The Knight (Book One of The Wizard Knight) by Gene Wolfe
01/04/2004 . Source: Pauline Morgan 
pub: TOR. 430 page hardback. Price: $25.95 (US), $35.95 (CAN). ISBN: 0-765-30989-0. check out website: www.tor.com and www.twbooks.co.uk/authors/genewolfe and www.artsweb.bham.ac.uk/jlaidlow/utlan/links
Mythology has long been a source of inspiration for story-tellers. In modern times, the most popular seem to be Greek or Arthurian with Egyptian coming in third.
Most other pantheons have been used at some time. Gene Wolfe has chosen to draw from the Norse, although he does not embrace it in its entirety - he takes only what he needs for the purpose of the story. He is a more subtle a craftsman than to go down that route. The challenge is to work out which game he is playing with the reader. Superficially, this is a rite of passage novel.
A young man is drawn into a fantasy world in which he has numerous adventures. This is not a new concept, therefore, Wolfe is doing far more than this. The narrative is written in the form of long letter from the protagonist to his brother. It begins when the story-teller is left overnight at a cabin when his brother receives a phone call from his girlfriend and dashes back to her.
The narrator goes for a walk. Several things suggest that he crosses a boundary from the America he was born in and the world he subsequently finds himself in. He cuts himself a staff from a tree that does not normally grow in our world, then as he is watching the clouds and their shapes he sees on resembling a castle.
Instead of changing and dissipating, the castle hardens into stone. He follows its track. The last thing he remembers before he wakes up in a cave with an old lady spinning, is many hands grabbing him. He cannot remember how he got there. Amnesia is a device Wolfe has used before but here it seems to be designed to keep essential information from the reader. The old woman, Parka, tells him his name is Able of the High Heart and this is the name he adopts for the whole of the novel. This world, Able discovers, is many layered. Most people live in Mythgarthr.
Below are Aelfrice, Muspel and Niflheim. Above lie Skai, Kleos and Elysion. Journey between worlds is possible, but time runs differently in them. After a meeting with a knight, Sir Ravd, Able decides to become a knight himself and to win his spurs by heroic deeds.
He also falls in love with Desiri, Queen of the Moss Aelf, and vows not to carry a sword until he has the one she has promised him, a legendary weapon called Eterne. While I acknowledge Wolfe's skill and reputation, I do have a few concerns about this novel. The narrator has initially been left on his own and has a keen interest in women, as evinced by his affair with Desiri, suggesting a youth in his early teens. Although she changes him, giving him the form of a strong, full-grown knight he remains, by his own words, still a kid inside.
Both the tone and the naivety of the text make him seem much younger, such as ten or eleven, which doesn't fit with the content of the story. However, the style is consistent. It is also idiosyncratic. There is little attempt to develop other characters other than the narrator so that the tale seems superficial and the episodes of the plot cut sharply, often lacking in expected detail in the same way that a dream cuts unexpectedly between scenes. There is a degree of aimlessness to Able's adventures as if they are, to a certain extent, being guided from elsewhere.
This leads to the realisation that the significant elements are the events. The difficulty is untangling them. So, let's speculate. Since much of the novel has overtones of the kind of wish-fulfilment associated with an adolescent boy - heroism, sex, etc - one possibility is that the levels of this fantasy world are levels of consciousness. In Norse mythology, Niflheim was the home of the dead, the lowest level.
Able is told that descending to the lower levels is easier than climbing to higher ones and, if you go too low, you may never be able to get back. When on one occasion, Able descends to Muspel, the struggle back is long but even more time has passed than completing the journey suggests. Suppose Mythgarthr is a level of consciousness associated with dreaming, then below it the mind is moving towards comatose and eventually, if you go too deep, death. The route to waking will be upwards.
Able does want to reach the castle in Skai, while at the same time wants to seek out Desiri in Aelfrice. It is of note that Able comments that the only person that has a name from Earth is Michael, a man from the second level Kleos, who he meets briefly. When Able first arrived, Parka gave him a length of the thread she was spinning as a bow string. He had already commented on the strangeness of it, leading us to suspect that she was spinning lives.
When he sleeps, Able often has strange dreams about other people's lives, the source emanating from the bow string. Are these perhaps his family calling to him from the upper levels trying to draw him to them? It is probable that these suggestions are totally erroneous.
Only reading the second volume, which will be called 'The Wizard', will we know exactly what Wolfe is doing within the pages of 'The Knight'.
Pauline Morgan |
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