“Diner Physics”: A Review of The Diner at the Dawn of the Universe by David Bonn

 

 (prepublication version, 2023).

An echo of the Absurdist English tradition, The Diner at the Dawn of the Universe is 1984 meets Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, with a hint of Terry Pratchett and Robert Anton Wilson.

Existing in an un-time at a 20th-century Americana diner of the mind (to borrow from Ferlinghetti), this fast-paced juke-ramble unfolds in a dystopian/symmetrian universe, somewhere between “the itch and the scratch.” Think Kerouac’s On the Road, Bukowski’s “Nirvana,” and apropos episodes of The Twilight Zone, and you are nearly there, with entropy and quanta juicing up the jazz.

Our protagonist is Dave, who came to work at this patina-of-entropy diner and wound up running the show when the owner/caretaker stepped out and never returned. Don’t feel bad for Dave—the food is served by replicators, ala The Jetsons and Star Trek.

Note the name Dave. Names are simple here… there are Dick and Jane. Names are all that’s simple… A quarter of the way into it, we learn the seven Articles that govern the diner’s inhabitants. We get the Articles again a little later, with explanatory notes.

I mentioned 1984… Bonn’s version of Big Brother, the Ouroboros (the Big O), operates as a Greek Chorus of traffic cops and ever-changing billboards comprising corporate and spiritual maxims, song lyrics, movie and book quotes, and greeting card causalities. It’s a cultural cornucopia. A handbook of the (un)times.

Denizens can mind-morph themselves and the diner. Think of a song, the jukebox plays it. An interesting moment is when a denizen morphs rapidly through the Sears-Roebuck fall and spring catalog collections while chatting with Big O. As people come and go, we get Charlie Brown and Sisyphus, Elwood P. Dowd’s invisible rabbit buddy Harvey and a hippie called TnT, and a “Winnie,” who has a fondness for honey and a “Joni” who strums a guitar.

In a diner devoted to quantum philosophy, where What the f***?’s the mantra, and the scratch precedes the itch, it’s inevitable that there’s a table reserved for Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato. Someone called Bishop quotes the Bible chapter and verse, but it’s all just rote and remembrance, and glaringly lacking in faith. Versions of Einstein and Newton disagree on the nature of God, while Einstein rolls his dice and the entropy ever-emerges.

If you like quantum philosophy delivered as a Beat/existentialist experience, this is the book for you.

(I received an Advanced Review Copy of this book on Reedsy Discovery)