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The Literary Works of Paul Enns Wiebe
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paul Enns Wiebe grew up in the Idaho outback. Early on he found that the life of irrigating spuds, digging ditches, driving trucks, repairing fences, chasing mad steers across the open range, and castrating the occasional boar had lost its fascination.
This discovery led him to the halls of higher education. After Bethel College granted him a bachelor’s degree, he went on to earn a PhD from the University of Chicago. He taught comparative religion and literature at Wichita State University until resigning his tenured position to become an independent writer.
Wiebe now lives with his spouse, Elly, in Fort Collins, Colorado.
The book Playing Scrabble with Turtles is the true story of Rosemary Lombard, a woman who has taught her pet turtles to read, “read/write” (using wordboards), draw, and do other things that have long been thought to be the sole province of homo sapiens.
Evidence of these humanoid skills are found on the YouTube documentaries “Rosemary‘s Turtle Draws“ (six minutes) and the longer “Rosemary‘s Turtles“ (33 minutes). Playing Scrabble . . . is now widely available as an ebook; it can soon be found online as a regular book.
Wiebe’s Novels
Crazy Were We in the Head
Growing up in a Mennonite family in Idaho back in the forties and fifties, John Reisender is perplexed. Why had Great-grandma been married in a Muslim mosque way hell and gone out in the wilds of Central Asia? On the road to solving this puzzle, he finds himself excommunicated, temporarily, from the family religion, discovers that his maternal grandfather had escaped Czarist Russia, acts as an undertaker for a cat's funeral, takes a crash course in Nietzsche from the keeper of the city dump, escapes drowning, becomes an unsung, accidental semi-hero in a high school football game, cheats death on a spelunking expedition, and falls in lust with a pious girl who sports a derriere that reminds him of the WWII pinup girl, Betty Grable. With a Dickensian cast of characters brimming with eccentrics, Crazy Were We in the Head hilariously and often movingly chronicles a singular American boyhood.
The Church of the Comic Spirit
On a popular talk show, Father Alazon Lecher announces that he has received a series of revelations. He reports that several God-sent angels instructed him to find and translate a set of twelve scrolls—the Bear Lake Scrolls—and establish The Church of the Comic Spirit.
The Scrolls, the original versions of some famous Bible stories, form the centerpiece of this novel. Each tale has a distinct plot, style, and brand of comedy. The characters are cast as schemers, rogues, buffoons, fools, and schlemiels. God is often the central character, though his role and nature change from story to story, much as in the standard Old Testament.
The teachings of the Church are set forth in a catechism consisting of answers to FAQs. Whether God really exists or whether someone has been posing as God? Whether irreverence is the highest virtue? Whether laughter is the way to salvation?
Pope Dun the Incredible
This piece of fiction revives the recipe for the picaresque novel. Take a charming rogue of low estate; flavor with a menagerie of bizarre companions; put this comic hero in a dozen absurd situations; establish him as pope. Then serve as an outsize farce that makes the scandals of priests and their fondness for altar boys, to say nothing of cardinals and their fondness for confidentiality, look like copy for a slow-news day.
This novel flays just about everything in the contemporary world that begs to be flayed - politics, the media, and of course religion. The comic hero is a mix of Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff and an ultra porn king. Benny Good's misadventures lead him from a humble origin as an Amish foundling through stints as a novice evangelist, overland trucker, and radio talk show host, then achieving the office that includes the perk of being addressed as Most Holy Father. Beyond that, who knows?
Just Another Dead White Male
Ed Budwieser, an English teacher, comes to believe he is the reincarnation of Shakespeare. His wife and daughter don't believe it. His pastor has serious doubts. Only his grandson maintains a simple, childlike faith.
Sacred Books & Sky Hooks
This genre-bending work is a blend of nonfiction amd fiction. It is a mystery/detective/literary work, providing high drama with an occasional dollop of comic relief. The characters include the narrator and protagonist, Ethan Swift III, a former Washington lawyer and amateur comparative religionist who puts three founder myths—those created by Corky Ra, founder of a contemporary start-up religion; Joseph Smith; and the Apostle Paul—on the virtual stand and cross-examines their claims to having had divine revelations. Along the way Ethan encounters Alcina Smith, a beautiful Mormon apostate whose stern father is one of the Twelve; Sabrina Makespeare, a literary agent; Jason Joseph Allred, whose flirtation with polygamy both Ethan and Alcina in danger; and FBI special agent Dennis Box Elder, who offers Ethan a measure of succor.
Alone in a Dark Wood
A defrocked New England minister attends a San Francisco convention learning how to sell life insurance to seminarians. He accidentally encounters an old friend from seminary days who has been reduced to selling trinkets. On three consecutive days, the two have discussions in which they progressively reveal their most personal secrets to one another.
Dancing Over the Rays of Light
Dancing Over the Rays of Light is set in a retirement home and environs. It touches on the humor and pathos of the elderly, who sit, gossip, and dream while being largely ignored by their following generations. It is narrated by a wee cluster of cells that wakes up one morning with no memory of who, where, or even what he/she/it is. On finding that he is a very old man, he proceeds to discover his reason for being with the aid of a yoga instructor, a set of fellow inmates, a teenage girl detective, a sassy scrap of wood, and a nip or two of hooch.
Hôtel Adiós
Talia la Musa, daughter of former Christian missionaries to Iran, gathers a small flock of oddballs to join her recently formed Kachina Round Table (KRT) in her recently "inherited" hotel in Small Southwestern City. The KRT consists of herself; an illicit son of a semi-famous Irish novelist; a grandson of the more-famous Author Unknown; a Russian immigrant; and a hillbilly columnist who advises his readers on how to beg off from any number of situations.
After writing a spate of maniacal columns, the KRT inaugurates a American political party, the Dead Rights Party (DRiP), which boasts that its main plank is to establish voting rights for deceased ex-citizens and talking parrots over the age of 18. The DRiP then runs two members of the KRT for POTUS and VPOTUS, with surprising results. In the end, Talia, on the lam after a court finds her guilty of finagling the ownership of her hotel, plots a new religion in which the goal of life will be to avoid both hell and heaven and find happiness in a third option.
Inklings from the Pen of . . .
A collection of excerpts from Wiebe’s novels, as well as the first chapter of the nonfictional Playing Scrabble with Turtles.
CONTACT: paulwiebe122@gmail.com