Getting to Know Harry Stephen Keeler

This two-volume set takes the concept of an unreliable narrator to comic extremes. The enigmatic storyteller adopts no fewer than 50 identities in his travels through Chicago, including that of a philosophy professor who proposes a new solution to the famous Marceau case. RP

Keeler’s 1917 story “Misled in Milwaukee” eventually morphed into this surreal novel in which bumpkin Ezra Jenkins searches for his brother, X-Y-Z Jenkins, in the eerie metropolis of Wiscon City, encountering characters such as African-American poet Olivia Debrevois and an entity known as Life’s Triple Enigma. RP

This is a literal head trip, involving the peregrinations across Chicago of a skull in a bag. Whose brain did the cranium once encase? Why is it stuffed with what appear to be scraps of poetry? Why is the damn bag so ridiculously complex? A fever dream told by a confectioner, this is irresistible stuff: the best single volume introduction to Keeler’s world. EP

My favorite Asian-American novel by a non-Asian-American might well be this neglected masterpiece, in which the titular sleuth, born and raised in Indiana, takes on a corporate espionage case and a maddening literary mystery all at once. While the book is full of Keeler’s trademark loopiness, its hero is a melancholy fellow—brilliant, assimilated, yet unable to win recognition in a white-dominated country. Keeler was fascinated by all things Chinese; Chinese characters, books, and artifacts play significant roles throughout his work. But though he sometimes attempted to turn the racism of the period on its head, he didn’t always escape it. Here, he replaces insensitivity with a relentless accounting of just how slim the odds of success were for a person of color in a racist society. As if that weren’t timely enough—it’s also the ne plus ultraof leak narratives! EP