The Reader's Shelf: Get Lost in a Maze of Winding Tales, June 15, 2011
Jun 15, 2011The labyrinth—best known as the elaborate maze that imprisoned the bloodthirsty half-man, half-bull Minotaur—has a long history. It was designed to permit no escape—the Minotaur would simply wander its twisting, turning corridors forever, or until slain by some valiant hero. For medieval thinkers, the labyrinth became a symbol of pilgrimage and salvation, while modern conceptions resemble the Minotaur’s prison—infinitely complex, a maze of mirrors without end. In this labyrinth, the distinction between reality and imagination becomes unclear. Those entering may find a world of layered language and meaning. But, like the medieval pilgrim, those considering this more modern maze will have the opportunity to supply personal import to the twistings of the journey. Readers seeking a dense, labyrinthine experience will find plenty of turns to navigate in these six books.
For Jorge Luis Borges, the labyrinth is a form that folds back on itself infinitely. Those entering this labyrinth become aware of the myriad choices they may make, as all possibilities exist simultaneously. Borges explores this idea in Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings (New Directions, dist. by Norton. 2007. ISBN 9780811216999. pap. $14.95), which includes, perhaps most famously, “The Garden of Forking Paths.” This tale features Dr. Yu Tsun, a spy for the German empire during World War I who is pursued by MI5 agent Richard Madden. Tsun flees to the house of Stephen Albert, who is studying Tsun’s ancestor Ts’ui Pen, whose life’s work was to write a vastly complicated novel. In his questionable refuge, Tsun contemplates a world of options as he considers his next move. Sharply and beautifully written, Borges’s stories are sure to delight with allusion and linguistic play.
Obsession surrounds the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a 15th-century manuscript, since it is rumored to contain codes that reveal the location of a buried treasure. As four Princeton University students begin to unravel secrets held for centuries hidden in a labyrinth of riddles, the campus becomes the site of mystery, death, and literary detection. Smart and compulsively readable, The Rule of Four (Dell. 2005. ISBN 9780440241355. pap. $7.99) by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason is richly detailed, providing literary and artistic threads full of enticing prospects.
Revolving around a maze of a house, Isabel Allende’s THE House of the Spirits (Dial: Random. 2005. ISBN 9780553383805. pap. $16) recounts the history of the Trueba family. Clairvoyant Clara is the matriarch, though her sometimes cruel husband, Esteban, maintains a louder presence in the home. The Truebas’ house, classical in style, is meant to be the pride of the neighborhood, but it reflects many a dark family secret in its strange design, rife with protuberances, twisted stairways leading nowhere, crooked hallways, and leaning turrets. Employing ravishing language and a keenly observed setting and characters, Allende dramatizes the political and class conflict of 20th-century Chile.
Descriptive settings also pervade Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities (Mariner: Houghton Harcourt. 1978. ISBN 9780156453806. pap. $14), an astounding blend of revelation and confusion. Kublai Khan isn’t sure that he understands correctly as Marco Polo chronicles his travels to cities of chain and concentric canal, of leaden streets, crystal theaters, and sweet marjoram cooked in the streets. Marco Polo could be recounting his dreams, his imaginings, or his native Venice, over and over, one snapshot after another. It’s up to Kublai Khan—and the reader—to untangle dream from reality in this travel tale of language play and imagery.
In 1905 in Berne, Switzerland, Albert Einstein is on the cusp of developing his theory of relativity, and he is working out the kinks in his dreams. Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams (Vintage: Random. 2004. ISBN 9781400077809. pap. $14) collects these dreams, each of which dramatizes the unusual passage of time. In one dream, time runs backward; in another, time is gained by moving more quickly. In this tangled world, time behaves in unexpected ways, and the world is shaped accordingly. There is no predicting how things “ought to be.”
When Richard Mayhew plays the Good Samaritan, stopping to help Door, an imperiled rag girl, he falls through the cracks from London Above to London Below—a maze of tunnels, hidden passageways, and dead ends where time has no meaning. In this dark underworld, Richard questions the reality of his own existence and wonders if he will ever find his way again to London Above. In Neverwhere (HarperPerennial: HarperCollins. 2003. ISBN 9780060557812. pap. $13.99), Neil Gaiman presents a dark tale rich in allusion and labyrinthine in its conception of people, places, and time.
This column was contributed by Talea Anderson, a recent graduate from the University of Washington’s MLIS program
| Author Information |
| Neal Wyatt compiles LJ’s online feature Wyatt’s World and is the author of The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Nonfiction (ALA Editions, 2007). She is a collection development and readers’ advisory librarian from Virginia. Those interested in contributing to The Reader’s Shelf should contact her directly at Readers_Shelf@comcast.net |
