Brown by Beckett? Bowler!

What on earth could this alarming book cover, its red lettering dripping with blood, have to do with the erudite calm of Superior Person’s Tuesday?

Peter Bowler’s lexicographical readers will be shocked to hear that the maestro of anfractuous lexiphanicism has now written a novel in which murders are committed and a legendary lost object is pursued. Shades of The Da Vinci Code, you ask? We asked Peter to explain.

“I set out to write a Da Vinci Code as if written by Samuel Beckett”, he says, “but The De Reszke Record rapidly degenerated into a kind of Peter De Vries romp. Its hero is an escaped asylum inmate with a history of extreme pedantry. His interior monologues, of which there are many, are larded with literary allusions, Latin quotations and other recondite nonsense. I chose for my subject matter something that is dear to my heart — the wonder and romance of old 78rpm records, of the great singers who were the darlings of Victorian era opera houses but who survived long enough for their voices to be heard today, rising miraculously from the grooves of battered old shellac discs.

My email address is pbowler@nnsw.quik.com.au. I love to hear from readers and if asked to expand on the above will gladly do so, probably at stupefying length. You have been warned.