Anton‘s Bark - Five

The real Otto admits that being a character in Anton’s novels has had him going around in circles. He’s unhappy about it, but there’s no obvious way for him to avoid what he is. He explains that Anton had decided to do some research at the university library. The aim was to locate references to the cave his future reader, a statue of Heraclitus, resides in. In the library, the writer discovers an eighteenth century map, and is drawn to a location on that map, called Cape Unknown. This sends him into an immersion enabling him to hurtle through what he imagines the whole universe to be. From that vantage in the Unseen, it becomes easier for Anton spot the cave again. But before he can step inside, to find out what happens in his novel, he is whisked back into the library. He tries to write a few new sentences. They will find their way into Chapter Four, and suggest that the fictional Otto will end up shouting at himself. The episode concludes with the real Otto reading that fourth chapter, which concerns what happens to him in a hotel room, on his first night in Vienna.