FABIAN

A Cubist Biography

Tom Newton

FABIAN

A Cubist Biography

 

Tom Newton

Fabian final front
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FABIAN

A Cubist Biography

Unbeknownst to Fabian, the disillusioned, would-be filmmaker after whom this enigmatic novel is named, his inventor and biographer—a writer known as Tom Newton—has abandoned conventional authorial practice and conscious decision-making. Fabian, press-ganged into existence, is inspired or doomed to create his own fictive universe peopled with conquistadors, Aztec priests, a charlatan psychoanalyst, immortal alchemists, and more. The tale careens across time and the globe in a bizarre whirl of adventure both psychic and corporeal. Opinions, digressions, ambiguous photographs, even footnotes and appendices challenge the novel form. No assumptions can be made!

Unbeknownst to Fabian, the disillusioned, would-be filmmaker after whom this enigmatic novel is named, his inventor and biographer—a writer known as Tom Newton—has abandoned conventional authorial practice and conscious decision-making. Fabian, press-ganged into existence, is inspired or doomed to create his own fictive universe peopled with conquistadors, Aztec priests, a charlatan psychoanalyst, immortal alchemists, and more. The tale careens across time and the globe in a bizarre whirl of adventure both psychic and corporeal. Opinions, digressions, ambiguous photographs, even footnotes and appendices challenge the novel form. No assumptions can be made!

Reviews

The biography of a mutable individual who is not so much a fictional character as a type of literary tulpa. In other words he has been created from a liberated speculation and a rigorous whimsy, his flesh and bones and career grown from the protein of an organic thought experiment. This book is a highly enjoyable romp through the ramifications of Bonini's paradox, in which a gradually evolving model becomes more and more difficult to understand fully as it approaches parity with the object or idea it is modelling. Fabian seems exactly like a real person, his treatment at the hands of Tom Newton more like a discovery than an invention. The writing is cool, crisp, precise, without waste. I am strongly reminded of Borges, naturally enough, also Paul Valéry and even W. G. Sebald, but as the text progresses it acquires momentum, hurtling through its various territories of concepts, images and pure unabashed story. Essentially, this is an excellent narrative, splendidly rich, sincere, clever and deeply satisfying.

—Rhys Hughes, author of The Postmodern Mariner

 

Tom Newton’s Fabian is a page-turner, a voyage, and a delight. When an author invites his readers to join him in asking “what if,” fiction meets biography, and we all face the truth. “One must live while one still can,” Fabian tells us. His story proves the point. Newton’s novel has echoes of Paul Auster’s Book of Illusions and Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life while leaving no doubt that the invention and storytelling are beautifully his own.

—Rob Ackerman, playwright, Dropping Gumballs on Luke Wilson

 

Tom Newton’s enormously readable and thoroughly engaging novel Fabian is a cubist novel, the only cubist novel I’ve ever read, and I love it. The book comes at you from many directions - it’s as much a Rubik’s cube as it is an artistic one - and if you’re eager to encounter reality in a new and startling form, then you will feel totally welcome inside this multi-dimensional work. Fabian himself is a strange and marvelous character, shape shifting, original and erudite, and the book he travels through is fast-paced, often funny, sometimes sad, and always surprising. I hope it receives the acclaim it deserves.

—Kos Kostmayer, author of Fargo Burns

The biography of a mutable individual who is not so much a fictional character as a type of literary tulpa. In other words he has been created from a liberated speculation and a rigorous whimsy, his flesh and bones and career grown from the protein of an organic thought experiment. This book is a highly enjoyable romp through the ramifications of Bonini's paradox, in which a gradually evolving model becomes more and more difficult to understand fully as it approaches parity with the object or idea it is modelling. Fabian seems exactly like a real person, his treatment at the hands of Tom Newton more like a discovery than an invention. The writing is cool, crisp, precise, without waste. I am strongly reminded of Borges, naturally enough, also Paul Valéry and even W. G. Sebald, but as the text progresses it acquires momentum, hurtling through its various territories of concepts, images and pure unabashed story. Essentially, this is an excellent narrative, splendidly rich, sincere, clever and deeply satisfying.

—Rhys Hughes, author of The Postmodern Mariner

 

Tom Newton’s Fabian is a page-turner, a voyage, and a delight. When an author invites his readers to join him in asking “what if,” fiction meets biography, and we all face the truth. “One must live while one still can,” Fabian tells us. His story proves the point. Newton’s novel has echoes of Paul Auster’s Book of Illusions and Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life while leaving no doubt that the invention and storytelling are beautifully his own.

—Rob Ackerman, playwright, Dropping Gumballs on Luke Wilson

 

Tom Newton’s enormously readable and thoroughly engaging novel Fabian is a cubist novel, the only cubist novel I’ve ever read, and I love it. The book comes at you from many directions - it’s as much a Rubik’s cube as it is an artistic one - and if you’re eager to encounter reality in a new and startling form, then you will feel totally welcome inside this multi-dimensional work. Fabian himself is a strange and marvelous character, shape shifting, original and erudite, and the book he travels through is fast-paced, often funny, sometimes sad, and always surprising. I hope it receives the acclaim it deserves.

—Kos Kostmayer, author of Fargo Burns

Hear excerpts and discussions on The Strange Recital podcast

Chapters Four and Five of  Fabian: A Cubist Biography

Fabian_Audiobook cover

About the author

Tom Newton lives on a mountain with his wife and daughter. He is the author of Warfilm, Bloomsbury, 2015, the short story collection Seven Cries of Delight, Recital Publishing, 2019 and Voyages to Nowhere, Recital Publishing, 2023.

He spent many years working in the film industry as a prop man, while pursuing a parallel career as a musician and sound engineer. He was a participant in London's punk music scene in the late seventies.

 

Tom Newton
Tom Newton

Tom Newton lives on a mountain with his wife and daughter. He is the author of Warfilm, Bloomsbury, 2015, the short story collection Seven Cries of Delight, Recital Publishing, 2019 and Voyages to Nowhere, Recital Publishing,2023

He spent many years working in the film industry as a prop man, while pursuing a parallel career as a musician and sound engineer. He was a participant in London's punk music scene in the late seventies.

 

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