The Malacia Tapestry by Brian Aldiss

Back in the 1980s, as a teenager, I read Brian Aldiss's Malacia Tapestry and I loved it.  I enjoyed it so much that it is one of the few science fiction books I have retained over the decades.  While most of the SF paperbacks I read in my youth have been sold or are now in the custody of my brother back in New Jersey, my 1985 paperback copy of this 1976 novel has stayed in my possession over 25 years and traveled with me cross country, because I knew I would reread it someday.  This weekend this paperback's odyssey reached its conclusion when I reread it.

The novel is a smoothly paced first person narrative by Perian de Chirolo, an actor residing in his native town of Malacia, an Italian city state in an alternate universe. I had thought the time period was based on the Renaissance, maybe because the word "Renaissance" appears on the back cover, but some of the men in the novel seem to wear 18th century fashions (breeches and silk stockings, tricorn hats, powedered wigs or hair in a queue held by ribbons) and the illustrations in the book are reproductions of Tiepolos. Some of the capers in the book remind me of the Casanova I have read.  Of course, Aldiss isn't confining himself to one period; there are triremes and dinosaurs, after all, Byzantium is a going concern, and a man in the novel invents a camera and talks the Marxist jargon of exploitation, class enemies and revolution.

Malacia, though a vibrant and exciting center of commerce and culture, is a conservative place; characters say it has not changed in thousands of years, and Perian tells us that the city government's "immemorial duty is to protect Malacia from change." Progressives are burned at the stake or secretly murdered in a dungeon. Despite the efforts of the secretive city government and the predjudices of most of the populace, one of the main characters of the book, inventor and revolutionary Otto Bengsthon, an immigrant from a northern country (he was thrown out of his native town because of his radical ideas) is determined to bring change to Malacia. He not only is revolutionizing the world of art with his camera, but employs hydrogen balloons against the Turkish army which is laying siege to Malacia. (Some of his revolutionary comrades think that their cause will be helped by allowing the Turks to demolish the city, but Bengshton insists that first the "Turks must be defeated, then revolution comes from within.") Perian is in the middle of all these efforts, even though he himself has little interest in revolutionary politics; working with Bengshton allows him opportunities to impress Armida, the beautiful daughter of the inventor's patron, successful merchant Hoytola.

Perian goes to great lengths to woo Armida and impress Armida's father, and succeeds in winning Armida's love; she agrees to a secret betrothal. Despite his protestations of love for Armida, Perian is an incurable ladies man, and enjoys dalliances with many women behind Armida's back.  His promiscuity gets him in trouble with both the revolutionaries and the wealthy members of the middle classes.

Are we to admire Perian de Chirolo for his zest for life, his commitment to his art?  Or are we to deplore him for the way he treats women, how he betrays his friends, his indiference to the social problems which exercise Bengsthon?  Bengsthon, Armida, and others certainly lecture Perian often enough on his selfish and superficial attitude.  In part, the novel is the story of Perian's gaining knowledge and maturity, though Aldiss does not suggest that greater knowledge and maturity necessarily lead to greater happiness.  At the end of the novel the city council has taken care of their Turkish and Bengsthon problems, but it still seems possible that Bengsthon's followers are going to bathe the city in blood, and that Perian may actually join them.  Perhaps we can hope that Perian, who has had wide experiences in a broad cross section of Malacian society, can moderate the radicals and help lead Malacia through a period of peaceful reforms?     

Aldiss includes lots of entertaining elements in the novel: the characters discuss art; Aldiss describes their religion, which I guess you could call Manichean; and of course there is the theme of class struggle, social justice and change.  Even without the Turks or Bengsthon, it seems that Malacia's way of life is threatened; the dinosaurs are dying out and trade with Byzantium is drying up.  Perian's father's fortunes are in severe decline, and with his erudite monomania with historical trivia (a scholar, he spends countless hours researching what Philip and Alexander of Macedon ate) he seems like an examplar or synecdoche of Malacia as a society with a sterile or counterproductive obsession with the past.

I was surprised by how good the style and pacing were, how effortlessly and pleasantly the book flowed; I remember Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer, and Primal Urge being ponderous and at times tedious. I even laughed out loud at some of the jokes in Malacia Tapestry.  There are lots of characters, but Aldiss makes sure each is different and interesting and memorable. 

(On the bad side, this edition has lots of typos.)

It might be worth considering whether Malacia Tapestry is really science fiction or rather should be categorized as fantasy.  The prophecies of the many priests and wizards in the novel seem uncannily accurate, though we learn that these prophets are susceptible to bribes and not above lying.  Most of the characters believe in spells and magic and wear amulets.  Perian has weird visions that reminded me somewhat of the allegorical visions the protagonist in Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain has.  (Also as in Magic Mountain, we have a character whom competing theorists try to sway to their way of thinking about how the world should be.)  There is also the strange fact that Armida's hair is jet black when she is first introduced (page 35) but after Perian's most vivid vision and the dinosaur hunt in which he slays a towering therapod and "becomes a man," Armida's hair is described as "golden" (page 329.)  And then there are the satyrs (people who are half man and half goat) and the people who have wings growing out their backs and fly nude around the city.         

However we categorize it, Malacia Tapestry is a great, fun read.  I guess as a teenager I had pretty good taste!  Highly recommended.

Notes on Henry Miller

I first encountered the work of Henry Miller while at Rutgers.  Not in a class, of course.  I was killing time between classes in the Alexander Library and took a paperback copy of Sexus off the shelf and flipped through it, looking for the pornographic scenes, of which there were quite a few.  Years later, while living in New York, I bought new editions of the three volumes of the Rosy Cruxificion trilogy, Sexus, Plexus and Nexus, and read them for real, from start to finish.  I can still remember sitting on Fifth Avenue, not far from the Guggenheim, my back to Central Park, laughing as I read the scene in Sexus in which Miller, sitting in the passenger seat of a car speeding through Long Island, tries to convince his friends to drive him to Walt Whitman’s birth site.

                “What about visiting Walt Whitman’s birthplace?” I said aloud.

                “What?” yelled McGregror.

                “Walt Whitman!” I yelled.  “He was born somewhere on Long Island.  Let’s go there.”

                “Do you know where?”

                “No, but we could ask someone.”

                “Oh the hell with that!  I thought you knew where.  These people out here wouldn’t know who Walt Whitman was.  I wouldn’t have known myself only you talk about him so goddamned much.  He was a bit queer, wasn’t he?  Didn’t you tell me he was in love with a bus driver?  Or was he a nigger lover?  I can’t remember any more.”

Just typing that passage (from page 123 of my edition) made me laugh.  In that passage you find the appeal of Miller (to me at least) in a nutshell: funny, literary, and shockingly coarse, crude and offensive, or as we say today, “politically incorrect.”

Last year I reread the Rosy Crucifixion and read for the first time several other Miller books, and then filled my e-mails to friends (among them poet and playwright Jason Irwin, immortalized as the first commenter on this blog) with discussion of Miller.  In the interest of keeping all my literary notes in one place, I paste below excerpts relating to Miller from my correspondence. 

JULY 18, 2012

I read Tropic of Capricorn, which has some good parts, and one part I found very surprising, in which Miller complains that after they built the Williamsburg Bridge the Jews invaded his beloved Brooklyn neighborhood and ruined it. Then I reread Sexus, which I think is probably Miller's best book. It has the most sex, the fewest bizarre surrealist sequences, and has a more structured plot than Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn. The Tropic books are mostly disconnected anecdotes divided by the weird surrealist transports and irrational hateful rants about how he wishes the world would explode or drown in blood, how he respects a man who murders his neighbor more than a man who has a 9 to 5 job, etc. I love the anecdotes, and the insane misanthropic diatribes can be fun, but those surrealistic sequences put me to sleep. I suspect, however, that Miller thinks that those nonsensical scenes are his best work.

Unable to find it in any of the libraries out here in the wilderness, I bought Crazy Cock at the Half Price Books just west of Des Moines. I love the cover; I wish my copies of Sexus, Plexus and Nexus had such nice covers. I have not read Crazy Cock yet.

I got Moloch from the Simpson College Library. It also has a nice cover. Unfortunately, it is the worst book by Miller I have yet read. A lot of the usual Miller stuff is in there; he works for the messenger company, he cheats on his wife (in one scene he has to borrow money for his wife's abortion from his mulatto girlfriend), there are several characters from his other work, like the mulatto girlfriend and the fat Jewish medical student (I think he's called Kronski in Sexus), there is an Indian, other people keep telling Miller he is a great guy and a genius, etc. But the style is not there, partly because it is written in the third person, so it is not nearly as fun.

The most interesting things about Moloch are the fact that the whole book is an anti-Semitic diatribe, and Miller's more sympathetic treatment of his first wife and his child. The book being in the third person, Miller not only says again and again that Jews are ugly and dirty, but has Jewish characters themselves admit this. As for the first wife, the Miller character loves her and tries to reform, tries to stop cheating and make things work out right with her. He also goes on about how he loves his little daughter. In his other work I don't recall Miller showing any sympathy or affection for his first wife and their daughter. In fact, in Sexus Miller takes credit for improving his wife by making her more sexually liberated; in Moloch it is just the opposite, the wife gets the husband to behave.

Perhaps the best scene in Sexus is when Miller gets a letter from his hero, Knut Hamsun, a stupid and embarrassing letter which breaks Miller's heart but of course had me laughing out loud. I read Hamsun's Hunger in the '90s and have decided to reread it. It turns out that Robert Bly translated it in the late 90s... I doubt it was his translation I read, I think I read an old mouldering hardcover. Anyway, today, when I take the laundry I will seek a copy of this Bly trans at the Franklin Street branch of the Des Moines library.

I'm reading Thomas Mann's “The Black Swan.” I liked The Magic Mountain and “Death In Venice” but this thing is damn lame. It is mostly two women talking about humanity's relationship with “Nature,” largely as reflected in the menstrual cycle and menopause! Thank heavens it is short.

AUGUST 23, 2012

I just finished Plexus, book two of The Rosy Crucifixion.  It was good, because there were lots of scenes of Miller being down and out and being a dick to everybody.  He and his second wife Mona try to sell candy door to door, try to run a speakeasy, hurry down to Florida during a real estate boom, and other crazy schemes, all of which end up with them stealing money from their creditors.  Most of the time they live on money Mona extracts from her "admirers" (she assures Miller that she never has sex with them, but also insists he never meet them.)  Fortunately the many long scenes in which Miller's friends tell Miller he is a genius don't bother me.   

Unfortunately, way too many of Plexus's 640 pages are given over to surrealist and Dadaist scenes, including dream sequences and a scene in which Miller retells the story of Goldilocks; in Miller's version Goldilocks is stripped, cooked, and eaten by the Three Bears.  There is also lots of mystical doubletalk, especially after Miller discovers Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West.

Next week I will start Nexus, the third volume of The Rosy Crucifixion.  I think I will read some Thomas Mann stories this weekend.

SEPTEMBER 2, 2012
I read Thomas Mann's "Tonio Kroger," a story Miller specifically praises in Plexus.  I liked it, but, as usual, I found Mann too long-winded, thought he was belaboring his points, and included too many long "philosophical" dialogues.  I am almost finished with Nexus, the third volume of The Rosy Crucifixion.  After reading the anti-Semitic Moloch it is kind of funny how every good character in The Rosy Crucifixion is Jewish, and how Miller will say things like "I have never met a Gentile of genius" and "every Jewish doctor I met was a man passionately interested in music, art, and literature."  Miller is a wacky character, it is hard to take much of the stuff he says seriously.