AAt one point in Verissimo's delightful murder mystery, which is also a spoof of murder mysteries and a satire of academia and conspiracy theorists, his narrator Vogelstein exclaims, "I have made a book out of what I remembered--with an epigraph and everything!" His glee encapsulates his longing to be considered an author and also a non-authorial conception of what a book really is, as though anyone might actually think an epigraph a major issue.

"I have made a book out of what I remembered--with an epigraph and everything!"

Vogelstein's book--which makes up most, but not all, of Verissimo's novel--is a recounting to Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (a participant in the whole and the "author" of another part of the novel) of Vogelstein's role in the 1985 conference of the Israfel Society, specialists in the work of Edgar Allan Poe. Academic jealousies and hatreds, already well-developed, take center stage as the conference attendees gather. The most hated of all, Rotkopf, an arrogant German who lives in Mexico, freely distributes the cruel and condescending behaviors which mark him. When he is found murdered in his hotel room, more than one colleague is a potential suspect.

[Verissimo] knows how to manage concepts and events which are clearly ridiculous in such a way that the reader's willing disbelief is not simply taken for a ride--the reader is presumed to be as intelligent as the author.

And thus begins the assembling of the clues, many of which Verissimo has already given. Vogelstein, the narrator; Borges, his attentive listener (and his idol); and Cuervo ("Crow" or "Raven"), a Poe expert and criminologist, discuss what Vogelstein saw when he broke into Rotkopf's hotel room; the phone call which precipitated the destructive entry; and the internecine battles of the various experts. A chief element of their investigations--one which intrigues Vogelstein and Borges, but embarrasses and appalls the hyper-rational Cuervo--is the Necronomicon, which figures mightily in the writings of Poe disciple H.P. Lovecraft. Is it possible that Lovecraft's invention is real, that Lovecraft's mythology of horrifying extraterrestrial beings at work on earth is real? And what of the Elizabethan John Dee and his contention that, given eternity, an orangutan could write all the books which have existed, and will yet exist, in the history of the world? And, by the way, how many different letters or shapes can a dead body--arranged carefully in front of a mirror--make, and what possible clue could the murderer (or the dying victim himself?) intend by such an arrangement?

Kirkus Reviews has already recommended Borges and the Eternal Orangutans to readers of Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons)--an idea I second--but Verissimo, despite his manipulation of cryptography, secret societies and art (literary instead of visual), is a very different fish from Brown. Because Verissimo's field is verbal art, he is aware of literary history and trends; he knows how masters of language use words to suit their ends; and he knows how to manage concepts and events which are clearly ridiculous in such a way that the reader's willing disbelief is not simply taken for a ride--the reader is presumed to be as intelligent as the author. This presumption is of course a given in the writing of mysteries, but not so in the case of thrillers, which are often praised for the dexterity of their presentation of "educational" materials. I intend here no disparaging of Dan Brown: I thoroughly enjoyed both the aforementioned novels. But Verissimo's book--while just as entertaining--is also aware of itself in an entirely healthy and pleasurable way. Verissimo writes not simply as a storyteller but also as a verbal artist, exactly what one would expect of a devotee of Poe and Borges. And because he is not concerned to compete with the book-as-doorstop crowd, he can weave together, slyly and amusingly, dozens of references to earlier writers and literary history, handfuls of clues and red herrings, clever conversation, and even a couple of evenings of unwedded bliss, in less than 140 pages. Another characteristic he shares with traditional mystery writers is the almost inevitable humanity--human-ness--and believability of the unraveled plot. Thrillers try to shock us with events of earth-shattering proportions--remember what is at stake in The Da Vinci Code--but mysteries, no matter how convoluted and arcane their set-ups, return us time and time again to the inborn, archetypal character that even extraordinary people share with the rest of us and the ubiquity of the ordinary sins of anger, revenge, and hatred.

Borges and the Eternal Orangutans is a marvelous book--funny, perplexing, challenging--ably rendered into English from Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa. Buy it. Make it a bestseller.

Mail to Cooper Renner

As of January 2005, Cooper Renner edits the online magazine elimae.