Frank

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Ralph M. Berry

Fiction. FRANK is an "unwriting" of Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN, the story of Frank Stein, distant cousin of Gertrude, who, in revolt against southern racism, succumbs to the siren song of linguistics, inventing from language a life of his own. But in creating a new life, Frank revives an old plot, giving birth to monstrography. Frank's undoing is narrated by New Yorker Rob Lawton whose literary aspirations have gone south, all the way to the Everglades, where he has encountered Frank lying senseless in a johnboat. Their story within a story uncovers a more literally untamed America than either could have foretold, a horroglyphic creation of mad weirdploy and hybrid TV-speak which exacts a violent revenge. Only by making an end of Frank's creation can Rob hope to escape the conclusion plotted against him one hundred eighty years earlier by an eighteen-year-old girl.