Ma[i]zes

Ma[i]zes is a novel about corn, legacy, and the human cost of lost vocation. The text experiments with and prioritizes formal rigor, presenting document artifacts from the fictional world. Primarily, the exploration focuses on the energetic potential of juxtaposition and alternative approaches to forced linearities of the Western plot that bias obfuscation and strategic revelation. The text also interrogates the mechanism of narrative- or myth-making in two ways. Part I enacts myth-making as is done by the archive: through the juxtaposition of an official dossier constructed by one character for the FBI to implicate another character in a crime and the indicted’s response to the dossier. Part II, using a more traditional narrative prose style, enacts modes of myth construction driven by folklore, local gossip, literary language games, individual psychologies, and fear. In both Parts I and II, the driving emotion relates the desire and the struggle of controlling one’s disembodied legacy.