*** (novel)

***

Cover of the 1st edition
Author	Michael Brodsky
Cover artist	Mark Beyer
Language	English
Genre	Postmodern literature
Published	1984 (Four Walls Eight Windows)
Media type	Print (clothbound hardcover, paperback)
Pages	367
ISBN

*** is Michael Brodsky's fifth novel. The title consists of precisely three asterisks, as mentioned on the book's copyright page as part of its Library of Congress cataloguing information.

The book centers on Stu Potts, working for Dov Grey, captain of industry, creating ***s out of raws. No underlying meanings for "***", nor for "raw", both of which occur frequently in the text, are directly suggested. Readers are left to struggle on their own. One reviewer suggested "*** seem to be (depending on the passage and on the mood of the reader) archetypal widgets, phenotypes or, occasionally, art."

*** is also metafictional. The novel begins with a "PROLOGUE" title page. No other title page appears in the novel, as if the entire novel is prologue. Early on, a short chapter consisting of instructions on the assembly of the book's "thought packets" is provided, offering contradictory advice. Towards the end, alternative plot lines are suggested and discarded, left for "the next time the story is told."

Before the novel was published, the strangeness of the title attracted attention. Brodsky was quoted in a brief note in the New York Times:

Ideally, you shouldn't say anything, but just visualize the asterisks. But I guess that saying 'Three Asterisks' is O.K.

The novel opens with a 13-page section consisting almost entirely of paragraphs that begin "It all began with ...". These include some simple one-liners (including "bathroom smells, bathroom noises", "hunger, and thirst of course", "the loss of his credit cards") any one of which could start a typically written novel, but here do not. They also include longer paragraphs that refer all over the map, including some that look like they might have something to do with ***. For example, one paragraph starts by mentioning that Stu was very much liked by his fellow tenants (Mr. Bresson, Mr. Dostoevsky, Mr. Balzac, Mr. Xman). But being captioned very much liked was so terrible that Stu needed "a manly atmosphere, heady with *** work, to cure him of this pathos." Another says that the beginning was when Stu felt he was one in an assembly line of listeners, each bound to repeat the story to the next listener.

The story properly begins with Stu Potts attending a party hosted by Bette Kaye, noted for when "Dov Grey became Dov Grey." Prominent among the attendees are Dov Grey and his wife Gwenda, employee Jomm Dawrson and his wife Tullshie (also called Miss Tullshie Dawrson née Dreadnought). Dov and Jomm share their hostility to the popular Hinkle-Winkle, who is "the eternal embodiment of goodish news," and a "freeloading ... world-class houseguest." In contrast, their wives are sympathetic to Hinkle-Winkle and his associates, "a band of brotherly strugglers all, unhierarchizable sodality of free souls." We learn later that Gwenda's sister Trendy is "wife and, depending on the time of day, concubine" to Hinkle-Winkle.