Imagine discovering that you are so much more than you ever thought yourself to be. That you
had a history deeper than your memory and a destiny entwined with the fate of all humankind
and, more, the universe and creation itself? Such is the discovery being made by one Martin
Mueller, and though him, ourselves, as we take a brief, reality-shaking peek inside his mind.
Inside the Mind of Martin Mueller is about nothing less than one man’s quest to answer
humanity’s deepest questions: Who (or what) are we? Why do we exist? What is the universe
and what is one person’s role in it?
When this short, wild ride of a novella opens, Martin Mueller simultaneously reaches the end of
a prison sentence and completes his life’s work, a treatise on the very quandaries preoccupying
philosophers for as long as people walked the Earth. He describes it as being about the
fractured “oversoul” of man and how to rectify it, or as one of his fellow inmates summarizes it,
“One love”. What all this combined resolution brings him, however, is only the glaring question
remaining of his own personal purpose in this madcap cosmic play. As he ponders the next
horizons before him, both in his intellectual pursuits and impending freedom, his final day on the
cellblock leads him to the cell of an inmate he doesn’t know well but who affords him an escape
from all the others plying him with requests for favors from the outside. His seemingly
spontaneous host, John Brown, shares his stash of contraband with Martin in purported
celebration of Martin’s fate and the two begin a long, meandering conversation that soon
reveals itself to be so much more than mere celebration and all about Martin’s quest to clarify
his fate.
After revealing himself a sort of true-life prophet able to predict the seemingly random twists of
their present encounter, John Brown, née Koot Hoomi, guides Martin and the reader through
millennia of memory linking himself, Martin and ancient wisdom expressed through a myriad of
beliefs and practices under a myriad of names but all united in common precepts articulated in
Martin’s own personal investigations and our own stacks of historic and religious texts. Reading
these richly detailed accounts of times and beliefs long past yet profoundly still resonant and
relevant, it is impossible not to liken this tale to a modern-day Siddhartha.
Martin’s adventures do not end with this revelatory conversation, however. Rather our
Luetkenmeyer uses their revelations as a launching pad to blast the reader off into their own
meta-stratosphere where we must question our own certainty about reality and identity.
While probing complex, esoteric concepts, however, the text always remains graciously clear
and cogent. The characters are fully crafted and the sets, namely the prison and Martin’s home,
are palpable. And despite confronting issues of the deepest intellectual severity, the novel also
maintains humor and an active plot throughout. At times, the story even strays into the
downright surreal, such as when Martin’s wife, the purported normal one, peoples her garden
with cardboard cutouts of guests a la Lewis Carroll’s chess pieces in Alice Through the Looking
Glass. It all fits, surprisingly, however, all serving Martin’s, and the reader’s, joint initiation, if not
into an honest-to-God Secret Order, then at least into a new understanding of reality and our
prospective place in it. Inside the Mind of Martin Mueller is a view into the outside world where
each of us plays a pivotal role in the singular, sometimes maddening but always worthwhile
drama unfolding.
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About the author
