The Scrolls of Nef, or the Fascism of Piety
The Scrolls of Nef, by Gary Glickman, Hand to Hand Publishing
(784 words)
There
are more than enough story levels in The
Scrolls of Nef to satisfy what I imagine will be
many years of masters' theses and dissertations. Describing the novel by any
one theme above the others means to risk casting the others into shadow, and
overlooking the impressive multi-vision.
But I suspect one of the themes most talked-about in this third novel by
Gary Glickman, (half of the music-writing duo, The DreamBrothers) will be the theme of
monotheist fundamentalism's murderous rigidity: any group that claims a
monopoly on Truth ensures becoming what it claims to hate. Hate in the name of
love; violence in the name of peace; distortion and lies in the name of purity.
Like the string in a necklace, that theme of fundamentalist decadence organizes
the novel through all its many narrative levels.
At
the most concrete plot level, the peaceable kingdom of Ruhal
is invaded by an Imperialistic Empire spreading its fundamentalist monotheist
Religion, throughout what might be Medieval Europe. The Godlians,
as the invaders call themselves, see themselves as liberators of the natives
from the darkness and wickedness of their more pacifist, tolerant,
polytheistic, Gaia-honoring traditions. If such a theme sounds familiar and
timely for the beginning of the 21st century, it surely is—although as
Tolkien reminded us, archetypal resonance is not allegory. However the 21st century will
eventually unfold, the novel unfolds and resolves according to the archetypal
story of how a peaceable kingdom responds to Imperial invasion.
We
readers experience the Godlians mostly through the
double viewpoint of two royal brothers, the exiled princes of the invaded
kingdom. It is the split vision of the two oppositional brothers that defines
the structure of the story. Looked at simply, the two brothers hold opposite
and incomplete masculine energies, and must eventually integrate their
different strengths to overcome their oppressors. Though separated on two continents by a vast ocean, the
brothers have parallel and convergent educations: each brother finds a mentor;
each must learn to see through his different princely arrogance; each finds his
missing soul-pieces, and by doing so, becomes a hero.
Soul
searching, or "soul-reading" is in fact another unifying theme. The
macho older brother, gently pressing his beloved's chest, sees images of her
future, and though he is alarmed, she tells him he is simply "soul-reading."
The younger, intellectual brother apprentices himself to his scholarly
great-uncle, royal translator of the ancient scrolls of Nef,
in order to "wake up" his soul. Soul-reading, according to great
uncle Mordec, means "aligning with the living
soul of the planet, and becoming fluent, therefore, in reading people."
And
so, toward soul-reading, the brothers follow their seemingly-disparate
destinies that we readers can see are really mirrors of each other. Talland, the crown prince, is at first easily seduced by
the story of marrying the Godlian Questioner's
daughter. That choice is narrowly and disastrously avoided; gravely wounded, Talland is brought to recover at the mountain-top abbey of
a rag-tag bunch of eccentric healers that the villagers understandably think of
as witches. Orland, the younger prince, hides out with his great-uncle, or with
the refugees of the Old City, from whom he learns authenticity, sex, empathy.
But he must eventually flee the decadent city of his mother's birth with the ancient
scrolls of his uncle's translations, carriers of the old wisdom, which the Godlians wish to destroy. Talland's
ten year task is to unite his country's rustic partisans. Orland must voyage
through the heart of the Godlian empire, to find a haven for the
scrolls, and for his crew of refugees.
So
what kind of story is this, that constantly flirts with everyday magic but asks
no structural indulgence from fantasy; that flirts with gender-reversals and
illusions ("Orland" sounds suspiciously like Virginia Woolf's
gender-transforming "Orlando") but recognizes the rigidities of real
gender-polarized human culture? There is an epic sweep that pays homage to
Tolkien (what modern epic does not?) but also a play of domestic manners,
interior psychology and the artificial limitations of gender that owe to Jane
Austen, Ursula LeGuin or indeed Virginia Woolf.
Doesn't that spectrum from Tolkien to Woolf sound double-gendered, the heroic
masculine and the containing, interior feminine?
The
vision of the world revealed by The
Scrolls of Nef does seem double-gendered, which is one level of the
characters' struggles. The resolution of the epic sweep is an integration of
warrior and teacher, priest and singer, masculine and feminine, political and personal—an
old fashioned comedy resolution (the lovers marry; the brothers share the rule;
the kingdom is liberated; the wisdom is saved) in the larger context of whole
lifetimes passing, and all of our small personal stories folding together,
mostly unnoticed, into what the victorious call history.