Antoine Wilson is the author of the novels
Mouth to Mouth,
Panorama City, and
The Interloper. His work has appeared in
The Paris Review,
StoryQuarterly,
Best New American Voices, and
The Los Angeles Times, among other publications. He is a contributing editor at
A Public Space. Born in Montreal and raised in California and Saudi Arabia, he now lives with his family in Los Angeles.
[
My Book, The Movie: Panorama City]
At Electric Lit Wilson tagged
nine novels with nested narrators retelling stories they’ve heard, including:
Gargoyles by Thomas Bernhard
This second novel from Austria’s pre-eminent rant-meister is narrated by a doctor’s son following his father on his rounds through the gloomy and treacherous countryside, calling on one patient after another, 
all of whom suffer from various horrible ailments. For 80 pages or so, it’s a parade of grotesques, then doctor and son arrive at the local castle, Hochgobernitz, where they encounter the suicidal insomniac Prince Saurau, whose unhinged philosophical monologue dominates the next 80 pages. How unhinged? At one point, Saurau quotes, verbatim, passages from a dream in which he watches his son writing. The debut of what would become Bernhard’s trademark style, Gargoyles answers the question: What would Heart of Darkness be like if Conrad had let Kurtz take over halfway through?
Read about
another entry on the list.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
