Of course, the staff at the Smithsonian doesn’t know that their star illustrator is only twelve years old, but they soon find out. When the Institution gives him the prestigious Baird Prize and invites him to the nation’s capital to give a keynote address, their prepubescent honoree decides to hop on a freight train — emulating a hobo he read about in a book — and travel to Washington D.C. to receive the honor.
Larsen keeps the plot moving, supplemented with accompanying charts on most pages that range from the sublime to the ridiculous. Along the way we encounter McDonald’s Happy Meals, Valero the talking Winnebago, the 24/7 “Hobo Hotline,” a talkative racist trucker and other milestones of the American open road. Elements of magical realism also show up occasionally, including a brief train stop outside the normal time-space continuum and an eerily helpful band of traveling sparrows. Finally, Larsen spices up his story with a bit of conspiracy theory — a role played here by the Megatherium Club, a secret organization that seems to pop up in the most surprising places.
The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet is a clever, well-paced, and often brilliant book. However, I don’t expect that the literary establishment will open its arms wide to embrace this book. Works of fiction that go beyond your typical word-processed documents and spill out into the margins — examples that come to mind include House of Leaves and The Raw Shark Texts — don’t win the big awards, no matter how visionary or imaginative they are. The typical response to these books reminds me of what a precocious twelve-year-old prodigy might encounter upon arriving at the Smithsonian Institution — hoping to be judged on his work alone but instead running into all sorts of other agendas.
Nonetheless, count me in as a believer. I don’t jump to the conclusion that the next new thing in fiction will take place outside the margins of the text, but Larsen’s eccentricities and linotype-breaking tendencies set this book apart from the crowd. The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet is an impressive debut, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Larsen’s next novel pushes the envelope even more.
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