When Douglas Thompson submitted the first part of The Rhymer (titled Heredyssey) to Sein und Werden it made me feel a little bit giddy. I’d published his work in previous issues and was a big fan of this self-labelled Glasgow-surrealist but here was a story unlike anything I had read before. In the best possible way. Here was an excerpt, workable as a stand-alone piece, written almost entirely in verse. Obviously Thompson is a risk-taker, a dare-devil member of the literati, to propose such a feat as this. Should the measurements be out of sync, the angles a bit skewed or the trajectory off course, this could have been disastrous. But Thompson’s risks are calculated. He is a master craftsman, pulling out all the stops with exceptional timing (comic and otherwise).

When I accepted Heredyssey I told Thompson I would love to read a full-length novel written in the same poetic style. I knew Heredyssey was already a longer piece but when Thompson told me there was a whole novel in the pipeline I was thrilled. Barely a couple of months down the line, Heredyssey, now titled The Rhymer, appeared in my inbox.

Let me just say, at this point, that Thompson works part-time as an architect (and full-time as a writer if his literary output is anything to go by). This is not something I’m mentioning in passing. To me, architecture is one of those mysterious schools that straddles both science and art, one that demands artistic freedom within the constraints of mathematical equation. Taking much of his influence from the whorls and fronds of nature, the architect can create in months what nature took a billion years or just a few seconds to develop. But whether he is inspired by the crystal or the snowflake the architect must be a methodical, patient perfectionist with a healthy mix of left and right brain activity, someone who can work on the delicate minutiae whilst keeping sight of the bigger picture. And these traits are not limited to Thompson’s day job. I believe he builds his stories in much the same way he plans his physical structures. To Thompson every word, every sentence is significant. He is one of those authors for whom writing is more than just the telling of a good story. It is a finely honed craft. This is true of all his work, not just The Rhymer. Take, for instance, his short story My (Ruined) Father, an immaculately constructed piece of prose that juxtaposes the slow disintegration of a building with the deteriorating health of the narrator’s father.

 

‘I have seen the old photos. My father had a fine face (façade) once, a good (bone) structure, captivating pair of big eyes (windows), and a strong dignified looking mouth (shopfront).’

 

Evocative, tender and visual, Thompson’s writing creates feeling in everything, be it natural or man-made. Similarly in The Fallen Woman he creates emotion and intuition in physical constructs, merging the sentient with the composite and turning solid into fluid.

 

‘Look: a falling figure hits the water and half the world collapses inwards. Lurching of heart and lungs. Towerblocks double-over in pain, bridges spin round in half-recognition.’

 

Just as Duchamp’s Woman Descending a Staircase was an attempt to portray movement and altered perspectives, Thompson uses rhetoric to expose every point of view, every narrative and every context until characters begin to converge in bas-relief. Because emotions are never just black or white, and personality is not a linear composition, Thompson’s characters are complex and intricate with changing attitudes and inconsistent behaviours. In what may almost be called a study of form, another work by the author – Sylvow – begins with a man taking several photographs of a flower, from every conceivable angle, only to discover that ‘every flower and leaf has turned itself towards him’. In Thompson’s world nothing adheres to the laws of physics, solid floors liquefy, human-machine hybrids emerge and reality and memory distort and converge, and like Escher’s unfathomable stairs and Dali’s melting clocks, The Rhymer is a visual mind-bender, a puzzle to be solved.

But Thompson never insults his readers’ intelligence by giving the game away. He does drop a few screwy clues here and there and plants some cock-eyed signs to lead us on our merry way, but never does he give us more than he wants to. The fun is in solving the mystery ourselves after all and The Rhymer is a mystery, albeit an existential one. Who is this man, this philosopher-poet who seems to have lost his memory of time and place? Is he a seer? A mad man? He is searching, but for what exactly? Is it love that drives him on? Or the question of self? Or the even bigger question of God? Like a character in a computer game he must find the clues along with us, gaining points with every correct answer and to reach the highest level is to reach enlightenment is to discover who he actually is.

But is enlightenment reached through affirmation or denial? Is the personality established through a process of building up or cutting down? The Rhymer’s characters wear masks, hide their features and change their appearance in true dream-like form, but do they do so in order to cast doubt or to raise questions? These characters are more than just members of the chorus; they’re part of the vehicle transporting Nadith (let me refer to him thus, to avoid confusion) through time, space and sur-reality.

 

‘This mask thing is a metaphor of course, but then again it isn’t. I really am a new person every time, made instantly into what the first of my lost audience yearn for. In that sense, this polished metal face is a mirror, dragging everything in from around it, and by the very contours of its features: fluidly distorting.’

 

Nadith, then, isn’t just a seer; he’s also a truth-teller. He is the reflection of society’s whims, mankind’s mistakes. He empathises, but he doesn’t attempt to cross any bridges. He teaches through disclosure, yet this is not his calling. He has fallen into the realm of sooth-sayer while all he really wants to do is find his brother and gain some insight into his past.

Zenir (let us call him) is his brother’s polar opposite. While Nadith, the humble drifter, isn’t always likeable, Zenir is always detestable. Vanity, greed and superficiality are just some of his vices and he is rolling in the excesses of a profitable artistic career. Because of this he always seems to be one furlong, mile or art gallery ahead. And so Nadith chases his brother’s shadow through Suburbia, Industria, Oceania, Sylvia and Urbis where geography and grey matter seem to converge. We see nature encroaching on the concrete jungle in an effort to reclaim its space; we see the prophetic vision of (wo)man-made machines...

 

‘... a carefully substantiated and cross-referenced theory with footnotes, that only dreamt it was a woman, only a pale worm left behind like a thing spilled from an anatomist’s pickling jar, broken on the wheel of learning. And crucified now on the spokes of a bicycle.’

 

and the plight of the suburban lawn...

 

‘And in this quiet street we walk through, how all the trees and bushes and hedgerows seem hushed and hunched over like monks in hoods immersed in green hymns, asleep in their pews, the timber fences of suburbia which keep them confined and subdued’.

 

...all, perhaps, sites of longing and mourning for that which Nadith seeks. As a transient, he is the leaf blown this way and that, into the onslaught of traffic, the noise and fury of the material world. He will never fit into their spaces, but that’s okay because he prefers the sky as his roof and the grass as his bed. And so he drifts, from beginning to end, destined perhaps to repeat and repeat ad infinitum.

Should this book come with a warning? ‘... contains surreal imagery and disturbing verse. May offend.’? I don’t think so. If anything, I think it could prove to be a pleasant surprise for the unsuspecting genre-reader. And it’s not as though this technique has been employed just for a bit of fun. I’m sure it was fun to write, almost as much fun as it is to read, but there’s more to it. Language is a hinge and verse is a lubricant. There’s no easier way to teach and inform someone learning to read than by repetition and rhyme.

 

‘Uncurling, serpent Zenir slithers through the contours of their bowels, lengthening their vowels, promoting their taste for pretension, distancing themselves from each other by claims they can lay to his vision, acquisition in material transposition of the spiritual windows he opens.’

 

By the time you reach the end of The Rhymer you still won’t have all the answers, though you’ll be surprised by those you do have. Just as this tale refuses to squeeze into any one genre, so it will baulk at fitting within your expectations. I promise you will want to go back and re-read sections, reacquaint yourselves with characters, re-imagine logistics, and still you won’t know, for sure, who is what or why. And that is how it should be. There are clues to the past and there are hints at the present, but who’s to say if these are dreams, reality, or the ravings of a lunatic. Read it, enjoy it, and when you’ve figured it out, give me a call.

Rachel Kendall, Jan 2014