The Mingling of Fact and Fiction
The most famous work by the author is an essay title “The Frequency.” An essay is by definition a literary form typically not included among fiction. Essays may be opinion rather than fact that the opinion generally is informed by some understanding or misunderstanding of facts. Allman writes about an actual historical event involving Dan Rather and—using historical “evidence”—constructs a theoretical fiction that offers an alternative narrative. This mingling of fact and fiction also extends to actual fictional works such as a short story based around the reality of finding a treasure trove of silent films previously thought lost. A play is constructed around the fictional conversation that might have taken place among three actual notorious criminals kept within the same super-maximum-security prison.
The Teller Is as Important as the Story
That short story about the discovery of silent films thought to be lost is based on a true event, but is told expressly through the eyes of a fictional first-person narrator. The essay about the Dan Rather incident immortalized in the REM song “What’s the frequency, Kenneth?” is written directly in the first person, but incorporates much of the postmodern stylistic tendencies of its equally historically authentic “hero” novelist Donald Barthelme. Though an essay clearly written by Allman, at times it does almost seem as though one is reading a story by Barthelme. And since Barthelme is portrayed in the essay (probably ironically and with tongue firmly cheek) as a kind of master storyteller manipulating poor Dan Rather and those two guys who accosted him, the telling becomes inseparable from the tale itself.
Allman wrote two YA novels centered equally upon two characters which are constructed so that halfway through one flips the book over and reads the story as told from the second character after having just read the story as told through the other character. In his mainstream debut novel, Otis: On the Occasion of His Foray into the Wilderness of Civilization, he takes a completely different and unique approach in which he creates a sort of modern-day Tall Tale featuring a robust cast of characters, but tells their stories through the singular vision of his titular protagonist who weaves in and out of their lives in an episode picaresque manner befitting the fabulist inspiration of the narrative.
