Page 8 - Boca ViewPointe - October '21

Page 8, Viewpointe October 2021
Book Review

Fantasy Tales from a Topsy to deal with historical characters, as in previous novels
about a Gestapo commandant and the French semioticist
Turvy World Roland Barthes. Here he has perhaps been inspired by
the noted Titian portrait of Pizarro attaining the conquest
Richard Gessner. The Conduit and Other Visionary Tales of over the Inca Emperor Atahualpa and reverse engineered
Morphing Whimsy. New York: Rain Mountain Press, 2017. sixteenth century history. The prologues tell a fantasy of
Laurent Binet. Civilisations, trans. from the French by Sam the putative daughter of Erik the Red coming to Latin
Taylor. London: Harvill Secker, 2021. America in the eleventh century and integrating the
“Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold, conquistador blood and signature red hair into the new
And many goodly states and kingdom seen; world. And an imprisoned Columbus writes letters to his
Round many western islands have I been, benefactors King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella regarding
Which Bards in fealty to Apollo hold.” John Keats his fanciful mission to convert the savages to the superior
“And I have known the eyes already, known them all-- life Christianity and his own fascination with the Cuban
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, queen, Higuenenamota.
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, The main tale relates The Chronicles of Atahualpa.
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, The two authors I am writing about share the desire After historically claiming the domination of the Inca
Then how should I begin to remake a world altered in the density of their own empire, the Fourth Quarter from his half brother, Atahualpa
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? fantasies. Richard Gessner, a poet, short story author and sets out on Columbus’s restored Pinto with 200 sailors to
And how should I presume?” T.S. Eliot’s J Alfred artist, writes in the tradition of Poe and Kafka exploring conquer his new world, the Fifth Quarter. He enters upon a
Prufrock the macabre of his imagination, probing the subterranean fascinating period of European history, the great dynastic
depths in a series of stories and sketches of imagination; struggles between European monarchs, as well as the
By Dr. Ronald J. Meyers continents colliding, whimsy of “caviar floating like an Renaissance and the Reformation, and Binet playfully
atom between a man’s pompadour and a woman’s bouffant though with clear satiric intent, explores the roles of
The masks of fantasy are hairdo,” and “the rumblings of an epic poem based on the characters ranging from the Luther, Machiavelli, Lorenzo
varied and yet distinct. Born theme of ink congealing inside a hot water bottle.” Tales de Medici--with the inference that the Colonialists from
perhaps of disillusionment, of writers, from successful authors to research scholars the Fourth are no different than the Conquistadores of the
fantasy authors like and failed attempters, to gossip purveyors, maintained Fifth. Titian is called upon to repaint Atahualpa’s triumph,
their readers, are prone among the stacks of a Zoo-brary, bred by their keeper into and Michelangelo to constructs the Temple of the Sun in
to delve or escape into the brave new world of Darwinian excellence. Spain. There are whimsical letters between Erasmus and
myriad worlds of illusion. There are some moral tales, such as the fugitive Sir Thomas More over the fissure in Europe over Henry’s
The causes of disillusion embezzler impaled inside a couch with a spring stuck apostasy. This will end with King Henry VIII willfully
also are varied--ranging through his body, the hermit, guilty of war crimes, adopting in the religion of the Sun, and identifying himself
from dissatisfaction with escaping into a tree, confronting his doppelgangers. And as the son of the sun.
political, religious, economic systems, to personal, then the playful absurdities, the psychiatrist seeking to There is the fictionalized relationship between
deriving from emotional reversals, disruptions, or Oedipal recover his framed degree from the tonsils of the pelican, Atahualpa and Columbus’s Cuban Queen Higuenenamota,
dissatisfactions. From Dante to Edgar Allan Poe, both or the desperation of the bald to alleviate their condition who joins him on his mission, and charms European
the Italian medieval author and the nineteenth century by harvesting mice on their craniums, and the plight of monarchs with her naked beauty accented by her
American were known to be beset by deep personal issues the dyslexic nose. bedecked jewelry. She is his wise counselor to reform
ranging from the civil wars in Dante’s Florence which set Also a collector disillusioned by love, organizing love the exploitation of capitalism by the merchant class and
family against family, and Dante’s own exile from his city letters and rechanneling the ink through a complicated the religion controlled by the established priesthood.
of birth; as well as Poe’s estrangements from his adopted tunnel system back to their authors. And cakes that devour The nail on the cross is seen as a remnant of savagery by
family and his failed military career. Dante’s The Divine the guests at an inverse wedding celebration, the Fool Atahualpa and his generals. He imposes his own Agrarian
Comedy recounts a journey through the physical horrors turning into a bowling ball, and Vanity in his marble coffin reform and communal standards of equality, the Seville
of hell, and Poe’s through the interior of his woebegone confronting his life of sensual abuses, the universe patented edict, and yes, refines and imposes his own 95 thesis on
imagination. by pragmatic visionary, and perhaps appropriately the the church door at Wittenberg. And finally the quixotic
Neanderthal dilettante commenting upon it all. Man of la Mancha is seen to be engaged with the other
Renaissance literary luminary, Michel de Montaigne.
Perhaps the common denominator is the pressure on the

Condolences nonconformist subjected to the power of those who disdain Though undoubtedly brilliant and clever, the work finally
his eccentricities. Not original sin as ascribed to Kafka but
is labored, as was said of Paradise Lost, “few would wish
refusal to toe the line while his tormentors seek to debase it longer than it is,” and the challenge for the common
We regret to inform you that Reva Tucker a Boca him, and he seeks to assert his own frail humanity. reader is to be able to keep up with the whimsy of these
Pointe resident of Montego Bay, passed away on August Laurent Binet, a French educator and intellectual, seeks fanciful, fantasy writers.
21, 2021. She and her late husband Kenneth Tucker were to indulge in political fantasy, in the free thinking tradition
former members of the Club at Boca Pointe.  of Voltaire, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Dr. Ronald J. Meyers, a resident of La Paz, is an
Genet. Highly regarded in Europe, he has a propensity Emeritus Professor of English. rmeyers@esu.edu. 

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