Unpublished Novels by Dieter Weise

The Island of Fools follows the unruly travails of a young botanist who faces an insular world of hypocrisy and mediocrity when he goes to work at a remote and profoundly conflicted national park in the North American wilderness. His unwitting career mysteriously aligns with the natural forces that alone can stop the island park’s greedy and selfish administrators—who are fortunately as inept as they are shortsighted—from burning down the wilderness in order to conserve it.

Synopsis.

When incredulous young Quinn sails for remote Island of Fools National Park to work as a

conservation botanist for the superlatively bureaucratic Agency, he is seized upon as a tool in the overdeveloping park’s internal dispute about whether to build an unnecessary warehouse or an unnecessary visitor center. The cagey head Interpreter, Widgel, surmises Quinn will side against the Agency’s endless quest for improved facilitation and causes him to delay its passenger liner’s departure, undermining Quinn’s standing with his new colleagues. The captain is forced to perform a reverse maneuver that damages the engine.

Aboard, the ship’s purser warns of the metaphysical toll employment at the Island will take on Quinn's soul, and an archaeologist gives an account of a Hudson’s Bay Company factor who once went mad from having to overwinter there. The archaeologist hopes to uncover artifacts proving the island was named for numerous absurd mishaps that befell 18th century voyageurs, and not because the rough outlines of its shores resemble a giant cap and bells when seen on the map. The ship’s passengers become seasick upon being forced to read a prose description of the Island by an Agency nature-writer parodying the Ruskinian pathetic fallacy, but everyone is cured of the miserable reading by the actual island’s appearance on the horizon.

The ship unloads at a grotesque employee enclave called Poltroon where it now lies stranded

as a result of engine damage following its reverse maneuver. Quinn’s backpack—containing all his food and possessions—is deliberately misplaced by vindictive maintenance men who assume Quinn's role in damaging the ship was due to a deliberate conspiracy against them. The only person who knows why Quinn was really hired, the Wilderness Supervisor Evada Little, is either missing or doesn’t exist. Quinn’s immediate superior, the haggard Max Furor, does nothing but assign him to clock his work hours. His other coworkers include Fiddlehead Canon, a vegan

exterminator who poisons the exotic fool’s parsley colonizing the wilderness, Chester Trail, an amicable old trail hand who fancies himself a Shakespearean fool, and Odin, an irascible Icelandic boat mechanic who won’t mend vessels without supplication.

The cunning park superintendent claims the Island is facing a fiscal crisis and threatens to

implement a sustainable budget if employees refuse to file specious accident claims in order to receive excess funding. Meanwhile, Quinn assists an elderly visitor setting off for a trip in a wooden kayak. The man’s lost backpack, containing his heart medication, has been repeatedly swapped with Quinn’s by miscommunicating wardens in increasingly desperate attempts to correct their compounding errors. As the Head Warden delivers an address to the assembled rangers on the need to maintain eternal vigilance, a radio call reports a corpse floating in the

harbour. A newly installed security system locks everyone inside, and Chester, holding the park’s master key in his teeth, is delivered through a hole pierced in the window. But the commercial lodge’s illegally hired eastern European dishwasher has already determined the qayaqer had a fatal heart attack.

Max Furor orders Quinn to the Cascade of Cretins—a chain of waterfalls where the Ludicrous

and Ridiculous Creeks converge but are not visible since they are obscured by brush after years of unnecessary forest fire suppression. Quinn is supposed to look for black bears even though the island has never had bears. Little unexpectedly calls Quinn to another assignment,

and his boat is nearly sunk in a storm off treacherous Foolscap Point. He survives only through Chester’s pilotage.

Little assigns Quinn to undertake a sham environmental compliance survey at the site of a

proposed foot bridge between Poltroon and the Island of Fools. The bridge is roundly opposed because it would allow members of the public within sight of the employees’ opulent houses, thus exposing their greed and hypocrisy. After a rare three-toothed saxifrage mysteriously appears overnight, Quinn attempts to report to Little that he suspects himself the victim

of a ruse. Fiddlehead overhears and files a wrongful complaint for which Quinn is punished by being made to attend interpretive training with Widgel - who forces him to learn an elaborate rhetorical method of expounding on topics with which he isn’t familiar with to tourists. Widgel has come to the island with a fraudulent, yet bumbling, archaeologist who plants a stolen Indigenous artifact to forestall the bridge in return for the maintenance division’s agreement to support Widgel’s new visitor centre. Quinn escapes, stealing the dead man’s wooden kayak from the junkyard, and setting off for the island’s far side to seek out Little in person.

Along the way, Quinn rounds Foolscap Point with the help of a benevolent mallard hen, and a

disgruntled lighthouse-keeper recounts the story of how the wardens once almost burned themselves alive while debating whether a forest fire they were monitoring was naturally ignited or human-caused. Two bush-crazy rangers who spend the summer issuing citations to each other at a remote outpost attempt to entrap Quinn, accusing him of impersonating

an Agency officer because of Quinn’s initial erroneous encoding in the payroll system.

At Mooncalf - the far opposite end of the Island of Fools - Quinn finally meets his conflicted boss, who reveals that she withheld the real nature of his job from him: to find that the Island of Fools aster (Aster imbecilus) had gone extinct from the island’s highest point, the Peak of Ignorance, so the hill could legally be deforested to provide a better view for tourists to take selfies in front of. She gives Quinn a form to take back to Poltroon, ordering that a mysterious wildfire he is wrongly accused of starting at the Cascade of Cretins be allowed to continue to burn. The Superintendent arrives to fire Little for failing to approve clearing the Peak of Ignorance of trees.

On the journey back to Poltroon, Quinn visits idyllic Simplemind Island, home of Dr. Gadley—a proponent of the neo-Luddite philosophy of “heterochronism” and inventor of a renewable power source in the form of an electromagnetic cuckoo clock—and Mrs. Dr. Gadley, a scientist who demonstrates the intelligence of orchids and serves cold fool at an impromptu dinner symposium on civilization’s follies. Chester arrives by rowboat at the banquet, which is being held in honour of a canoe-load of voyageur re-enactors circling the island, with the news that the park is facing destruction by the Cascade of Cretins fire and that the superintendent intends to confiscate Simplemind as park property and build a new gift shop there. Mrs. Gadley expounds on how the Agency behaves exactly as if it believes itself to be divinity, and 

Quinn learns that unexplained bear sightings at the island are due to Max Furor’s dressing up in a bear suit to scare Girl Scouts in order to secure the funding to build bear proof campgrounds.

When he returns to Poltroon, Quinn meets an entirely new employee who is under the impression Quinn is his missing supervisor. Quinn’s and Little’s identities have merged in the payroll system. As an unattended junkyard fire of copies of the Controller’s unused austerity budget spreads out of control on Poltroon, the invidious botanist Dr. Necker, who is to replace Little in reward for his claim that sugar maple and other native harvestable timber species all possess an epic-genetic mutation that causes them to be behaviourally invasive, tells Quinn he will promote him to biologist if he agrees to order the wildfire extinguished. The junkyard fire destroys the generator just as a medical emergency is reported over the park radio. Quinn is conscripted to the rescue team, but first sent to interrupt Odin’s patio party to ask if a boat is available to travel to the rescue site.

The intoxicated Odin reveals to Quinn that Odin is actually “Duffer”—the name on Quinn’s second-hand uniform—and that the reason the Warden’s Glory still hasn’t been fixed is that the Nordic mechanic has been enjoying a time-off award for good deeds actually done by Quinn but mistakenly attributed to Odin by tourists. Odin only received the lumber for his new patio because of the extra cargo space freed when Quinn first sailed to the island with only a backpack.

The rescue party finds that the injured man is merely the Agency nature-writer and Youtube outdoors prima donna Lifton Frodlitt and that he is only requesting evacuation because he finds the scenery too dull. In the ensuing brawl, Frodlitt's ankle is injured and he is strapped to a litter. Confused by his directions, his rescuers carry him the wrong direction in the dark, mistaking the artificial inferno at Poltroon for the wildfire at the Cascade of Cretins. The party discovers the Agency’s firefighters at the Cascade sitting around a mobile field office set up beside a small campfire—the only remains of the wildfire. The firemen, upon learning that Poltroon is burning, smother the last of the wildfire and hurriedly hike over Mt. Oblivion in the dark, hauling Frodlitt on Chester’s pack donkey as the drunken Odin sings an absurd ballad over the radio.

When the Warden’s Glory has to engage reverse gear to evacuate park personnel from the inferno at Poltroon, it is unable to shift into forward gear again and forced to sail backwards into the wind. Because there is one more passenger aboard than there are lifeboats for, and Quinn’s name still isn’t present in the computer system, the ship maroons him at Japer’s Hole with a only dubious and uncertain promise of later rescue. But Dr. Gadley’s sailing sloop shows up to spirit him from the expanding inferno, bringing news that the austerity budget—which will require the Agency itself to obey the same environmental protection rules that it forces on the public—has been implemented. As the first ember from the fire crosses from Poltroon to the Island of Fools, a flaming spruce tree clenches a fist-like bough in triumph.

Sara Person is obvious. When she enters a room, everyone looks at her. Strangers ask her for directions. Old people trust her and small dogs are obsessed with her. She just wants to be left alone, but the more she tries not to be noticed, the more people watch. So when the shopkeeper of an unusual Winnipeg vintage clothing store gives her a red hand-knit hooded cardigan she says has the power to make Sara’s troubles disappear, it sounds too good to be true.

Sara has no time for enchanted sweaters. She’s lost her job as a sheet music page turner. An irate pianist has stolen her phone because she got a standing ovation. Her roommate’s secretly an online adult entertainer—and both are being stalked by an unscrupulous off-duty police officer who hangs around their apartment wearing video glasses. Worst of all, Sara’s new job offer is an obvious person’s nightmare: an ad agency wants her to live stream promotions from giant roadside attractions in Saskatchewan dressed as the provincial phone company’s mascot, Little Red Hiding Hood.

But after Sara’s new cardigan gets torn, the disturbed policeman develops an increasingly dangerous obsession with her—and with trying to prove the extraordinary garment led him to commit an appalling crime. Sara goes on a madcap prairie road trip to find the only person who can possibly mend the situation, and the sweater: the master who knitted it to start with, and who just might be Sara’s long-lost grandmother. Is Sara really darned? Or can her grandmother help make her troubles disappear?

“Darned” is the dark and funny western Canadian story of a young woman on the fringes of an inequitable world who discovers the redemptive powers in tradition. It is a modern take on the French peasant folktale “The Story Of Grandmother”— the original source for the literary versions of “Little Red Riding Hood,” and a traditional coming-of-age story without the patriarchal elements imposed by Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm.

Synopsis

Sara Person moves to Winnipeg from Newfoundland to escape her cruel foster father. She takes a job as a sheet music page turner in a nationally televised recital competition but infuriates a pianist, Livvo Livvi, by getting her own standing ovation. Livvi steals her backpack. An elite advertising executive gives Sara his card, offering her a job in Saskatchewan.

Justine, Sara’s roommate, secretly works as an online adult entertainer. An unscrupulous off-

duty police officer named Kenspeckle, who records people with his video glasses without permission, has determined their address and tricked Justine into meeting him. Sara has requested her adoption records. A reply in the mail tells her it will be eight weeks before she learns the identity of her birth mother in Saskatchewan.

Sara goes into a strange vintage clothing shop called “Outcast Looks.” The proprietor, Mme.

Cligner, gives her a red hand knit hooded cardigan she claims will make Sara disappear. Sara doesn’t take this seriously, but at home, Kenspeckle walks in on her in the bath and uses the toilet in front of her as if she isn’t there.

Sara gets fired because of a viral video of her upstaging Livvo Livvi. Livvi returns the backpack

he stole, minus her phone, and propositions and gropes her. The ad executive shows Sara’s viral video to a SaskTel board meeting. They agree to hire her to portray their corporate mascot, Little Red Riding Hood, in promotional live-streams from Saskatchewan giant roadside attractions.

Meanwhile, Justine tries on the red sweater, tears it, and sees a terrifying vision of herself in

the mirror. Later, Sara wears the sweater to test if it really conceals her, but doesn’t notice the tear and can be seen by Justine and Kenspeckle. Kenspeckle tries to assault Sara in her room. She escapes, and hides at Mme. Cligner’s. Cligner explains that the red sweater belonged to a missing woman also named “Sarah,” but spelled with an “H.” Sara learns that her birth mother in Saskatchewan has agreed to meet her.

Kenspeckle frames Livvo Livvi for his own assault on Sara. He confronts Mme. Cligner in her

store, and kills her in what he believes is self-defense against raincoats that possess martial arts skills. Sara is the only witness. She gets on a bus for Saskatchewan. Kenspeckle conceals his crime and seeks a way to prove the existence of enchanted clothes. Meanwhile, Oksana Ludina, an elderly knitter with a laundromat in Shuteye, Saskatchewan, gets a letter saying her missing daughter "Sarah" wishes to meet her.

A stranger on the bus tells Sara that Little Red Riding Hood is the Saskatchewan phone

company’s mascot. She calls the ad executive and accepts his job offer, which she assumed was a hoax. He tells her to find a “Little Red Riding Hood” giant roadside attraction, which he doesn't know the location of. Sara discovers the red sweater is torn, but accidentally leaves it on the bus.

Livvo Livvi is abducted by Kenspeckle, who loads Cligner’s body into a pickup with the raincoats, and forces Livvi to accompany him to dispose of the body. When Kenspeckle sets the raincoats on fire, they try to strangle him, but Livvi doesn’t see this. Kenspeckle gets in an accident while speeding in the fog to intercept Sara, allowing Livvi to escape. Livvi, who is Russian-Ukrainian,

shelters with a commune of iconoclastic agrarian pacifists, the Yavni ('Prominent People'), who speak his language.

In Shuteye, Sara meets Oksana, and learns there is no Little Red Riding Hood roadside

attraction, or town called “Alphabet” - which Mme. Cligner said was the home of the cardigan's owner. Sara sees Livvo Livvi by the road in Shuteye. She messages to ask why he's there. Kenspeckle, using Livvi’s phone, messages back and requests to meet. After rewatching footage he's secretly taken of Sara with his video glasses, Kenspeckle concludes the red sweater is responsible for his escalating insanity, and that the tear in it has restored his memories of seeing Sara.

The man Sara met on the bus, Nobody, takes the sweater to Oksana, his great aunt, so she

can darn it. She instantly recognizes it as her missing daughter Sarah’s. Sara learns of a mix-up with her adoption records. Her mother was actually a missing person, with the same name as her, and Shuteye is part of “The Alphabet” – 26 small towns with alphabetical names along the railroad. Oksana is her grandmother, and Nobody is her cousin.

Cligner’s body is found in the river, and Kenspeckle learns an autopsy will be performed the

next day. He goes to Oksana’s house, locks her in the attic, and steals the repaired red sweater.

Posing as Livvi again, Kenspeckle tricks Sara into meeting him. He forces her to appear in a live

video, intending to prove the cardigan confers invisibility, hoping to exonerate himself. Sara

disappears, but only to him, and not to the camera or anyone else.

Sara finds Oksana and frees her from the attic. Oksana shows Sara how to knit the invisibility

stitch. As Oksana puts on a newly completed vest, Kenspeckle arrives, armed, and sees Oksana

transform into Mme. Cligner’s body. He realizes he’s gone mad, learns that the autopsy has

discovered his taser marks, and confesses his murder. Sara and Oksana rush downtown to witness the raising of a new roadside attraction—a monument to Sara’s mother. A fracking earthquake almost topples the statue into the crowd. The viral video of the accident sways the next day’s provincial election. A new government opposed to coal power saves Oksana’s town from contaminated water and the earthquakes caused by carbon sequestration.

Sara reopens a bakery and craft shop across from her grandmother’s laundromat, a dream of

her lost mother’s. The shop sells hand-knit protective sweaters for women. Sara’s long lost cousin, Nobody, photographs Sara and Oksana together for the store’s website, telling Sara it’s the last picture she’ll ever have to appear in.