Fantastic Metropolis

Introduction

Edward Whittemore (1933-1995) is the author of five highly imaginative novels, written between 1974 and 1987. His death in 1995 tragically cut short his writing career. He is best known for the four novels which constitute the Jerusalem Quartet—Sinai Tapestry (1977), Jerusalem Poker (1978), Nile Shadows (1983), and Jericho Mosaic (1987)—a sustained work of extraordinary breadth and imaginative intensity. An earlier book, Quin’s Shanghai Circus (1974), is also well worth considering as it contains the seeds of what was to come in the Jerusalem sequence and is an excellent novel itself. Out of print for many years, all five books have just been reissued by Old Earth Books.

Although they contain fantastic themes and elements, these novels don’t fit into any convenient genre. They are not science fiction, fantasy, historical, or religious fiction, though they contain elements of all these. What distinguishes the books is not commonality of style, but rather originality of expression. Their individuality and imaginative invention puts them alongside the works of such writers as Angela Carter, Mervyn Peake, Vladimir Nabokov, and Mikhail Bulgakov.

Edward Whittemore had an interesting and unusual life. He graduated from Yale in 1955 with a degree in history, and his interest in that discipline is reflected in the historical flavor of the books themselves. Historical episodes play an important part in all the novels, and the characters, set against this historical background, possess remarkable biographies in their own right. As a young man, he was recruited into the CIA. From 1958 to 1967, he served as an agent for that organization, traveling widely both in East Asia and the Middle East. Undoubtedly, these experiences greatly influenced his writing and fed his imagination with exotica unknown to most Westerners; all his novels involve espionage activities of one kind or another.

The espionage that plays a central role in all of the novels is often carried out in ridiculous and eccentric ways: In Sinai Tapestry, a giant stone scarab is used to transport arms. In Jerusalem Poker, Nubar Wallenstein’s paranoiac spy network is of hilarious and outrageous proportions. In Nile Shadows, allied intelligence operations have the peculiar names Waterboys and Monks. Is Whittemore lampooning his past experiences as an agent, mocking the activities of the CIA and similar organizations? The organization run by master agent Yossi/Halim in Jericho Mosaic is like an insider’s view of the workings of Mossad; in fact Halim’s life and activities are closely modeled on those of Eli Cohen, the famous Israeli spy. Was Whittemore a party to secret information owing to his past spook activities? Or was he, as his friends speculated, still an active agent?

Quin’s Shanghai Circus

Quin’s Shanghai Circus was Whittemore’s first published book. It received favorable reviews from the literary press at the time: Jerome Charyn in The New York Times Book Review described it as “a profoundly nutty book full of mysteries, truths, untruths, idiot savants, necrophiliacs, magicians, dwarfs, circus masters, secret agents… a marvelous recasting of history in our century”. Although the book can be described as a sort of historical spy novel, the way the story is told, the eccentricity of the characters and how they inhabit the location of the novel, places it outside the mainstream of literature. It has an original voice and is bright with unusual imaginings. It captures the essence of the Orient while displaying an esoteric grasp of its history, and an understanding of its main philosophical concepts and cultural practices.

The novel opens in the 1960s with the arrival in New York of a giant expatriate American named Geraty. In his luggage are two curious items—an ancient ring of Nestorian origin and the largest collection of Asian pornography ever to land on American shores. He is dressed eccentrically:

The unraveled tops of three or four sweaters showed at his neck, which was swathed in a piece of red flannel tied with string. He wore torn military boots, the type issued to American soldiers during the Second World War, and a black bowler hat that might have belonged to a circus performer in the 1920s. Over everything was a military greatcoat, ancient and spotted and patched, of no recognizable era or campaign.

Geraty’s baggage and his dress are part of the overall plot of the novel. Whittemore structures his novels like Chinese puzzle boxes that gradually reveal interlocking mysteries. Here, the mysteries are the characters, and the actions and memories of the main protagonists propel the novel forward. A “stories within stories” structure, reminiscent of Jan Potocki’s extraordinary The Saragossa Manuscript, enriches the reading experience.