The Wake and the Manuscript

by Ansgar Allen

In this brooding and obsessive novel, Ansgar Allen recounts the story of a nameless man who attends a funerary wake with no other distraction than papers that once belonged to the body on display. The deceased considered the papers to be his magnum opus, a text that unraveled everything he had been educated to accept, beginning with the spectre of religion—namely The Church of Christ, Scientist—and ending with the very fabric of educated, civilized thought. Allen’s protagonist thinks he’s above the conclusions drawn in the titular manuscript, but the blurred lines between what he reads and what he sees in himself incite an apocalypse of introspection. The result is a dark, labyrinthine attempt to diminish (and eventually annihilate) the memory of the man who came to rest on the table before him. Literary and existential, The Wake and the Manuscript explores the vagaries of death, identity, desire, and indoctrination as it (un)buries a history of delusion that speaks volumes about the human condition.

Genres: Horror

176 pages, Hardcover

Published December 1, 2022

About the author

Ansgar Allen is the author of works of fiction, theory-fiction and philosophy. He lives and works in Sheffield, in the UK.

Reviews

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A man reads his dead colleague's manuscript while grudgingly sitting vigil at his wake. As he in turn shares his colleague's words with the reader, this Bernhardian narrator launches a darkly humorous evisceration of his colleague's ideas on education as well as their shared experience being raised in The Church of Christ, Scientist, growing increasingly vehement in his criticism even as he is periodically distracted by his current position and his memories of the events leading up to it. Written in the unbroken form of a single monologue, the book is as much a reflection of the narrator's own history and character traits as it is of his colleague's ideas of which he is so bitterly critical. And yet it all becomes so entwined by the end as to make differentiation between the two men difficult, and perhaps ultimately irrelevant.

[Corinne Hughes · Rating 4 out of 5]

At the core of this novel is a philosophical exploration of the educated mind, "the grammar of his upbringing, the grammar of that environment and the grammar of his imprisonment."

A man attends the wake of a childhood friend, where he is provided a manuscript written by the deceased to save, to make something of. A wonderful twist is that this man has been repeatedly disrupting the creation of this manuscript for years. At the wake, it is clear that the manuscript has become a point of obsession for him as a manifestation of all the questions that linger from a common difficult childhood, where church was like the "household furniture," innocuous and yet pervasive to every moment. Each man ends up experiencing quite different adulthoods, where their paths, at times unfortunately, continue to repeatedly cross. We only ever see the deceased through the eyes of this man, and I wonder if we ever learn anything of the deceased at all, or instead are we ever just gazing at the man himself crumbling.

The writing is claustrophobic, intense, and purposefully circular and repetitive. The book is also written without any text breaks, thus compounding the intensity. But fortunately, there are incredible moments of humor and relief as the man interrupts his reading and memories with sharp judgements but then humility.

I felt a sense of urgency while reading, that I couldn't put the book down, yet at the same time I was unsure of what I even wanted to know. I found the ending to be incredibly tender--any part of the novel that includes reference to the speaker's daughter is like a crack through the mania, where something truly known and understood exists in his life: a deep love for his daughter.

Overall, it is an enjoyable dive into the neurotic mind of an academic.

Thank you so much RDS Publishing, Anti-Oedipus Press and NetGalley for the e-book!

[Katrinka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible. Hope to leave a better review soon, but I devoured this one over the course of a day, and my eyes are shot. An indication of how good this one was: I simply can't read books on a screen—but W&M was the exception that proved the rule (hence my eyes resenting my getting sucked in).

[Andy Weston · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ansgar Allen is a writer who always inspires deep thinking and provokes discussion, and though this may not be his best work, (that being Wretch, for me) it certainly doesn’t disappoint.

Here, he examines the contention that ‘to become educated is to become sick’, in the form of fiction, though that tag is quite irrelevant.

The scene is rather suitably set at a wake where the contrived opposition of education as health, versus education as illness, happens across a tangled ‘mind travel’ across medieval and modern examples of Western doctrine. Discussions take place as vignettes, sparked by the unnamed protagonist, himself a mourner, perusing the journals of the deceased, which, he claims, imitates his own writing and plagiarise his interests.

Allen is something of an acquired taste, and for a newcomer to his writing, I don’t think this would be a good place to start, rather, take on Wretch.

[Donald Armfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

With a manuscript in hand that deciphers the memory of the man lay to rest. Despite the loss the pages depict existence in forms of reflection on the protagonist’s own thoughts and quirks of life at hand.
Later the protagonist learns his apocalypse is not only a page unturned but a retrospective in its own eternal fire.
This was an interesting read, a little hard to follow which reads in ”scripture form” (is what I’m calling it,) like a continuous thought flow of ideology.

[Chaos Orc · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book changed the way I think about things. It inspired me to reflect on who I have been and how I have thought about other people. It includes a lot of insights and is written in a way that was challenging but also rewarding. It inspired me to read Extinction. I found a lot of the events and sentiments the narrator recounted to be darkly humorous.

[Isobel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not for me. The book, purposefully written in a dense, dry manner that is representative of academic writing and stream-of-consciousness of a nameless protagonist who is ill (and possibly slightly crazed), the majority of this book is a single paragraph. Interesting idea and, I believe, executed in the manner intended, just not for me. DNF around 30%.

[Wayne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading the book by Ansgar Allen, and it was definitely different. Lots of interesting ideas, but it was just one long paragraph, in case you don't like that (hard to mark your spots). Characters were interesting. #TheWakeandtheManuscript #NetGalley

[Craig · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was swept away by this unbroken narrative, lost my confidence in my interpretation at the threshold of its climax, and set it aside before the holidays.

I read the final pages a week or so ago and here’s a tentative second take. The scholar-narrator’s gaze is held by the virus of twentieth century binary perspectives. The object his logorrhea targets for dialectic immunology is a childhood acquaintance cast as homo sacer in the professional Academy, a man whose Same is the very Aristotelian post-fetal shit that serves as his organizing metaphor for the Edenic hangover metastasizing toxin of formal situated-pragmatic education and performative scholarship for an audience of seven.

What I’m certain of is that I’ll be reading every book Ansgar Allen publishes for us. And if philosophy, education, and Bernhard count among your concerns, reach out to what he’s offering.