"Clark tells the story of his attempts to write a magazine-style essay about Bjarki Thor Gunnarsson, a climate change denier and conspiracy theorizer who also happens to manufacture the widest, purest, most metaphorical pine boards around. Set mostly in rural Maine, Bjarki, Not Bjarki combines personal narrative, immersive journalism, and environmental rumination, all told in a distinctive essayistic voice. While Clark considers the motley theatre of rural masculinity, North American colonization, woodpeckers, gift cards, crab rangoon, and bald eagles, the new pine floor in his newly renovated home buckles. He and his wife separate. He puts on a mask, goes to Florida, and does not cry. Upon Clark's return, Bjarki's famous boards seem only to exist in hismind. The book asks: How do we make sense of the world and of ourselves, especially when the floor beneath us is so unstable, when nothing is quite what we had hoped it would be?"--
“You know, I actually think about that an awful lot, like, what is our purpose in life? Why am I here? I always think about some little kid being like, ‘What’d you do with your life?’ And me being like, ‘Well, I sold a bunch of floors.’”
These are the words of Bjarki Thor Gunnarsson, the young man who manufactures the widest, purest, most metaphorical pine floorboards on the planet.
As Matthew Clark—a carpenter by trade—begins researching a magazine-style essay about Bjarki and his American Dream Boards, he comes to discover that nothing is quite as it seems. Santa Claus arrives by helicopter. A wedding diamond disappears. A dead coyote jumps to its feet. And then, at a Thai restaurant in central Maine, Bjarki is transformed into an eggplant.
In Bjarki, Not Bjarki, Clark wants nothing less than to understand everything, to make the world a better place, for you and him to love each other, and to be okay. He desires all of this sincerely, desperately even, and at the same time he proceeds with a light heart, playfully, with humor and awe. As Clark reports on the people and processes that transform the forest into your floor, he also ruminates on gift cards, crab rangoon, and Jean Claude Van Damme. He considers North American colonization, masculinity, the definition of disgusting, his own uncertain certainty. When the boards beneath our feet are so unstable, always expanding and cupping and contracting, how can we make sense of the world? What does it mean to know another person and to connect with them, especially in an increasingly polarized America?
Set mostly in rural Maine, Bjarki, Not Bjarki is an expansive book. It is a standard work of journalism, describing with nuance and humanity the people and processes that transform the forest into your floor. It is also a meditation on what it means to know another person and to connect with them, especially in an increasingly polarized America. And it is a ghost story about marriage. It is an inquiry into the limits of language and certainty, a rumination on North American colonization, masculinity, gift cards, crab rangoon, bald eagles, and wood, all of it told in an exciting, energized, and original prose.
