Patrick Stubbins

Parzifal Patrick Stubbins

A child is abandoned in an alley, by his mother, on his way home from school. An old man speaks compulsively as he awaits what he hopes is the end. Remarkable things fail to happen. Life, pointlessly, goes on. Parzifal is a novel of music, identity, and the inherent ambiguity of artistic creation. The protagonists include a professor of Unheard Music, an incompetent composer who may never have existed, the ghost of Anton Bruckner, and various former Nazis. An unnamed narrator reflects upon age and loss, and the inevitability of death, among other things. Elvis makes a memorable appearance for no apparent reason. The stench of opera permeates all. The narrator attempts and fails to retell the story of Parzifal and the Grail, often forgetting who Parzifal is, frequently confusing the character with himself, sometimes heedless of the story he is trying to tell. Parzifal is therefore various to the point of hopelessness: an imagined youth, a medieval morality play, a symphony which may never have been written, an apparition on the fringe of memory, imperfectly forgotten. In the end there is no resolution. Perhaps. A meditation on the illusion of reality, on the resilience of failure, and the mortality of everything.