THE GREAT ABRAHAM LINCOLN POCKET WATCH CONSPIRACY
By Jacopo della Quercia
*****
BY LOOKING THROUGH THE LENS OF CONSPIRACY, WE AFFORD ourselves an illusion, an illusion of possibility, prediction, and control. Casting the horrors and intrigue of history in the light of conspiracy is a comfort, and to wield these elements so cleverly, as Jacopo della Quercia does in this novel, his debut, we are allowed to look at the present through the artifice of exploring the past. In one of the most memorable scenes (which I won’t give away here), the overtones of our need to control the popular perception of history is pervasive – as there is a lifeless, heartless attempt at changing history in the Oval Office.
It is this character that lets the author reprogram an element of known history and use it in service of the story, and the identification of this character with another greatly popular and historic literary character further illustrates the need for people to feel like they’re in control of their lives, and ultimately their future, and the will to hold onto this control through will; it is this will, I think, that defines the struggle of the characters within the story, and the struggle for self-definition in the greater scope of history. This is a great quality of the novel, the author’s understanding – not only of the history – but of the present’s comfort.
The work is a testament to Jacopo’s substantive education in American and world history. Despite the mixed-bag genre, none-of-which are truly capable of properly categorizing it, the characters are a high-point of the story. The relationship between Taft and his wife has a lingering sadness, a sadness that manifests as a crisis of conscience, the sadness of sickness being a catalyst for the presumption to make changes to the actual writing of history. It betrays a more human look at the development of connected events, no matter how loosely, and peoples, places, and the multitude of intersecting strings [Jacopo] manages to keep in hand.
The story, in my reading, is more about the way that the passions and the sorrows and the love and sadness of people shape the world, despite their status. We see the most powerful of men succumb to the discomfort of despair; the way another prominent Bull Moose of a character walks among his people in disguise, in one of the many call-backs to Shakespeare, the first being a character’s defining himself as ‘the Falstaff of his era.’
The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy not only takes you on a ride through the reality of history, but the reality of characters interacting with history as it’s happening; and by using conspiracy as the catalyst, it highlights another unique aspect of our nature: the curiosity and community built around assumed truths in history, the community conspiracy, which is itself a dodge, a comfort, a way to skip a more difficult and pressing issue: that of mindless action, unpredictable chaos without deeper meaning. By uncovering deep and all-encompassing conspiracies, it gives us the comfort of being able to see some sense in a world of randomness; it allows the world to be held accountable in breathing together (the definition of conspiracy), as all thoughts and persons in our world become more easily linked and associated, Jacopo shows a world of connected people, by narrative or company, doing what people have done since people were people: try to take a part the biggest balls of tangled cables, the tangled wires of prominent historical characters behaving poorly.
The Pocket-Watch itself, I thought, was a source of light, something that drew the curiosity of its characters, bringing their prejudices and predispisitions with them in their attempts to divine its origin and mechanism of action. That mysterious pocketwatch, with dual transcriptions, is itself an image for a history stuck in the loop of time, or an era in which time stands still; the focus on the watch puts us into the story as another character, allowing us to be in on the conspiracy and history, allowing us to breathe together around that baffling fob watch.
An object of wonder, of mystery, this watch — full of strange connections, bringing people together, in wonder, in awe: it demonstrates how people, who otherwise might have never crossed paths, become entangled in a web whose spider is that watch: around which the mystery and characters perform in this brilliant, clever, ersatz roman de clef. It is the anatomy of wonder and togetherness, and how it is easy for so many to reject the love of friends and community when contronted with intriguing symbols and puzzling events, embracing the solitude of skepticism and melancholy.
In this book, you become a part of the unfolding story; as people have a natural capacity for pattern recognition (and pareidolia for when it fails us) and we – as readers – get to participate in the mystery. using our own impressions and experiences to try to crack the mystery, but in the end we prefer it, to keep that unique, blended version of history. We’re more voyeur than reader here, as our minds turn as well with mystery as those within the story. We go with each clue around the world, from Brussels to Paris to New York, as each new connection informs us of a larger and more complicated world, a world more strange and beautiful for it.
brandon the writer | author & staff writer for sir swag 