As I mentioned in my previous review of one of his books (for Angelmaker), Nick Harkaway is an author I find myself needing to get a running start at. Like bouncing off a tightrope before slinging back and flying into continued motion. Or maybe like being thrown into a pool and instinctively lunging for the safety of the solid sides, for an exit, before learning the strokes to propel forward and onward into the narrative river beyond. Pick a metaphor for failing to launch at your leisure.
This one took more runs than most, and should have, because once the stone crested the hill, it ran ragged, inevitably installing itself within me. Themes I’d pondered a dozen years prior were discovered within, developed further and with more style and gusto than I’d hope to be able to muster, even with an audience of only one.
Collective voting systems, cultivated narratives, multitudes created within the one, magic as knowing the true names of things. Reality shown to be as thin as paper and as thick as ink. Harmonic and ideological resonance across spaces, times, states. Roko’s Basilisk with fins and a nose for blood. Harkaway resonated on some wavelength I’d also tuned into and wrapped these themes and theses into something whole and entrancing.
The book scratched at itches so deep, so long held, I’d forgotten they yearned for the nail.
The obsessions explored, shared, invited within to live, a little while, a span of six-hundred-some-odd pages and a lifetime nestled within the connectome, deep within the grey matter.
Great reading is experiencing and conducting a fugue. Living within, between, among. Coexisting with an author’s construction and doing the work beside them, in the way one brings themselves into any involved work. In Gnomon, this felt much more literal, in that the reader, if they believed, had faith, if they followed far enough down the rabbit hole, secreted an operating system for a narrative universe into themselves, allowing new dimension to unfold in the interstitials, to slip in through art and artifice until they existed as not just assumptions but stated facts, as states of being.
Nick’s real sneaky that way.
I hesitate to talk plot and character for fear of revealing the trick to it. You don’t deserve to be seated to the side of the stage for this one, to have the various ropes and levers and mirrors pointed to and commented upon before watching the magic for yourself, feeling the awe unspoiled. All I will intend is that you feel the gravity of my gratitude for the experience. Harkaway is a master and this was another masterpiece. It’s worth the dive, all the way to the bottom.
Vocabulary:
(Harkaway’s like any great author in using the right words, even if it’s not certain his audience will know them inherently. He trusts a reader to care enough to learn, and I’m repaying that trust by, well, learning.)
oneiric – adjective
of, relating to, or characteristic of dreams.
“A small alteration in the oneiric psychoscape would have caused her difference to become extremely dysfunctional.”
apocatastasis – noun
the state of being restored or reestablished; restitution.
catabasis – noun
a retreat, especially a military retreat. (Used, in cases in this novel, discussing an escape from an underworld.)1Later defined as “The mystical journey of Orpheus into the kingdom of Hades, and by extension any voyage into darkness. Greek, kata: against, down; basis: the place on which you stand. Literally, a pedestal. Therefore “catabasis”, a journey down beneath the place where we stand.”
“After a moment, she enters STEGANOGRAPHY, CRYPTOGRAPHY, APOCATASTASIS and CATABASIS into the mix. The overall picture shifts a little as if shrugging, but does not change. She shrugs back, almost irritated: No, I don’t know what to do with those either. Don’t look at me like that.”
bouquinistes – noun
Via Wikipedia: “The Bouquinistes of Paris, France, are booksellers of used and antiquarian books who ply their trade along large sections of the banks of the Seine: on the right bank from the Pont Marie to the Quai du Louvre, and on the left bank from the Quai de la Tournelle to Quai Voltaire. The Seine is thus described as ‘the only river in the world that runs between two bookshelves”
“This is no lair of chattering bouquinistes; be assured there will be no tote bags and no branded pencils.”
(Editor’s note: one of my great regrets in visiting Paris some twenty years ago now is not having spent more time leisurely perusing these booksellers and artists and stands along the Seine. The whole trip, though random, felt at times rushed. Some day I’d like to get back and do the thing again at a slower pace.)
affray – noun
a public fight; a noisy quarrel; brawl. (Now I wonder where it split from the shorter ‘fray’ but am not ready to pop for a copy of the OED)
“He loved affray.”
catafalque – noun
a raised structure on which the body of a deceased person lies or is carried in state.
“And here, at last, is the damned catafalque, the unwelcome coffin, arrived as it always does between the moments so that I cannot see and stamp on whatever kobold drags it in.”
One other vocabulary note that I found interesting in reading was the two contrasting definitions of fugue:
fugue – noun
1: Music – a contrapuntal composition in which a short melody or phrase (the subject) is introduced by one part and successively taken up by others and developed by interweaving the parts.
2: Psychiatry – a state or period of loss of awareness of one’s identity, often coupled with flight from one’s usual environment, associated with certain forms of hysteria and epilepsy.
Overall, a highly recommended read, even if you, like I, need to repeatedly roll your stone up the hill to its tip. You will not remain as Sisyphus. It will crest, and roll down the other side, carrying you along with it to the crash of conclusion.
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Notes:
- 1Later defined as “The mystical journey of Orpheus into the kingdom of Hades, and by extension any voyage into darkness. Greek, kata: against, down; basis: the place on which you stand. Literally, a pedestal. Therefore “catabasis”, a journey down beneath the place where we stand.”