Stuart Cohen. Invisible World. Regan, 1998.

I had read a recent article about Stuart Cohen which compared him to David Foster Wallace. I could not pass up a recent opportunity to read one of his works. Apparently, Invisible World was his first novel. I was not disappointed.

Invisible World is not for everyone. People who like Wallace or Neal Stephenson will probably get a kick out of it. It is intellectually stimulating and even philosophical, but in a very entertaining manner. In some ways it is hard to describe. It would be like saying Infinite Jest is about a teenage tennis player and some Quebec separatists. While it has no science or speculative fiction elements to it, Invisible World reminded this reader of some of the novels of Stephenson such as Cryptonomicon or The Diamond Age because of what some of the characters and the reader experience.

There is mystery. Andrew Mann’s childhood friend, Clayton Smith, now an accomplished artist in Japan but living in China, has committed suicide. Before he died, he sent plane tickets to Andrew in Chicago to attend his funeral in Hong Kong. This takes place shortly before the re-assimilation of Hong Kong into China. (The possible future of the city is a topic of discussion among a few of the characters.)

We also meet Jeffrey Holt who runs a textile import-export business out of South America and his co-worker Silvia. Silvia is a former girlfriend of Clayton. We meet a few other Chinese and Oriental acquaintances of Clayton, and we begin to see that his suicide was part of an elaborate plan.

When you were a kid, did you ever play go on a treasure hunt? Where you were given a clue which took you to another location where you got another clue, and so on, until you found your “treasure”?

Basically, that is what happens to Andrew. He goes to Hong Kong for Clayton’s funeral, where he is given directions to a place in Shanghai. The Shanghai location turns out to be an empty office of the Invisible World Trading Company, of which Andy has been told in a note from Clayton that he is president. In the Shanghai office he finds business cards to that effect.

He then goes to Beijing where he is told he will get something from an actress in a traditional Chinese opera company. And from there he ends up in Inner Mongolia. Each step reveals something valuable to certain people. Without going into it too much, the ultimate goal is a map of the Invisible World. (Gee, maybe its Andrew is a bit like the egg hunters in Ready Player One.)

Andrew means “man.” So Andrew Mann’s name simply means “a man.” At one point he is registered as A. Mann. He is a kind of everyman, an ordinary guy whose unusual childhood friend gets him caught up in some international intrigue. Andrew knows that we have to depend on other people, yet in the course of the story, nearly all the friends of Clayton he meets are out for themselves. Perhaps Clayton has seen this, and that is why he hypothesizes an invisible world. It is neither a utopia nor an escape. It can best be described as a work of the imagination, of art.

Clayton made a name for himself as a sculptor in Japan. Even Andrew, who knows little of art, appreciates their abstract beauty. But then Clayton started working in paper and cardboard and most of his newer stuff started looking like junk. Critics and art collectors lost interest.

Holt and Silvia and some of their Chinese connections specialize in cloth. While they deal in wool and silk and cotton from locations around the world, they are also collectors. Holt is caught in Peru with a piece of priceless pre-Columbian cloth. One of the “treasures” Clayton has for Andrew on his treasure hunt is a Chinese robe that was probably made for a Ming emperor—but it might just be a theater prop.

We also run into a few minority people in China such as Uyghurs and Mongols.

From my limited experience in China around the time this book came out, Cohen represents well what it would have been like to be in China in the 1990s and the motives of many people in China. Business is done very differently than in the West. So much of it is about the connections, the guanxi, literally “closed network.” How do we establish trust with others?

While this is by no means a political tract, there are some tyrants in the background. One of Holt’s friends “disappeared” during the rule of the military junta in Argentina. An older Mongol man had an American friend who fought with him against the Japanese. Certain priceless objets d’art were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution under Mao. There is a hint that Silvia’s father may have played a part in that Argentine junta. One of Clayton’s business associates belonged to the Khmer Rouge.

A recurring theme, though, is the settling of the empire. According to Chinese political philosophy, the God of Heaven sets up governments by settling a righteous person at the top. When the righteous cease to be righteous, the mandate of Heaven is lost, and Heaven has to settle a new emperor. So, Clayton seems to be saying that he wants “A. Mann” settled to rule the Invisible World. Nothing is permanent, though, in this world any more than in the real world. A Confucian explaining the mandate to Andrew, speaking of the imminent handing over of Hong Kong to China, says: “One could say the British have lost the mandate of heaven. And soon, so will the Communists” (102).

Similarly, Clayton speaks of the spirit, at least the human spirit, as an entity apart from the brain and body. The materialistic Silvia retorts, like Antonio in The Tempest: “What is a spirit? Do I need to take it out of my pocket when I pass through airport security? Maybe I did, and I forgot to take it back at the other side” (222).

I should note that Clayton has a lot to say in this story, even though he has died. Much of the story includes people remembering him and what he said. He also has left a few notes and letters to people on this treasure hunt. There is one small part in the last section where he seems to be speaking beyond the grave, but other than that, he still is the main character because what he has done motivates everyone else.

Mostly, though, the plot is a treasure hunt. We are looking for the Invisible World, the connections and places that have real meaning. At one point Clayton says we could write encyclopedias on virtually every object on earth. There is so much to learn and enjoy and discover. If the Beatles, under the influence of their oriental guru, say nothing is real, Clayton says everything is real. At times we may feel like we are trying to make sense out of randomness, but there appears to be an underlying order and purpose, even if we can only make out shadows.

At one point Clayton mentions “Sheng Du, the garden of Kublai.” Thanks to Coleridge, in English we know that as Xanadu. Does it exist? Did it? Coleridge got his information from a travelogue. But then he did something else with it. Is Coleridge’s Xanadu less real than the historical garden at Sheng Du? Ultimately, the novel Invisible World is a work of art about art itself—just like the poem “Kubla Khan.”