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Metropolis

Early in 1977, I flew with my bicycle—an old French Follis—to Tahiti. This began a two-month foray across the Pacific, to Samoa, Western Samoa, and then Fiji. I slept in a hammock strung between trees. I wandered along mud roads, through rain and tropical sunshine. I sailed around islands on a copra boat. I caught—and survived—malaria. Finally I went on to Adelaide, Australia, where my dreams became filled with images of despair. A series of characters appeared and reappeared: the Fat Man, a sick boy, a strangely beautiful woman. And a city: decaying buildings, mysterious passageways. When the despair threatened to overwhelm me, I decided to turn my dreams into a novel. The result is Metropolis, my fifth novel, which followed my dreams over a period of about nine months.

Metropolis remains one of my favorite works, perhaps because it seems so personal. It has never been published—indeed, I have never sent it anywhere. Nonetheless, the imagery in this work intrigues me. I recently re-read it—my first reading in many, many years—and I was struck by how much the character Clara, the mysterious, slender, dark beauty who inhabits the novel as she inhabited my dreams—resembles Jacqueline, my wife. I made the video, above, contemplating this. And now I am considering something more ambitious: to publish the novel myself, full of illustrations, as I did for HAG—and also to create a movie based on the novel. The movie would probably be a combination of live action (using Jacqueline, for example) and animation, since the movie would require rather grandiose sets: huge buildings, etc. It would be quite an undertaking. Meanwhile, I will be adding an occasional short video and some photos here, as I play around with these ideas....