The Book of Transparencies

Fiction. THE BOOK OF TRANSPARENCIES begins in 2005 with an unnamed narrator who finds a copy of The Book of Transparencies by William Bolzebados, published in 1977, in the community college library where he teaches. Drawn to the author and the book's subject (the relationship between Bolzebados and the artist Cleo Barnes), the narrator begins to follow Bolzebados' life and the story of his book, travels that take the narrator through New York, Paris, Italy, Berlin, fictional parallel landscapes and fabrications, and finally to Maine where Bolzebados disappeared from the back of the Aucocisco Ferry bound for Peaks Island in October of 1975. The arc of the narrative swirls around the reasons for, and results of, this event. The narrator creates an archive of this particular history which includes himself, Bolzebados and Barnes, but also a more amorphous, clouded space where all three of them exist, speak and attempt to fill in the holes and gaps of their collective memory.