Fantastic Metropolis

Waking Beauty is ultimately a novel about transformation, and its central theme is the ability of old tales to take on new forms and meanings. The novel’s three parts recapitulate the movement of one of the oldest mythic structures: death, descent into the Underworld, and rebirth. This vision subverts the cyclical symbol of the Hierarchate, the ouroboros-the snake devouring its own tail. The ouroboros is a closed cycle—like the Wheel of Ixion, it offers repetition rather than change. In the novel’s stunning final chapter, Witcover offers an alternative: an ending that is a new beginning, a transformation, and an awakening.

At one point in the novel, a character tells Rumer that “What you call heresy is only love,” and Waking Beauty is ultimately about the power of love to transform reality. Hold on a second—I know that statement sounds goofy, but separate it for a moment, if you can, from its lingering odors of patchouli and unwashed flesh. What but love, after all, keeps us from screwing each other in the name of commerce? What but love causes an author to write, not for popularity or fame, but to satisfy her inner vision? Through the character of Rumer, Witcover provides a moving and very strange meditation on the meanings of sacrifice, passion, and love.

In the stunning final section of the novel, Witcover depicts a transformation that transcends the oppositions of the old stories and brings into being a new and uncharted world. This apocalyptic transfiguration is both wondrous and terrifying—it is nothing less than the Unspinning itself, the unraveling of the forms and meanings that gave shape to the world of the Hierarchate. It is an awakening, an ending, and a new beginning; a stunning vision of Life as Dream and Dream as Life—a web of perception and meaning that binds us all together. In the end there is no ending—only transformation.

Despite its many accomplishments, Waking Beauty has some rough edges. While Witcover’s highly stylized prose is often perfectly suited to the story’s dreamlike tone and imagery, it also establishes an emotional distance from the novel’s characters and actions. Despite a general chilliness of characterization and tone, however, moments of raw emotion do frequently emerge. Witcover’s decision to double the character of Rose and Rumer—two women who are virtually indistinguishable—is also puzzling.

Despite its flaws, the novel often achieves a crystalline beauty of language and imagery. The opening scenes of Part II, in which the simularter Sylvestris Jaciodes contemplates his own reflection while in a metheglin haze, are among the finest in the novel and define Witcover’s style: dense, ornate, and sharp and precise as a razor’s edge. The novel also achieves moments of a transcendent strangeness—both its beauty and its horror are processed through a bizarre set of imaginative filters, and in a genre plagued by imitation, its unique and distinctive voice is a remarkable accomplishment.

It’s an imperfect novel, but still one that is richly rewarding. To be perfectly honest, I’d rather read a novel that takes great risks—and occasionally fails—than one that achieves perfection by taking none.

Despite a profligate and misspent youth, Jeff Topham has somehow become a responsible adult. He lives with his wife Anne and daughter Judith in a very nice old house on a shady street in Louisville, Kentucky. He welcomes comments at tophamj@earthlink.net.