Kyle Coroneos

"The true way to save the world… would be to make a hero out of most everyone by awakening them to the awesome possibilities awaiting inside themselves that have been rendered dormant by the skepticism of the modern world." (pg. 183)

A difficult book to appraise, Kyle Coroneos' Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board – subtitled A Novel – is well-written, thought-provoking and, with its barebones narrative, gives every indication of being quantified as literature. However, whenever I try to approach it as such, my brain short-circuits, and I find myself back at square one in determining just exactly what the book is.

The vast majority of the content comprises the author's opinions (via his protagonist's first-person perspective) on life, the world, art and everything in between, including diagnoses of our society and its reliance on technology. Straining under the weight of this is a barest of barebones narrative in which we follow a master thief who stumbles across a paedophile ring and endeavours to bring them down through an ingenious plan. This, however, can scarcely be called a plot – we are given no names, locations, and there is little motion, conflict or scene-setting in the story. It seems to be there simply to justify Coroneos' (admittedly interesting) perspectives on various intellectual topics, and those approaching Light as a Feather expecting any plot dynamism will find themselves with thirst. The lack of substance to the fictional narrative (as opposed to the commendable substance in the ideas discussed) can leave the reader adrift.

I can't help but feel that a genuine piece of literature would frame these ideas better, working them within the plot and character so that the themes emerge more naturally (and emphatically) than Coroneos' decision to provide a series of chapter-length abstract discussions interlinked by this thin master-thief thread. The book is a sort of confession from its unnamed protagonist, but it reads as something closer to Ted Kaczynski than Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov. The knowing reflection upon a story, that thing to be seeded into the prose which makes a story into literature, just isn't there in Light as a Feather.

Without meaning to draw an unfair comparison, Dostoevsky, for example, would see the essential importance of critiquing and juxtaposing Feather's protagonist's claim to having become "enlightened" by "unlocking the utmost potential of my human design" (pg. 30), rather than merely presenting the character's worldview uncritically. When Feather's protagonist refrains from intervening in the exploitation of one child in order to preserve his anonymity and take down the whole operation at a later date (pg. 86), a piece of literature would wrestle with, or at least acknowledge, this moral dilemma and its dramatic effects on the character. In Feather, it is never mentioned again after this moment.

And yet, again, my brain returns to square one, for the above comments on the thin fictional narrative and the weighty abstract discussions are not necessarily flaws. They are not mistakes from the author; the book appears to have emerged in its intended form, and intended from sincerity rather than a writerly affectation; anyone who reads Coroneos' articles on his website, Saving Country Music, knows he is reflective and independent in thought, and not afraid to write according to his own lights. There are also creditable fictions, such as Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, or Hermann Hesse's early books, which lean as heavily towards their abstract discussions as Coroneos' book. When Feather's blurb describes itself as just as much an adventure as a self-help guide, it is this company it broadly keeps.

Nevertheless, I can't help but feel that Feather needed more narrative meat on its glittering intellectual bones, though readers will appreciate many of the eloquent thoughts that emerge in the abstract discussions. Ultimately, I see Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board as provoking those stimulating intellectual exercises that result from reading good literature, but without the same narrative weave that grounds them and makes them endure.… (altro)