First Editions Club: July 2010
The Story Behind the Pick: Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross
“In 1995, my father told me about the suspicious death of my second cousin, who was morbidly obese, struggled epically with depression, and also suffered from lethal nut allergies. According to her husband — who was, conveniently, the only witness to her “suicide” — he came home from work to find her sitting at the kitchen table with a plate of peanuts before her. They had an argument, which she interrupted by taking a fistful of nuts in her hand and eating them. I was stunned when I heard this story — I was sure she’d been murdered — and immediately afterward wrote three chapters in one sitting that closely resemble those that begin the novel now.” — Adam Ross in an interview with Jillian Quint.
This story was the inspiration for Mr. Peanut and Ross used it as a model for the first pivotal scene in the novel. When his wife Alice dies of anaphylactic shock brought on by a peanut allergy, David Pepin explains that he came home after they had a argument to her committing suicide.
Unlike many reviews that I’ve read on Mr. Peanut, this one will not focus on the marital issues that are so prominent in the book. Though they’re quite important to the content, as I am not married I can not truly relate to that subject. Rather, I’d like to bring up a few of the many underlying themes that I couldn’t help but notice.
Kelly and I donning Mobius strips
First up is the Mobius strip. By definition the Mobius strip is “a surface with only one side and only one boundary component. The Mobius strip has the mathematical property of being non-orientable.” This means it’s a one-sided surface that appears to be two-sided. The detectives investigating Pepin’s case suspect he hired a man named Mobius to murder his wife Alice. Through Mobius we get the story of Sam Sheppard, one of the detectives investigating Alice Pepin’s murder. In a article in Aesthetica, Ross says, “I intentionally shaped the novel as a Mobius band, having it loop back on itself, since marriage, like that oddly shaped figure, is an institution where two people are supposed to be walking on the same side of the street, but oftentimes appear to be on completely opposite sides [and] in writing Mr. Peanut, I tried to construct a text that would also reward re-reading.”
Next is the character Sam Sheppard. In real life Dr. Sam Sheppard was convicted of murdering his pregnant wife in 1954 as was his character in Mr. Peanut. “[Sheppard’s character] appeared several years into drafting, again a gift from my father. After my dad and I watched The Fugitive, he told me a brief history of the case, so I read about it and, bingo, there’s my guy. What I found so captivating about the Sheppard case was its mystery and muck, what with Sheppard’s serial womanizing, his narcissism and the way his relationship with his wife anticipated so many moral hazards of the sexual revolution, not to mention the fact that his guilt or innocence remains in question. The cold facts are directly incorporated into the novel because you can’t get around them. They’re out there, and so I used them as the plot’s scaffolding.”
"Encounter" by M.C. Escher
Finally I also want to point out, without going into too much detail, a couple of other interesting things. On the title page of the book there is an M.C. Escher print called “Encounter.” Escher’s surreal art figures into the story on several levels.
References to Alfred Hitchcock appear often as well. David and Alice meet in a class that studied Hitchcock’s film work. Sheppard’s partner, Ward Hastroll, is an anagram for the villain in Hitchcock’s “Rear Window.”
As there are so very many different things going on in Mr. Peanut, it’s difficult to get all of the aspects of the novel down in one place without giving too much away or writing out the entire book. My suggestion is to get your hands (or eyes) on the book and start reading immediately.
Seeing as this is a debut novel and we are the first stop on Ross’ tour we are quite excited about our event on Wednesday, June 30th, starting at 5 o’clock. Mr. Peanut had an initial print run of 60,000 copies. It was published by Alfred A Knopf.
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