Ms. Hen reviews Famous Men Who Never Lived

Famous Men Who Never Lived

K Chess

Tin House Press

2019

Ms. Hen decided to read this novel because she listened to a radio show on NPR about books. She doesn’t usually listen to the radio, but she heard a commercial that there was going to be a show about dystopian fiction for the summer, and she was intrigued. She found the show online, and became fascinated learning about new novels.

FAMOUS MEN WHO NEVER LIVED is different from other dystopian fiction that Ms. Hen has read. It’s about an alternative universe, in which there was a split in 1909, and another world went down a different continuum. There is a nuclear war in the other dimension, and some people in that New York had the opportunity to go through a portal to go to the New York that we know. The people who arrive in New York are considered refugees, but from another world. They leave everything behind, and there is no going back. The New York where they arrive is a little bit the same, but also drastically different.

The novel is about Hel, a former doctor in the other dimension, and her boyfriend she meets on this side, Vikram, a PhD student in literature, a type that does not exist in this world. Vikram works as a security guard at a storage facility, and Hel does not work, and lives off assistance. Vikram brought books with him through the portal, books unique to their world. Hel loves reading THE PYRONAUTS, a classic science fiction novel by Ezra Sleight, who was a household name from their side. Hel and Vikram find the house where Sleight lived in this world, but here, he died as a child. They want to turn it into a museum for the UDP, Universally Displaced Persons, a place to showcase their culture and history.

Hel goes to a party to try to gather interest in her project about the museum, and brings THE PYRONAUTS with her. She shows in to the head of a museum, and misplaces it. She tries to get the novel back, but the woman does not have it. It’s the only copy that exists in this world. Hel goes wild with desperation trying to get the book back.

This novel is about refugees, and what happens when they leave everything they know, and cannot go back. The UDPs have a shared culture that nobody in this world could understand. There are books and movies and history that people do not know here. Even things like commercials on TV, or the fact that women there did not wear high heels. Their side might have been more dangerous, and it does not exist anymore, but it belonged to them.

This novel made Ms. Hen think about culture, and what she knows and likes, and she tried to imagine how she would feel if it all disappeared. She came to the conclusion that everyone likes different things, and people from other countries, and people of different ages, have memories and enjoy movies and music and TV shows others don’t. Ms. Hen knows that there are even people who don’t read books (the horror!) and she realizes those people have different cultural sensibilities than people who do read. She wondered if she could let everything go away, and tried to imagine what that would be like.

Ms. Hen thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It made her think, and not everything she reads does that. She loved living in this weird world for a little while, meeting people from a different dimension, and imagining an alternate universe. She likes books that pose the idea that anything could be possible, because somewhere and someday, it could become true.