''The Lost Scrapbook'' (1995) is a novel by the American writer

Evan Dara Evan Dara is an American novelist. He has published four novels and one play, which are concerned with subjects including social atomization, music, political dysfunction, epistemology, ecology, and time. The Times Literary Supplement (London) c ...

. It won the 12th Annual

FC2 FC2 can refer to: * FC2 (portal), an Internet content portal, frequently used by people in the Asian region * FC2: an EEG electrode site according to the 10-20 system * The nitrile version of the female condom, introduced in 2005 * Fire Controlma ...

Illinois State University National Fiction Competition judged by

William T. Vollmann William Tanner Vollmann (born July 28, 1959) is an American novelist, journalist, war correspondent, short story writer, and essayist. He won the 2005 National Book Award for Fiction with the novel ''Europe Central''.

. The novel is a prime example of ecofiction, and culminates in a battle between a fictional Missouri town named Isaura and the Ozark chemical company, which has been the economic linchpin for the community for many decades. The company is accused of releasing toxic waste which has poisoned the groundwater. Writing in the Washington Post, Tom LeClair compares the book favorably to The Recognitions by William Gaddis, saying: "This first novel resembles the ambitious debuts of

McElroy McElroy is an Irish surname originating in County Fermanagh, Ireland, where the placename Ballymackilroy is found McElroy is the surname of a number of people: Family of Clint McElroy * Clint McElroy (born 1955), American radio personality, co ...

(

A Smuggler's Bible ''A Smuggler's Bible'' is Joseph McElroy's first novel. David Brooke—who talks of himself in a split-personality manner—narrates a framing tale that consists of him "smuggling" his essence into eight autobiographical manuscripts, al ...

) and Pynchon (V), but author Evan Dara pushes the bar back upward toward Recognitions-height. With The Lost Scrapbook Dara asks readers to vault into an insistently bookish book, a dangerous and courageous request in an age of Web browsers and

Net server In computing, a server is a piece of computer hardware or software (computer program) that provides functionality for other programs or devices, called " clients". This architecture is called the client–server model. Servers can provide variou ...

s....I'd hate to see The Lost Scrapbook lost for 30 years, as The Recognitions went unrecognized, because Dara is a consummate ventriloquist of our time's voices and a remarkable ringmaster of our culture's circus acts....At the end of The Recognitions a composer finally plays his own music in a cathedral, hits a very difficult note, and brings the cathedral down on his head. Dara has taken a similar risk with his Beethoven-influenced novel of variations."

References

1995 American novels Novels set in Missouri Metafictional novels Postmodern novels Environmental fiction books FC2 books {{postmodern-novel-stub