In Pursuit of the Imagination
Nine Elusive Books
Erickson can be compared to Thomas Pynchon for his use of time and the surrealism of his writing, but Erickson is a more complete novelist and, while Pynchon’s vision has apparently failed him (witness the tepid Vineland), Erickson has forged his way into uncharted territory. The book plays such sophisticated and daring tricks with time that a simple summary cannot convey the sheer reckless beauty of Erickson’s writing, nor the sadness, the elegance, and the complexity of the plot. More than any other book on this list, with the possible exception of The Seven Who Fled, Arc D’X is an experience that could never be duplicated by a medium other than the novel form.
Lanark: A Life in Four Books (1981) by Alasdair Gray
Often compared to Dante’s Divine Comedy and the work of William Blake, Lanark chronicles the journeys of Duncan Thaw from life into death, from Glasgow to the disintegrating afterworld city of Unthank. It is in Unthank that Thaw, his memories wiped clean, takes the name of Lanark. As Lanark, Thaw has become nothing so simple as a ghost; as with the other inhabitants of this sunless afterworld, he is flesh-and-blood, and the actions he takes have serious repercussions. Unthank is a hell in which all the worst elements of life-on-earth are magnified and intensified: corruption, crime, political and environmental irresponsibility. This magnification provides Gray with opportunities for satire not so skillfully exploited since Voltaire’s Candide. Gray, a socialist, does not believe that politics and business can be separated from the human animal and Lanark is as much a book about the fascist tendencies of both as it is a probing psychological profile of Thaw and a marvelous, deeply humane fantasy. In fact, the book can be called a “masterpiece” precisely because it intertwines satire, deep characterization, and a mind-blowing imagination. The sections on Thaw’s life in Glasgow read like a less experimental Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, while the surreal element, firmly grounded in the practical, possesses a breathtaking beauty: gravestones speak with toothy mouths; mouths flap like wings through the sky; men and women encased in thick “dragon hide” because their souls are sick burn up, or crack open to emerge naked, pale, cleansed and reborn:
[Lanark] felt a wave of heat go through the cool metal under him then the beak shut with a crack like a gunshot. There was a second crack then a clang. The cloud of steam began clearing, yet he was unable for a moment to see the great beak, for the head had fallen off. There was a black hole between the shoulders from which poured a pale shining stream. It was hair. There was another clang as the thorax split. He fell sideways onto a wing and lay listening to sounds like buckets and kettles falling downstairs. The silver body and limbs cracked and fell apart until they covered the floor like ornate scrap metal. A naked girl crouched weeping in the middle, rubbing her cheeks with her hands…
There is also a gritty humor to the book, accentuated by Gray’s playful organization of his material. Who can resist a book that begins with Part III, doubles back to Prologue, before going ahead with Part I? This playfulness also has a purpose since the book can be read “out of order” by following it from prologue through Part IV for a coherent but totally different effect. Gray includes a chapter that lists all of the authors and philosophers he has stolen from to create Lanark, and the book is lovingly illustrated by Gray as well.
Gray’s 1982 Janine and Poor Things also come highly recommended.
Viriconium (1982) by M. John Harrison
Viriconium is a city of the far future—so far future that Harrison’s works concerning the city more properly resemble fantasy. Viriconium is, the reader gleans from the text, the last outpost of a high civilization in a world where most everywhere else barbarism is mitigated only slightly by high tech weapons and vehicles not properly understood by those who now operate them. The citizens of Viriconium may not understand these technologies either, but as a city of poets and painters and astronomers, they use these gifts to different ends.
