The Otto Loser Mysteries

Anton‘s Bark - Three

It is confirmed by the real Otto that as the muse Urania works her magic on him, Anton loses control of his novel. Her inspirations provoke Anton’s imagination in such a way as to make it impossible for him to write anything that makes sense; and because whatever he imagines comes true, the writer’s confusion spirals further out of control. He believes the only way forward is to imagine his future reader. His plan is to imagine meeting that person and asking about what happens in Otto in Flames. Thus, Anton is consumed by another inspired immersion. He is transported to a cave, where he ends up speaking to a statue of the pre-Socratic philosopher, Heraclitus. Because the statue has read Otto in Flames to the last page, Anton assumes that this must be his future reader. But his attempts to speak to the statue are foiled. Having talked us through these strange events, the real Otto completes the episode with a reading of Chapter Two of Anton’s book, which concerns a one-way flight from London to Vienna, sitting next to passenger dressed as a priest.

Anton‘s Bark - Four

Anton’s abilities as a writer have by now foundered. He is so confounded by what he is imagining, that it becomes necessary to redraft what he has written, in order to accommodate the visions being visited upon him by his muse. The places he goes to in his mind come to be spoken of as the Unseen. In this episode, the real Otto tells of another of Anton’s immersions in the Unseen. On this occasion the writer attempts to get back into the cave, where he believes his future reader may still be able to help with an account of what happens in Otto in Flames. While redrafting Chapter Three, Anton finds himself at the entrance to the cave, but can’t help imagining that he will be ambushed there, as soon as he tries to go in. The episode concludes with the real Otto’s reading of the third chapter of Anton’s novel, in which his fictional self, having returned to Vienna, has every reason to suspect that the priest on the flight over from London has been following him.

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.

Anton‘s Bark - Six

Otto describes the words and phrases that occur to Anton, as he sits in his favourite café, trying to re-write Chapter Five of his novel. Things go well for a time. And although the real Otto would rather have nothing to do with Anton’s book, he is compelled to admit that it is because everything Anton imagines comes true, that he and everything else, exist at all. He describes Anton’s extraordinary visit to Urania’s offices in order to purchase a map of the Unseen, only to find himself plunged into his most vivid immersion yet, involving the peculiar priest and a large sum of money. In the second part of this episode, Otto maintains his position as meta-narrator. Having turned the tables on Anton, so that he might inspire what is going on, he moves onto the afternoon of Wednesday, 18 February 2019; a momentous moment in Anton’s life, the better part of which has him sitting grumpily on a rocking horse, posing for Oksana’s portrait of him.

Anton‘s Bark - Seven

This episode begins with the real Otto’s reading of Chapter Five. It is a pivotal chapter in Anton’s novel where, after waking up from a nightmare in his hotel room in Vienna, the fictional Otto arranges to meet his estranged wife, Marie, at the Spitzenhof café, only to be shocked and disappointed when he gets there. We learn that the fictional Otto has been endowed with special but difficult to interpret powers of foresight. Since 1999 he’s been able to foresee what was going to happen to him within twenty-four hours of his arrival in Vienna. Unfortunately, the details of these prophecies are sketchy. Not to be thwarted by Anton’s designs for him, in the second half of this episode, the real Otto emerges once again, in his own right, putting him in pole-position to challenge Anton’s version of what happens to him in Otto in Flames, through his telling of what happens to Anton after he disappears and tries to write an improved draft of Chapter Six.

Anton‘s Bark - Eight

Otto’s reading of Chapter Six features his surprise meeting with Father Promentano at the Spitzenhof café. He’d been expecting to meet Marie there. He’d had a clear premonition of that meeting. As a result, the fictional Otto can only react angrily when this doesn’t happen. We discover that the fictional Otto finds himself in conversations with the peculiar priest, a Greek god in disguise called Father Promentano, who delivers a carrot, followed by a stick. The carrot is a large sum of money, the stick is a nightmare. And so, while sitting with a deity in the Spitzenhof café, having refused divine money, the fictional Otto is plummeted to a place in his memory in 1999, when he was last with Marie before they separated, and he went to England. They were on holiday together. At one point during this holiday, the fictional Otto sees his future come alive, through a series of curious prophecies. The sixths chapter is followed by the real Otto’s brief commentary on a few sentences that will occur in Chapter Seven, as well as his account of Anton’s evermore desperate attempts to get back into the cave, in the year 1882.

Anton‘s Bark - Nine

Today, Otto reads Chapter Seven for us. This is the last chapter Anton had been writing before he disappeared altogether. In this chapter the fictional Otto remains amorphous, somewhere in his memory. But he soon emerges, not quite into the Spitzenhof café again, but into Father Promentano’s operatic version of it. Otto’s reflections, following his reading of this chapter, centre on problems of the ‘self’. This is a conundrum, given that his own origins are to be found in a series of mystery novels. On this question, Otto explains that he has long believed himself to be an ‘automaton’, without the capacity to choose. While he was still a lawyer in England, the fictional Otto had been in a position to write a book about this. He completed the book before his fictional self was destined to return to Vienna. What the real Otto comes to realise about himself, and his written fate, no to mention Anton’s own passage through the Unseen, is that by stepping into the cave, the missing writer of Otto in Flames would go onto trigger an ‘intensification of the phenomenon of all possibilities’. This intensification includes some bizarre ways of drafting Chapter Eight.

Anton‘s Bark - Ten

The mystery of Chapter Eight is that the writer is no longer in a condition to be able to write it. Yet despite his condition, Anton is still able to imagine it. Even as far as the real Otto is concerned, this next chapter, which he reads for us, puts him where he’d always wanted to be, sitting opposite Marie in the Spitzenhof café. To his dismay however, and because of the interferences of the godly priest, the fictional Otto finds himself in possession of a large sum of money, which he’d never predicted having. By means of his capacity to narrate, the real Otto tries to take control of Anton’s book, or at least to take control of the writer who’d been swallowed into Unseen while writing Otto in Flames. And so, a new story begins. As the real Otto sees it, Anton Matins has become a strange creature, on an urgent quest to get back out of the cave, in order to be reunited with his long lost wife, Oksana. It is with this in mind that Chapter Nine begins to flow into Anton’s potent imagination.

Anton‘s Bark - Eleven

Despite the entanglement of its erstwhile writer, now trapped deep in the cave, Otto in Flames has taken on a momentum of its own. Today, the real Otto reads Chapter Nine for us. This chapter follows the meeting he’d had with Marie at the Spitzenhof café. Since 1999, the fictional Otto has known through his prophecies more or less what would happen to him on his first day in Vienna. Despite his bitterness at being nothing more than a character in a series of Anton Matins novels, the ninth chapter of Anton’s book sees Otto ensnared in an unforeseen predicament with Marie, he can’t wriggle out of. They leave the Spitzenhof separately. But Otto’s prophecy, such as it is, tells him that he will certainly see her again, back in his hotel room, at midnight that night. The only way the real Otto can influence events now, is by narrating his version of Anton’s wild-goose chase for a shoe, thrown by a lost French cartographer, down a cave passage in the Unseen. The shoe leads the writer straight into a Greek myth, which in itself will signal the structure for Chapter Ten.

Anton‘s Bark - Twelve

Chapter Ten embroils Otto even further into the unforeseen, during his second day in Vienna. By early evening he is ready to meet Marie again, and take her out on a date. His plan is to rescue the relationship he’d had with her, some twenty years before. He is sure that it is Marie he is about to meet in the lobby of his hotel, because his prophecy had always been that she would be with him in his hotel room by midnight that night. Anton however, would have been able to remind him that prophecies too, are open to misinterpretation. It is in fact, a surprise that awaits the fictitious Otto in the lobby. And yet, it is left to the real Otto to narrate what happens to Anton in the Unseen. But while the writer is trapped in a cave, the fictitious Otto finds himself trapped by a dog. He provides a detailed explanation concerning how all of this could have happened, but despite himself, the real Otto’s descriptions of Anton’s quest to escape from the cave, by chasing after a Frenchman’s shoe, can only have the effect of feeding back into what happens to his fictional self in Chapter Eleven.