Skip the story: Footnotes tell the real tale

The Grand Rapids Press

Mark Dunn gives readers a two-fer in his new book, "Ibid: A Novel" (MacAdam/Cage, 269 pages, $22). Not only does he launch an uproarious broadside against the political and cultural giants that peopled the 20th century, he does it with a sly wink to that literary afterthought, the footnote.

In Dunn's novel, though, the footnote takes center stage -- in fact, it's the only character on stage. The premise is sketched in the opening pages of the book as novelist Mark Dunn sends his only copy of a biography of three-legged deodorant mogul Jonathan Blashette to his editor at MacAdam/Cage. The well-intentioned editor accidentally drops the manuscript into his bathtub and, in an effort to console his distraught novelist, offers to publish just the footnotes.

Let the fun begin.

On its surface, "Ibid" details the life of Blashette, who begins his life as a circus sideshow attraction, thanks to his third leg. After a stint in college, he lands in a foxhole in World War I, where he decides that deodorant for men is an idea whose time has come. Blashette launches the Dandy-de-odor-o company, which becomes wildly successful -- although his products are never to be sold in Boston, a city that claimed the lives of two fiancees.

On a second and perhaps more interesting level, "Ibid" tells the story of the 20th century. Noted -- and notorious -- illuminati from the century gallop their way through the footnotes -- from Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Helen Keller to Diego Riviera, Leopold &Loeb and Nelson Rockefeller. Blashette always seems to be near the right place at the right time: He edits a draft of baseball great Lou Gehrig's farewell speech, discovers the truth behind evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson's notorious kidnapping and has a close friend who launches Alcoholics Anonymous.

There's even a tip of his hat to Vladimir Nabokov, whose "Pale Fire" is perhaps the best-known novel where the footnotes overtake the text to become the text-unto-themselves.

"Ibid" is the kind of history we all would have liked to have read: sloppy in places, irreverent in others, replete with missteps and do-overs, downright funny and occasionally tragic, but ultimately engaging.

Dunn's novel is a remarkably fresh take on an occasionally tired genre that reminds the reader the telling can be more important than the story itself.

Mary Ann Sabo is a freelance writer living in Grand Rapids who prefers using op cit to ibid in her footnotes.