Inklings from the Pen of . . .

By Paul Enns Wiebe

This book is selection of my work as an author since the time I quit my tenured position as a university professor to become an independent writer. The selection includes both fictional books and a lone nonfiction piece, which is about the remarkable achievements of a friend who has maintained a menagerie of turtles for half a century. All these animals are conversant with the English language; some even write poetry.

 

Many will read the nonfictional work as fictional. As an author, I have no control over how this piece is read, though I recommend that before reading it, the reader would do well to view a 33-minute documentary found on YouTube and entitled "Rosemary's Turtles." But note: though it may seem that in the double-blind test we once put one of them through, he failed, a close inspection of the doc shows that he was merely resisting the process, claiming that he should be the one controlling the test. When Rosemary asked him if he were ready for the test, he nosed the space between her thumb and forefinger (thumb indicating Yes, forefinger No), indicating ambiguity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Enns Wiebe
• Release date: Dec 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215216941

Paul Enns Wiebe

Armed with a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, Paul Enns Wiebe taught comparative religion at Wichita State University until taking very early retirement from his tenured position to become an independent writer. He has published nine novels and counting, as well as a pair of nonfiction books and a passel of articles in his academic specialties.  

Book preview

Foreword

This book is selection of my work as an author since the time I quit my tenured position as a university professor to become an independent writer. The selection includes both fictional books and a lone nonfiction piece, which is about the remarkable achievements of a friend who has maintained a menagerie of turtles for half a century. All these animals are conversant with the English language; some even write poetry.

Many will read the nonfictional work as fictional. As an author, I have no control over how this piece is read, though I recommend that before reading it, the reader would do well to view a 33-minute documentary found on YouTube and entitled Rosemary’s Turtles. But note: though it may seem that in the double-blind test we once put one of them through, he failed, a close inspection of the doc shows that he was merely resisting the process, claiming that he should be the one controlling the test. When Rosemary asked him if he were ready for the test, he nosed the space between her thumb and forefinger (thumb indicating Yes, forefinger No), indicating ambiguity.

Introduction

My initial venture into fiction, Alone in a Dark Wood, is of a serious bent, with occasional splashes of subtle humor.

A defrocked New England minister attends a San Francisco convention learning how to sell life insurance to seminarians. He accidentally encounters an old friend from seminary days who has been reduced to selling trinkets. On three consecutive days, the two have discussions in which they progressively reveal their most personal secrets to each other.

The sample from Alone consists of the first chapter.

Crazy Were We in the Head is a semi-autobiographical novel.

Growing up in a Mennonite family in Inverness, Idaho back in the forties and fifties, John Reisender is perplexed. Why had Great-grandma been married in a Muslim mosque way hell and gone out in the wilds of Central Asia? On the road to solving this puzzle, he finds himself excommunicated, temporarily, from the family religion. He discovers that his maternal grandfather had escaped Czarist Russia, acts as an undertaker for a cat’s funeral, takes a crash course in Nietzsche from the keeper of the city dump, escapes drowning, becomes an unsung, accidental semi-hero in a high school football game, cheats death on a spelunking expedition, and falls in lust with a pious girl who sports a derriere that reminds him of the WWII pinup girl, Betty Grable. With a Dickensian cast of characters brimming with eccentrics, this novel hilariously and often movingly chronicles a singular American boyhood.

Lost in the Bowels of the Earth is a chapter about John’s and his friends’ spelunking expedition.

In Just Another Dead White Male, high school English teacher Ed Budwieser comes to believe he is the reincarnation of Shakespeare. His wife and daughter don't believe it. His pastor has serious doubts. Only his grandson maintains a simple, childlike faith.

Like the legendary Walter Mitty, Budwieser has an active inner life, which is inhabited by visions of enjoying the company of younger and more beautiful women than his wife Mildred, who tries without success to be his reality principle.

The excerpt from this novel is its opening chapter, A Pair of Star-Crossed Lovers.

Regarding The Church of the Comic Spirit. One evening Father Alazon Lecher appears on a popular talk show to announce that he has received a series of revelations. Several God-sent angels, he says, instructed him to find and translate a set of twelve scrolls, then choose four disciples to help him interpret these scriptures—the Bear Lake Scrolls—and establish The Church of the Comic Spirit. The Scrolls, the original versions of some famous Bible stories, form the centerpiece of this novel. Each of the twelve tales has a distinct plot, style, and characters, who are cast in the roles of rogues, buffoons, fools, and schlemiels. God is often the central character, though his role and traits change from story to story. The teachings of the church are set forth in a brief catechism consisting of answers to FAQs.

The Bear Lake Scrolls consist of twelve comic stories, of which the more famous Biblical tales are inferior imitations. Each story has its own distinct plot, style, genre (short story, film script, newspaper coverage of a congressional investigation, diary, series of letters to the editor), brand of comedy (wit, satire, parody, sex farce), and characters (Eve and Adam, Methuselah, Noah’s wife Elsie, Abraham and Sarah, Lot’s wife Jane, Moses, Job, Johan, David and Bathsheba, Goliath – all cast in the roles of schemers, rogues, buffoons, fools, and schlemiels). God is often the central character, the comic hero, though his role and character change from story to story, just as in the standard Bible.

Like every religion, the Church of the Comic Spirit has teachings. These are set forth in a short catechism consisting of answers to FAQs: Whether God really exists or whether somebody has just been posing as God? Whether sin is an art form? Whether women are smarter than men? Whether the profits generated by Bear Lake World, Inc., should be tax-free? Whether irreverence is the highest virtue? Whether laughter is the way to salvation? How many angels can dance on the edge of a hot tub?

The story about David and Goliath, The Big Man in the Middle, is a major chapter in The Church.

Pope Dun the Incredible revives the recipe for a picaresque novel. Take a charming rogue of low estate; flavor with a menagerie of bizarre companions; put this comic hero in a dozen absurd situations; establish him as pope. Then serve as an outsize farce that makes the scandals of priests and their fondness for altar boys, to say nothing of cardinals and their fondness for confidentiality, look like copy for a slow-news day.

Benny Good’s misadventures lead him from a humble origin as an Amish foundling through stints as a novice evangelist, overland trucker, and radio talk show host, then achieving the office that includes the perk of being addressed as Most Holy Father. Beyond that, who knows?

Enter Benny, Stage Left is the opening chapter in Pope Dun.

Dancing Over the Rays of Light is set in a Kansas retirement home and environs. It touches on the humor and pathos of the elderly, who sit, gossip, and dream. It is narrated by a wee cluster of cells that wakes up one morning with no memory of who, where, or even what he/she/it is. On finding that he is a very old man, he proceeds to discover his reasons for being with the aid of a yoga instructor, a set of fellow inmates, a teenage girl detective, a sassy scrap of wood, and a nip or two of hooch.

This novel plows much the same field as Jonas Jonasson of The 101-Year-Old Man fame and Paul Harding’s Tinkers, though with a distinctive blade. It uses some of the devices of such unconventional writers as Flann O’Brien and Con Barthelme. It also has a bit of magic realism in it.

Dancing is represented in this book by both the Dramatis Personae and the opening chapter, A Great Awakening.

Sacred Books & Sky Hooks is a genre-bending literary thriller with occasional dollops of humor. Like Melville’s Moby Dick, it is punctuated by nonfictional discussions of a central subject. Instead of whales and whaling, this novel deals with the subject of founder myths: sacred stories told by and about founders of religious movements. And instead of being a tale of a quest on the high seas, it is a literary thriller featuring kidnapping, murder, and escape.

A former Washington lawyer and amateur comparative religionist puts three such myths—those created by Corky Ra, founder of a relatively recent start-up religion; Joseph Smith; and the Apostle Paul—on a virtual stand and finds them all guilty of making questionable claims about their divine revelations. On publishing his findings, he becomes anathema to the religiously correct, engages his nemesis in a Western-style shootout, and finally finds solace in a faraway place.

Hôtel Adiós teems with offbeat characters. Playing the lead in this political satire is the picaroon Talia la Musa, the daughter of former Christian missionaries to Iran. Ms. la Musa gathers a small flock of oddbirds to join her recently formed Kachina Round Table (KRT) in her recently inherited hotel in Small Southwestern City. The KRT consists of herself; an illicit son of a semi-famous Irish novelist; a grandson of the more-famous Author Unknown; a Russian immigrant; and a hillbilly columnist who advises his readers on how to beg off from any number of situations.

After writing a spate of maniacal columns, the KRT inaugurates a American political party, the Dead Rights Party (DRiP), which runs two members of the KRT for POTUS and VPOTUS, with surprising results.

Finally, there’s Scrabble with Turtles. Alone among my literary output, this latest work is pure nonfiction, though many readers will doubtless consider it as pure fabrication. The book concerns the 50-year project of Rosemary Douglas, who has taught her collection of turtles to draw, read (and write) the English language, use the dictionary, and of course to play Scrabble. This piece features the first chapter, From Palo Alto to the Groves of Oregon.

from Alone in a Dark Wood

1

At three o’clock, Calvin Burr had had enough. His body could no longer conform itself to the rigid contours of molded plastic seats, his eyes could no longer bear the slides with their bars and pie charts, and his mind could no longer swim among the numerals. He was only halfway through the convention, just as he was halfway through his life, but he was as desperate to get out of the one as he was to salvage the other. He made a show of looking at his watch, then made his escape, with the prospect of an appointment as his implicit pretext.

Besides, he still had not bought a Christmas gift for Jeremiah. A lapse would be inexcusable, especially this year. In the lobby, he met a veteran conventioneer who had brought his wife to the event. They were encumbered with shopping bags, and so he asked for their wisdom on the best hunting grounds.

Your first visit to San Francisco? they asked, and when he confirmed their guess, they were ready with advice.

Have you been to Fisherman’s Wharf?

No.

How could he have been? His lot had enforced a fidelity to charts and graphs.

They gave him directions to the cable car and assured him that all his needs would be met in the boutiques in the Cannery down by the Wharf.

Calvin did as he was advised. The cable care was only a brisk block away. He climbed aboard, and the wooden bench he shared with tourists and other conventioneers, though as unyielding as fitted plastic, was more humane. He was refreshed by the view of the Bay as the car rumbled down the hill. The instructions of the couple had been precise, and soon he found himself at the south gate of the Cannery.

Before shopping for others, he thought, there must be relief for oneself. On the ground floor of this refurbished fruit cannery, he found a shop selling exotic food and drink: nuts and candies, wines and teas. His experience of the last months had been that chocolate provides as fine a consolation for the body as religion does for the soul. This old Del Monte factory being no cathedral, he contented himself with the purchase of a large bar of Swiss chocolate. Eating it in the concourse while watching the lively crowd just three days before Christmas, his experience was again confirmed.

Sixty shops, a multitude of possibilities; but only one Jeremiah. With this in mind, Calvin Burr, conventioneer away from home the week before the best day of the year, entered a novelty shop. Placemats decorated with the likeness of a streetcar; etchings of a famous bridge; mugs in black and red proclaiming I [heart] San Francisco. Meaning, he supposed, I [love] San Francisco. Or was it I [red] San Francisco? Perhaps, he thought, remembering the plastic chairs, it’s I [buttocks] San Francisco? In any case, these would not do. The boy could hardly love a city he had not seen.

As he left the shop, his eye caught a bauble in its window. Tinted water encased in a thick but clear plastic bubble; and as he changed his perspective, the tints did too. He went back inside and stalked it from every angle; it treated him to every color of the rainbow. There’s a metaphor here, he thought. But he could not name it, so he left the shop again.

Fifty-nine possibilities to go. Candles, jewelry, books, metal sculptures, art. Up the elevator. Knickknacks, trinkets, totems, and clothing. Stuffed whales and rabbits. Each possibility was greeted by a rejection: won’t fit into the suitcase; too fragile; too mature; too childish; too strange; too ordinary; too expensive; too cheap. And always: doesn’t send a message. I suppose I’m looking for a metaphor, he concluded as he descended the escalator. And so he sought the original shop.

Inside once more, he took the bubble from its setting for closer examination, rolling it in his hands, trying to plumb its metaphoric capacity. Alas, poor Yorick, he thought. No—alas, poor Jeremiah. No again—alas, poor Calvin. I knew him—where are now your gibes, your gambols, your flashes of merriment?

May I help you?

The clerk, neither a pest nor a laggard, had come at just the right time. For this, Calvin was grateful.

Yes, he replied, could you tell me the purpose of this thing?

Oh. As far as I can tell it’s perfectly useless.

Then in that respect it’s like most of the other items in this store, he said, half as a cavil and half as an observation. When the clerk did not answer, he continued, What does it mean?

A pause. I suppose it can mean whatever you want it to mean. Another pause, then a venture. Maybe its meaning is its variable meaning.

This was a strange conversation, and Calvin wanted to release himself from it as quickly as he could. But the clerk’s last remark had given him a presentiment about the signal it could send. He only wanted to know, now, whether Jeremiah would catch that signal.

Actually, he explained to the man, who hadn’t asked for an explanation, I just wanted to know if my son would get as big a bang out of it as I seem to be getting. This wasn’t Calvin’s usual way of talking, but the situation was becoming an embarrassment to him, the gift was more important than he could tell the clerk, and he wished not to make an issue of this fact. To recover his decorum and to confirm his desperate choice, he asked, Tell me. Who usually buys these things?

Mostly kids, said the clerk. They seem to think it’s great. In fact, I gave one to my own son for his birthday, and I could see by his reaction that it was a big hit. I have no idea why.

It’s a gamble, thought Calvin, a real long shot. But it was already five, the chocolate was beginning to wear off, he had no prospect of a better gift—he had thought about the matter for weeks—and where Jeremiah was concerned everything would be a gamble anyway.

I’ll take one, he said.

Cash or charge? asked the clerk, who was now standing behind the counter.

Calvin automatically pulled out his card and dropped it on the package containing a version of the kaleidoscopic sphere. And could you giftwrap it?

The thing was done. Would you like me to print a message on the card? offered the clerk.

This is real service, thought Calvin, but the question immediately threw him into another perplexity. What message? With deepest regrets? Someday you’ll understand? Or, less apologetically, To a fine son? Simply With love, Dad? He’d thought about this one for weeks, too, but feeling harried, merely said, No, I think it speaks for itself.

The clerk wrote up his sale, married card and ticket in the mechanical chapel, and gave him the ticket to sign. This he did, then distracted himself by looking at the other baubles in the shop, wondering what messages they would have sent. They all seemed to say, I have been to San Francisco at a convention. I walked into a novelty shop down by Fisherman’s Wharf, and this expensive piece of worthless junk made me buy it, because I was in a hurry and besides, that is what one does and is expected to do when one is in San Francisco the week before Christmas at a convention and one is in a hurry. At a deeper level they seemed to say, There is a community among the three of us, don’t you see: giver, gift, and recipient—all expensive pieces of worthless junk. No, he had been right to spot the bubble, seek its perplexities, and fish the plastic from his pocket; he had been right to have it wrapped but not engraved, to let it present its own intrinsic sense to a sensitive son.

The clerk was staring at him.

Yes, Calvin thought to himself, there’s a good chance this gift will do the trick. At least I could have done worse.

I once knew a Calvin Burr, said the clerk a little guardedly, handing back the card.

Calvin stared at the clerk, as if seeing him for the first time. Medium height, slight, wire frames. Long brown hair, some gray, growing quite sparse in front, severely routed to the back of his head where all strands led to a pigtail, all held in place by a band whose original use, perhaps, had been to hold the daily news in place; a bit ludicrous, by virtue of the vacant lot above his brow. And the eyes: nondescript in hue, but penetrating—could be weapons rather than organs of sight, he thought.

The nametag said Daniel. Daniel . . . Daniel? Daniel Leon?

Daniel, said Calvin. Daniel Leon!

This was a busy shop at the energetic time of the year, a condition that muted the greetings and recognitions of Calvin and Daniel. Besides, what intelligences can be exchanged between the two former friends meeting for the first time after nearly a quarter of a century, what words but Cal Burr! and Daniel Leon!? What could they say except, The hair—I would have recognized you, but . . . I should have . . .—and You’ve put on some weight.? What could each do in that cubicle but assure the other that he looked as handsome as before and as well and as far from the grave?

Calvin was startled by the flash of recognition. He was of course pleased. But he was also embarrassed: strange shop, the press of urgent traffic, and a sense that he may have revealed too much to Daniel before his old friend had shed the disguise of a Cannery clerk. What had he said to this man who now stood before him, shaking his hand and making a pointed fist and injected it shyly and playfully into his belly?

He regained the propriety he hoped he had had before their mutual discovery and asked the smaller man, What are you doing in this place?—a witless question, Calvin would have to acknowledge, but excusable for one caught off his guard.

I live here, of course! I could ask you the same question.

Oh. He modulated his voice to a tone of dignity. I’m in town this week for a convention—I’m in business now.

A healthy woman who had been standing around for some time, baubles in tow, just then loudly cleared her throat in signal, threatening Daniel with a reminder of proper time and place. Calvin caught the signal, which to him was also something of a godsend. Well, it’s certainly been good to see you, he said with finality and, he would later admit to himself, with some relief.

It certainly has. Drop in next time you’re in town, replied Daniel, and turned his attention to the impudent shopper, who had been standing there, red and black mugs interspersed among her sausage-like fingers like cheap rings, probably—Calvin imagined—thinking of the times she could proclaim her visitation in and