My response to Passes Through, in my initial reading and on subsequent visits, can best be characterized as a species of wild joy. Dipping into it unfailingly produces an exhilaration that I suspect alters my brain chemistry in ways that parallel the workings of various illicit psychoactive substances but exact less of a toll. While engulfed in the mind-engine that Rob Stephenson has built one can surf a higher-dimensional ocean of linguistic possibility and emerge, kahuna-like, back on the shore one’s own (literary, in my case) practice. That my approach to writing fiction is less “experimental” and “innovative” than his doesn’t in any way lessen the impact his work has on me.
Passes Through follows along a trajectory of the history of the novel that arcs from Don Quixote (Cervantes) to Tristram Shandy (Sterne) to the trilogy composed of Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable (Beckett). Any close reading of these past masters will put to rest the old canard that the novel must have some kind of consensually recognized conventional structure. Although, on a macro level, Passes Through, like its forbears, doesn’t have any kind of conventional structure, on a micro level it actually has hundreds, if not thousands, of snippets of conventional structures, and they all whoosh away just as the reader begins to assimilate their presence. You are always anticipating that next wave, trying hard to ride the big one(s) and stay on your board. This is part of what makes reading Passes Through such a unique and thrilling experience.
But putting aside for the moment any other reasons why you might want to purchase and read Passes Through, keep in mind that it is extremely funny from cover to cover. I do not think it would be going too far to call it a comic masterpiece.
