Encomium

Encomium tells the story of a reunion of three brothers. One, a scientist, having returned home after a long absence, accompanies his younger brother on his plumbing rounds through the oppressive landscape of a rural America peopled entirely by invalids, alcoholics, miscreants and victims of grievous misfortune struggling to retain their sanity. Looming from the periphery is the eldest brother, Bill, an eccentric artist whose obsession with Eli Whitney has driven him to the wilderness of the unnamed civil division T2R15, where he repetitiously creates in total isolation his giant amorphous sculptures made of cotton. An encounter in the final pages with this misanthropic, verbally prodigious, bizarre and fascinating mind tests the ultimate boundaries of thought, itself.