The Review of Contemporary Fiction

The Troika by Stepan Chapman
Grant Hier

Stepan Chapman. The Troika. Ministry of Whimsy, 1997. 251 pp. Paper: $14.99.

Consider this an E-ticket ride and you’ll walk away smiling for being whipped through surprising twists and loops—no final payoff, but that’s okay: the point’s the journey, not the destination. If you don’t like wild, disorienting rides, however, then you’d best stay away from such mad, spinning teacups as The Troika. Fittingly, chapter one opens with a quote from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. There are three protagonists here: the mother (an old Mexican woman), the father (a Jeep), and the daughter (a brontosaur). They travel across the desert for eons. They travel to the future. They all switch roles (the mother becomes a brontosaur, for example). Like Alice, it seems like nonsense, but the absurd fantasy is so beautifully rendered in detail, you hang on through the ride. Also like Alice, there seems to be some grand allegorical significance to it all, but no single interpretation satisfies: The Troika’s four section headings—“a family illness,” “relapse,” “signs of recovery,” and “the cure”—indicate this is a journey through madness; the surreal landscapes of isolation are reminiscent of Waiting for Godot; violations of form and sliding identities are blatantly deconstructionist; the themes of fragmented family and man-as-machine are clearly postmodern. But to what end? We are left with no rational conclusion, which seems to be Chapman’s intent. “Can I tell you a Zen koan before I go?” Chapman writes in the final pages. As with koans, linear thinking fails when searching for answers in this novel. The Troika seems designed to reveal the traps inherent in logical thought and analysis. In the end, “Nothing had been decided, but everything was solved.” [Grant Hier]