The picture was drawn with ink on a large white linen bedspread, and consisted of a tiny single perfect square at the center of the canvas surrounded by concentric (imperfect) freehand outlines.... Since each square was larger, each imperfection was larger, too, until at the outermost edge, the shapes were no longer squares, but vast, chaotic wanderings.
-- The Name of the World, pages 12-13.

This is one of the strangest books I have read in recent years. In general, my response to it is a kind of puzzled admiration. Actually, I am tempted to make some obscure and pedantic observations, mutter a bit about its “multi-level meaning” and bluff my way through this review. The truth is, I find much of this book inaccessible. The author has been around a while and receives rave reviews and awards annually. That just adds to my confusion. This is a remarkable book, but I’m not sure why.

I’m fairly certain that the quote at the top of this review which describes a folk art picture in a museum -- one that this book’s protagonist is fascinated by -- represents the heart of this novella. Michael Reed sees the picture as a metaphor for human existence: we all start our lives logically, with specific goals in view, but as our lives progress, the course of our lives becomes increasingly erratic until we end up living chaotic, wandering lives. I believe Henry James once used a design in a carpet to demonstrate the same idea. Okay, so far, so good.

Michael Reed has a great deal in common with another flawed pedagogue that was discussed in this column last year, Ted Swenson of Blue Angel. Both men teach at small liberal arts colleges and find themselves trapped in an occupation that is meaningless (but tenured); both are infatuated by a young coed and both yearn for some cataclysmic event, some “radical change” which will catapult them into “a new life.”

However, The Name of the World possesses a kind of nightmarish darkness. Although the same images occur in both works -- departmental politics, faculty teas and dreary academic rituals -- Michael’s world is bleaker: alcoholism, mental depression and broken marriages have become occupational hazards.

Due to the death of his wife and daughter in a car accident, Reed is suffering a kind of arrested grief. His loss is so devastating he cannot confront it. Unable to drive a car or develop a meaningful relationship -- social or sexual -- with anyone, Michael prefers imaginary conversations with strangers and aimless drifting through the small college town. Watching the skaters on a campus pond, he notes that they are moving without purpose, pursuing nothing, much like his life and that of his associates. His only escape from academia is in the past -- a stint in Washington as a speech writer for a corrupt senator. The experience left him disillusioned with politics and humankind in general. “Washington is a place where everything is going on, but nothing is happening,” he tells a friend. (I suspected that myself.)

When a beautiful young woman, Flower Cannon, appears on campus, Reed is drawn to her. A series of chance meetings with her at concerts (she plays the cello), art studios (I’m not going to tell you about that one, but she paints, too!), strip clubs (she is an amateur stripper) and church services (she “signs” for the deaf members) leads the middle-aged teacher to believe he is moving towards some “fateful event” that will change his life in some irrevocable way. He is right, but the “harmonious convergence” seems to have little to do with sex. Flower Cannon seems to represent the infinite possibilities of all of us -- even Reed. Certainly, she is willing to try anything regardless of whether she has aptitude or talent for it. She is courageous, willful and beautiful. In effect, she is Reed’s antithesis. Instead of sleeping with poor Reed, she tells him a story. He seemed pleased with the gift -- the story of how she got her name. I was hoping for something more responsive to poor Reed’s four years of celibacy. Ah, well.

The Name of the World has scenes that combine elements of Lolita and Joyce’s Ulysses. In other words, it seems to combine sensuality with “a dark night of the soul” in which a badly damaged being in agony has unwittingly drifted to the brink of madness. Michael Reed tells his own story in one prolonged chapter -- a fact that can lead to some serious misconceptions. In the few instances when the reader is given a glimpse of Michael as others see him, the result is a shock. As he wanders through gambling casinos, grocery stores and bars, he is desperately hoping “for something to finally happen” -- something that will interrupt the endless repetition of classes, committees and conferences. In one scene, as Reed stands at a checkout counter reading tabloid headlines (The National Inquirer, Midnight, etc.), he meditates on why they are so popular. He concludes that it is because they assure us (the ones who have uninteresting lives) that: “The mighty are fallen; glamour equals misery; the innocent shall be raped and killed.” For Michael, the world grows increasingly sinister and dangerous each day, and he yearns to escape.

Does he make it? Well, I’m not sure. As I mentioned at the beginning, much of this book is cryptic -- a message written in code. One thing is certain. The narrator of this story undergoes a “sea change.” The man that drifts through the sky above the Hijarah Desert as this novella ends is not the same man that watched the “aimless skaters” move over the frozen ice of a pond on a Midwestern college campus. This change was wrought by a meeting with a woman/child named Flower Cannon. I haven’t the vaguest idea why this is so.

(Gary Carden is a storyteller and writer who lives in Sylva. He can be reached at gcarden498@aol.com)

 

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