by Tibor Fischer Alma Books, HK$225
Tibor Fischer seems most at home when dealing with outlandish conceits. His 1994 novel The Thought Gang follows the unlikely partnership of a misanthropic philosophy professor and a one-armed petty thief who impart philosophical wisdom to French society through the unconventional means of robbing banks. His next novel The Collector Collector is narrated from the perspective of a 5,000-year-old Sumerian pot.
The fantastic notion behind Fischer's latest offering then doesn't come completely out of left field. Good to be God centres on Tyndale Corbett, a jobless 40-year-old whose existence is so depressing he receives sympathy notes from the thieves who try to find something worth stealing in his squalid bedsit. Tyndale thinks only an outrageous act can change the course of his disastrous life. When he unexpectedly encounters Nelson, an old school friend who bears a striking physical resemblance to him, Tyndale takes the extreme action of stealing Nelson's identity and fleeing to Miami.
Tyndale arrives with the idea that the US is home to the gullible. So he concocts a scheme in a final attempt to achieve success in his life: he will convince Miami that he is God.
The premise sounds unlikely but Fischer has a knack for making the far-fetched work. In The Thought Gang - his best novel - Fischer made a similarly incredible story compelling. The novel is dominated by repartee between the two bank robbers - a ploy that not only allows Fischer to demonstrate his talent for delivering hilariously poignant one-line asides but also adds richness to figures that are, at first glance, merely nihilistic caricatures. Rarely has an uproarious caper story been so replete with intellectual insights.
The problem with Good to be God is that there is no trace of verisimilitude to prevent the absurd conceit becoming completely implausible. Within just a few days of arriving in Miami, Tyndale has become an assistant pastor in the Church of the Heavily Armed Christ and encounters drug dealers, black market vendors and goons for hire, who all abet Tyndale's plan to ascend to the position of the Almighty. That these criminal and religious elements almost instantly and without payment allow themselves to be co-opted by Tyndale is farcically improbable. Fischer's disregard for plot development also renders the novel's cast as cartoonish as it is colourful.