By Dean Poling
THE LITTLE BOOK: Selden Edwards
Seems only appropriate that a first novel about people displaced in time called “The Little Book” would take more than 30 years to be published. Selden Edwards started working on this novel in 1974, finished it in 2007, and saw it published last year. A 1970s rock star named Wheeler Burden wakes in 1897 Vienna. The fact he is a rock star is inconsequential to this story. It is important that he has succeeded in life but he is not the stereotypical rock star one might expect. Wheeler has always seemed to live in or between two worlds: He’s half Jewish; his father was American, his mother British; his father’s dead but casts a long, legendary shadow as a hero of war and sports, but he’s raised by a strong yet protective mother; Wheeler’s something of a legend himself not just for his accomplishments and his abilities but for his penchant of walking away from things at the moment before realizing ultimate achievements. Finding himself back in time, he is in a world and era described by a beloved professor from Wheeler’s school days. Edwards apparently feels that turn-of-the-century Vienna was the stepping stone to the coming modern age of the 20th century, and he makes a convincing argument within the context of this novel. Wheeler meets Sigmund Freud, Mark Twain, the philosopher Wittgenstein, and, given his and another time-displaced character’s knowledge of the 20th century, there is even contemplation of killing a child by the name of Adolf Hitler. But as Wheeler meets more people more closely related to him, readers come to realize that perhaps one cannot change the destiny of things. Perhaps, one’s life prepares a person for each moment, be it from the past, present or future, and in any shuffled form of those tenses. Would we change our destinies if we knew the future, or would we do everything in our power to ensure that we are granted the moments we know are coming with the people we love most? It is only one of the fascinating themes in this beautifully written novel. “The Little Book” is a big book of ideas and heart.
