Anton‘s Bark - Fourteen

Ever since 1999 Otto has known that by one-minute after midnight,
on 19 February, 2019, his estranged wife Marie, would be with him
in his hotel room. And in Anton’s mysteriously unfolding novel
that is exactly what happens. Today, the real Otto reads Chapter
Twelve for us. Now that that special midnight has come and gone,
there are no more prophecies he might use to guide his fictitious
self. And his quest to be reunited with his family is marred by
the fact that he is still in possession 30,000 euros, which he
now knows Marie badly needs. There is a sense in this chapter
that Anton may be aware of Otto’s repugnance at being in the hero
of Otto in Flames. While preoccupied with his adventures in the
Unseen there is a sense that the writer may even be enjoying his
hero’s predicament in Vienna. When it comes to Otto’s turn to
tell us what happens to Anton, increasingly absorbed in a
medieval version of the myth of Midas, the telling is also slyly
exuberant, raising the thorny question of who is taking who for a
walk.