffer and Breedlove signed "character releases" to appear in the novel — but Harington believes it lends his stories credence.

"I have to be careful not to have the [real] character say or do anything that might be libelous. I am simply out for authenticity," he said. "I want the reader to believe that Vernon Ingledew is an actual person, so why shouldn’t I have him living among real people?"

With all the mischief Harington commits on the novel form — not to mention the high jinks of his characters — it seems felicitous that the novel’s release date falls on April 1. But the levity of the book should not be mistaken for derision, nor should its publication date be taken to indicate that the novel is for or about fools. Harington’s fiction may revolve around the people of rural Arkansas, but there are no rubes in his writing.

And although scenes in "13 Albatrosses" may be farcical, the book is not a political satire. Harington and his characters never vilify politicians or the political process. In fact, the novel breaks away from the cynicism that seems to plague political writing, just as the Seven Samurai break free of their own jaded pasts.

Inspired by Ingledew’s intellect and by his radical — though strangely rational — politics, these seven characters transform from battered partisan warriors to champions of what the system could, and ought to, be. They embrace the challenge of a doomed campaign with something better than ambition. They approach it with hope. And that — regardless of whether Ingledew wins or whether Harington wants to admit it — will make for a happy ending.

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Local Book Signings:

April 6 — at Faybles Bookstore

April 12 — at Barnes & Noble

"13 Albatrosses (or, Falling off the Mountain)"

by Donald Harington

Published by Henry Holt and Company

402 pages, $26.00 (hardcover)