- Stephen Hall. Maxwell’s Demon / transl. from English by A. Kolesova. Moscow: AST; St. Petersburg, Astrel-SPb Publ., 2024. 400 p.
For a long time, the British writer Stephen Hall was the author of one novel. Published in 2007, the debut called The Raw Shark Texts (translated by Georgy Yaropolsky as “The Diaries of a Hungry Shark”) attracted the attention of book geeks who are hungry for puzzling rarities. Readers got a winning combination of a plot mystery and unusual textual devices: a postmodern homage to the film “Jaws”; A character who suffers from amnesia and receives instructions from an earlier version of themselves. graphic elements that dilute the narrative; a conceptual shark floating among empty pages, made up of words; Search for additional fragments of the metanovel in a real quest.
For all its surprising structure, the debut did not offer any radical novelty and even more so, complexity. Before him, for example, Mark Danilevsky’s “House of Leaves” had already been published, breaking the record for the density of typographic tricks. Hall’s play with text construction, who is well acquainted with the text-based art movement, is not a basis for large-scale experiments, but rather an auxiliary component of the story. The writer is much more focused on fantasies about the power of the book word. And the second novel “Maxwell’s Demon”, released in English in 2021, confirms this.
In The Raw Shark Texts, the plot attraction revolved around one fantastic theory: what if, from the many words, ideas and concepts that live in the breeding ground of world culture, entities beyond human control evolve? So Hall came up with a conceptual shark that haunts people and devours their memory. Maxwell’s Demon is also an attraction, but the number of theories has increased exponentially — all of them are mainly “about books, language, history, and how text works.
Therefore, it is not surprising that a reflective writer was chosen for the role of the narrator, albeit with a broken literary career. Being in the shadow of the famous prose writer father, who died seven years ago, Thomas Quinn is overgrown with dust, thinking about the entropy of everything and the inevitable collapse of the world, and at the same time misses his wife, who went on an expedition. From stagnant everyday life, he suddenly finds himself in a paranoid detective story with the intervention of inexplicable oddities. First, he receives a call from his dead father, voicing the question: “Where does a hollow angel come from in Bethlehem?” Then Quinn receives a note from a reclusive genius he knows Andrew Black (another writer!) with a picture of a mysterious black sphere. And then the devilry irrevocably captures the narrator with a whirlwind of autumn leaves, conspiracy theories, mystical anomalies. Reality is collapsing on all fronts, fictional characters appear on the doorstep, e-books hide the apocalypse – and this is just the tip of a crazy iceberg the size of Borges’ library.
Quinn’s maniacal desire to understand what is happening leads him into conspiracy weeds. Laying out a solitaire game of religious texts and linguistic hypotheses, he asks: if in the beginning there was a word and language determines reality, does this mean that there is an incredible possibility of rewriting the world with the help of letters? “Maxwell’s Demon” is too much of a writer in every sense, even by the standards of the usual novels about writers. It’s a bustling crossroads of books that illuminate the main thematic lines with their appearance, whether it’s Cervantes’ Don Quixote (the indistinguishability of imagination and reality) or Melville’s Moby Dick (the story of obsession). However, Hall does not erect an escapist ivory tower, where the game of the mind exists for its own sake. At the center of this construction beats the plot of the human heart: Quinn escapes into a textual detective story from the discomfort of his personal life, which in the end will still have to be dealt with.
“What is the world, Thomas?” Don’t answer right away. I want you to think carefully first. What does the world you live in consist of? From stones, grass and trees, or from articles, certificates, records, files and letters? From soil, rivers and sand, or from thoughts, ideas, beliefs and opinions? Let me ask one more question: what is this world in which there are only seven words”—she tapped her knuckles on Andrew’s note—”seven words put together in a certain sequence can make a balanced person blindly rush into the unknown; Where he had never been in his life?
Hall again wrote a metanovel — a space of mirrors, reflections and masquerade. Everywhere you look, there are fractals, repeating patterns. “Maxwell’s Demon” is Hall’s second novel, and also the second novel by Andrew Black, and also a famous thought experiment that the narrator is obsessed with, because it is this demon who is able to overcome the second law of thermodynamics – to reverse entropy, to create order from chaos. Or here is another chain: the plot destruction of the familiar world occurs in the fall, during the period of natural decay, one of the plot twists is associated with the autumn name, and the pages of the book are literally scattered with leaves-texts — prose calligrams. Lovers of unraveling semantic tangles will have something to do at their leisure. Especially after the finale, which answers a lot and at the same time leaves a generous scope for interpretation.
The prosographic herbarium used in the novel is a theoretical bonus to the dramatic leapfrog. Among the leaves, for example, there are quotes from Campbell’s The Hero of a Thousand Faces and Vogler’s Travels. The self-commenting novel at times looks like a very excessive focus, a pretentious postmodern joke. But in the end, this technique is destined for an exceptional role: the fall of leaves joins the climactic scene, illustrating the main metamorphosis of the novel — the change of reality with the help of the text. Maxwell’s Demon, as in the case of the writer’s debut book, invites you to admire the visual magic of text-based art.
Both of Hall’s novels belong to a single metaverse — they are textual fiction, where reality is transformed not by aliens or technological breakthroughs, but by the incredible power of the printed word. The true power belongs to the letters, the “angels who carry the message,” while the art world lives according to the same merciless evolutionary laws as the physical world. So, Hall reminds, even on the pages of a book, a person should not relax – who knows what other conceptual demons are hiding among the deceptively innocent lines?
Abd Faek Ghananeem is a creative storyteller with a passion for crafting engaging narratives that captivate readers of all ages. With a knack for weaving tales that resonate on a personal level, Abd’s work reflects a deep understanding of the human experience. As an author, Abd brings a unique voice to the literary world, offering stories that are not only entertaining but also thought-provoking. Whether writing for children or adults, Ghananeem’s work is marked by a blend of imagination, insight, and a genuine love for storytelling.
