Frank's World

[Steve Maas]

I last read _Frank's World_ by George Mangels when it was released in 1995, 
and have just begun rereading it.  At the time of publication there was some 
speculation that it was written pseudonymously by Pynchon. For example, see 
the interview with Jim Knipfel, author of the Pynchon-blurbed _Slackjaw_, at 
http://www.rarebookroom.com/newsknipfel.html
Knipfel concluded that Pynchon was an influence, but not the author. To the 
best of my knowledge, Mangels has not published anything since. I recommend 
the book, an indescribable one-of-a-kind rant. It certainly has Pynchonian 
Refs., such as (from the first couple of pages):

"God knows that ultimately there can be no death penalty for matter: once 
created, a Frank cannot be destroyed; [...]"

and one of the many ways Frank has been killed throughout history:

"[...] hurled out of a Vatican window by the Pope himself [...]"

I've included the first paragraph of Frank's World to give an idea of 
Mangels' style.

     Steve Maas

>From _Frank's World_ by George Mangels:
TIME would heal the wound that was Frank; the
world would continue to spin, to wobble, its axis only
slightly skewed, momentarily displaced, by the brief,
shuddering existence of one man--one THING--a
post-human mutant, a blurred Xerox copy of a
human being, the offspring of the waste of technology,
the bent shadow of a fallen angel; Frank was all of
these things...he was the sum of everything dark
and sticky, the congealment of all things wrong and
dark and foul in this world and every other seedy rat-
hole world in every back-alley universe throughout the
vast garbage dump of creation; God rolled the dice
and Frank lost...he was a spiritual flunky, a univer-
sal pain-in-the-ass, a joy-riding, soul-sucking cosmic
punk rolling through time and space and piling up a
karmic debt of such immense magnitude so as to in-
variably glue the particular vehicle of the immediate
moment to the basement of possibility--planet
earth--and force Frank to RE-ENLIST, endlessly, to
return, over and over, to a flawed world somewhere
to spend the Warhol-film-loop nights of eternity serv-
ing concurrent life sentences roaming the dimly lit hall-
ways of always, stuck in the dense overshoes of physi-
cality, forever, until finally--one would hope there is
always a FINALLY--eventually, anyway--God would
step in and say ENOUGH ALREADY and grab Frank
by the collar of one of his thrift-shop polyester flower-
print shirts and hurl him out the back door of the cos-
mos, expelling the rotten orb into the great wide
nothingness and out of our lives--sure, that would be
nice--but so would a new Cadillac--quit dreaming--
it just doesn't work that way...


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