I came to read this novel because I heard Brian Evenson recommend it during a talk he gave at the Fiction Collective 2 conference I attended last summer. Am I glad I read it.
It was first published by Knopf in 1972, but Soft Skull brought it out again in 2004. I read the original version: there was a barely touched copy at a local college library.
The book enjoyed cult status for a long time, and it is not hard to see why. It is close to wholly original, and it deals with a dystopia more gripping to me than the prophecies of either Orwell or Huxley. (Yes, you read that correctly.)
The book is divided into 109 sections over its 116 pages. Some sections are only a few sentences long. But, as with many if not most books that could be dubbed 'science fiction' on some level, the setting is perhaps the most important factor.
Ohle never tells us anything about this setting. He simply lets it sink in. Apparently, early in his life Moldenke, the main character, lived in an atmosphere similar to the one we inhabit: there was only one sun and one moon, people did not have to wear special goggles, and people had only one heart.
By the time Moldenke is more mature, artificial suns and moons compete with the real one, 'jellyheads' rather than people do a lot of the work, and, most bizarrely, he has four hearts, three of which came from sheep. And there is a river so thick and polluted it can be walked on.
It is very difficult, if not impossible, for us to fully orient ourselves to the timeline in this book. There are a lot of unnanounced flashbacks and, to make matters more complicated, undated letters that could come from any number of places on the time line. I have figured out a rough timeline: perhaps a future literary critic will complete the job (and I have no doubt there will be a lot of critics writing on this book).
1. Childhood - "they kept him in a crumbling home."
2 &3 - Working as a bug taster at a lab run by a jellyhead named Featherfighter - Working at Tropical Gardens. Meets Cock Roberta, the love of his life.
4. - Fights in "mock war." He agrees to sacrifice a minor broken bone and the continued ability to feel a list of feelings, including it would seem love.
5. After war he and Cock Roberta exchange letters, but never seem to meet again. Moldenke tries valiantly to feel again, but fails.
6. Kills two jellyheads
7. I am a little unsure about this, but I believe Bunce, a hardboiled talker who seems to control most everything in this more and more artificial world, imprisons Moldenke for the crime.
8. Bunce calls Moldenke on the phone repeatedly and threatens him. A Dr. Burnheart, who implanted the sheeps hearts in Moldenke, tells him how to escape.
9. He wants to 'go South' across 'The Bottom' to where he believes Burnheart is
10. Stops by Shelp, the weatherman's place. Learns that Bunce orders the sort of weather he wants, and Shelp is to announce it.
11. Runs into Roquette. He helps him walk across the Jelly River. They get on a boat that seems to be like a cruise ship. Cock Roberta is on the ship but they never meet up.
12. Things get really crazy: the boat seems to be, at the same time, a boat, a vehicle on a street, a vehicle in a tunnel, and so forth.
13. The end, which I won't divulge.
Let's just say that this book is about the overwhelming artificiality that threatens our very human dignity. In the end, poor, lonely Moldenke, makes a stab at reasserting his dignity. It might not work, but the attempt alone is enough: it proves that Bunce and his crew have not completely destroyed who we are.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Zachary Mason's "The Lost Books of the Odyssey"
The Lost Books of the Odyssey (Starcherone Books), by Zachary Mason, is a wonderful novel. In a manner similar to Miroslav Pavic in his contemporary classic A Dictionary of the Khazars, Mason's novel posits that a group of bards produced twenty-four vignettes, fragments, and so on that focus on Odysseus and his adventures. Some of these are simply alternatives, others are add-ons, and some are direct contradictions to the 'original' story. According to Mason's "Introduction," the lost books — which, ironically, are "regarded as fraudulent" (xii), by contemporary scholars — were written in such a dense, seemingly impenetrable code that it was impossible to understand them until the arrival of the methods and technology of modern mathematics and computer science.The point of each vignette or fragment "is less to advance a plot than to take one image or theme and, paring away all that is inessential, present it with the greatest possible concision and clarity." In practice, what this means is that eleven different themes appear and reappear, explicitly named in the subtitles of every chapter: Time, Memory, Desire, Revenge, The Gods, The Dead, Departures, Returns, Words, Deception, and Doubles.
For instance, the unforgettable first vignette is entitled "The Other Assassin" and the themes, which appear in italics right below the title, are "Doubles, Revenge." It relates the story of Agamemnon, who after having returned from the Trojan War for about ten years, decides that Odysseus is too clever and orders him assassinated. Due to the labyrinthine bureaucracy in his kingdom, the final person to assign the task noted only that a person of stature was to be killed, and reasoned that the clever and wise Odysseus would be best to do the job. In a chillingly military manner, Odysseus carries out the assassination not of himself, but of Agamemnon.
At this point, those who know The Odyssey may be a little confused. In that book, as soon as Agamemnon sets foot on his home island after the Trojan Wars, he is killed by his wife's lover. After Odysseus regains his home from Penelope's suitors, it is suggested that he lived to a ripe old age. The Lost Books of The Odyssey doesn't only add events that do not appear in the original, it completely distorts and contradicts the original.
In addition, there is no coherence among the books. For instance, at least four different origins for the book The Odyssey, by Homer, are proposed. One is that Odysseus began making up lies about his exploits that would "make it easier for him to work as he was wont" (61), and one of these stories became The Odyssey. A second explanation is that Odysseus, who was disguising himself as a wandering bard after the battle, made up stories about his glory in the battle. He was shocked to learn that people bought the one about the 20-foot horse. The third possibility takes place during a strange place and time where Odysseus, who has forgotten his name, is living alone with food and firewood but little clothes in a shack in a place where it is always winter. He finds The Odyssey behind a firewood bin. Finally, in the appendix we learn that the "origin" of the book was, essentially, working out various thematic combinations and recombinations.
There are many other wonders in this book: the fox who turns out to be the famous beauty Helen; Odysseus suddenly finding out that he has an exact double who makes it back to Ithaca to "reclaim" Penelope before he does and that Penelope accepts the legitimacy of the double, leaving him bereft; a chapter written from the Cyclops' perspective; Oysseus planning and executing a way to pull Scylla out of her cliff top cave to be slain; Homer himself wondering, "If I can't put it into words, is it real?"; and so on.
Mason's style is clean and concise. He uses long and complex sentences sparingly. What follows are a typical few sentences: "Odysseus roamed wild through the low hills of Ithaca. He swam like an otter through the rough surf and riptides, and knew every cave, thicket and droning, butterfly-haunted field. He hunted birds in the wood, laying in wait for hours till the silence seem to fill him (but never a perfect silence — there was always something that was not quite a noise, right at the edge of hearing)." What is of interest here is how Mason doesn't allow this quotation to be simply clichéd epic description: instead the details of the "butterfly-haunted field" and the sound "right at the edge of hearing" turn what could have been pedestrian into an evocative description with texture and semantic reach.
This is a tremendous first novel. It raises profound questions about time, fate, identity, epistemology and metaphysics. Is it perfect? No. I wish that there had been more continuity between the isolated fragments and vignettes. I tried hard, but can find no reason why the vignette that appears last couldn't be placed first. While I don't expect this book to use a standard plot line, it could have interlaced the themes through the books. But this is quibbling. I love this book.
Jefferson Hansen
For instance, the unforgettable first vignette is entitled "The Other Assassin" and the themes, which appear in italics right below the title, are "Doubles, Revenge." It relates the story of Agamemnon, who after having returned from the Trojan War for about ten years, decides that Odysseus is too clever and orders him assassinated. Due to the labyrinthine bureaucracy in his kingdom, the final person to assign the task noted only that a person of stature was to be killed, and reasoned that the clever and wise Odysseus would be best to do the job. In a chillingly military manner, Odysseus carries out the assassination not of himself, but of Agamemnon.
At this point, those who know The Odyssey may be a little confused. In that book, as soon as Agamemnon sets foot on his home island after the Trojan Wars, he is killed by his wife's lover. After Odysseus regains his home from Penelope's suitors, it is suggested that he lived to a ripe old age. The Lost Books of The Odyssey doesn't only add events that do not appear in the original, it completely distorts and contradicts the original.
In addition, there is no coherence among the books. For instance, at least four different origins for the book The Odyssey, by Homer, are proposed. One is that Odysseus began making up lies about his exploits that would "make it easier for him to work as he was wont" (61), and one of these stories became The Odyssey. A second explanation is that Odysseus, who was disguising himself as a wandering bard after the battle, made up stories about his glory in the battle. He was shocked to learn that people bought the one about the 20-foot horse. The third possibility takes place during a strange place and time where Odysseus, who has forgotten his name, is living alone with food and firewood but little clothes in a shack in a place where it is always winter. He finds The Odyssey behind a firewood bin. Finally, in the appendix we learn that the "origin" of the book was, essentially, working out various thematic combinations and recombinations.
There are many other wonders in this book: the fox who turns out to be the famous beauty Helen; Odysseus suddenly finding out that he has an exact double who makes it back to Ithaca to "reclaim" Penelope before he does and that Penelope accepts the legitimacy of the double, leaving him bereft; a chapter written from the Cyclops' perspective; Oysseus planning and executing a way to pull Scylla out of her cliff top cave to be slain; Homer himself wondering, "If I can't put it into words, is it real?"; and so on.
Mason's style is clean and concise. He uses long and complex sentences sparingly. What follows are a typical few sentences: "Odysseus roamed wild through the low hills of Ithaca. He swam like an otter through the rough surf and riptides, and knew every cave, thicket and droning, butterfly-haunted field. He hunted birds in the wood, laying in wait for hours till the silence seem to fill him (but never a perfect silence — there was always something that was not quite a noise, right at the edge of hearing)." What is of interest here is how Mason doesn't allow this quotation to be simply clichéd epic description: instead the details of the "butterfly-haunted field" and the sound "right at the edge of hearing" turn what could have been pedestrian into an evocative description with texture and semantic reach.
This is a tremendous first novel. It raises profound questions about time, fate, identity, epistemology and metaphysics. Is it perfect? No. I wish that there had been more continuity between the isolated fragments and vignettes. I tried hard, but can find no reason why the vignette that appears last couldn't be placed first. While I don't expect this book to use a standard plot line, it could have interlaced the themes through the books. But this is quibbling. I love this book.
Jefferson Hansen
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