The Einstein Intersection
by Samuel R. Delany
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Book Summary Information
Author: Samuel R. DelanyForeword: Neil Gaiman
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1998-07-15
ISBN: 0819563366
Number of pages: 149
Publisher: Wesleyan
Book Reviews of The Einstein Intersection
Book Review: "Myths always lie in the most difficult places to ignore"
Summary: 3 Stars
"The Einstein Intersection" is a slim novel and a "difficult" one, its unadorned prose easy to read and its unconventional structure hard to understand. Its various aspects--metafictional, surrealist, symbolist--defy readers expecting a straightforward narrative and place the novel firmly in the 1960s (with both the flashy complexities and trendy excesses associated with the decade). It is an odd combination of storytelling and navel-gazing; a spaghetti Western melded with the tedious minimalism of absurdist drama.
Forty thousand years from now, long after human civilization has ended on Earth, an alien species has taken up residence on the planet and for truly baffling reasons they have adopted and adapted our bodily forms, our souls, and our myths--from Helen of Troy and the Minotaur to Jean Harlow and Ringo Starr. (The cynic in me questions the alleged intelligence of these beings.) The hero, Lobey, embarks on a quest to rescue his lover, Friza, from the hands of Kid Death. Along the way, he meets up with some herders traveling across the plain, each of whom mirrors other mythic figures from four millennia of human storytelling. Armed with a "machete," a combination woodwind instrument and lethal blade, Lobey confronts fearsome dragons and Important Questions. Imagine the myth of Orpheus updated with the passion of Christ and the story of Billy the Kid and presented on a stage designed by Sartre during his "Trojan Women" years--and you'll have the general idea.
Interwoven with this modernist fare are excerpts (perhaps real, perhaps not) from Delany's journals during a stay in (appropriately) the Mediterranean, describing his thinking while he re-creates these various legends: "Billy the Kid is the last to go. He staggers through this abstracted novel like one of the mad children in Crete's hills." Or, more revealingly, "Endings to be useful must be inconclusive." These authorial interpolations are often essential to readers hoping to understand Delany's various allusions; just as often, they come across as self-important posturing ("going on twenty-three," he writes to himself, "you are too old to get by as a child prodigy"--a reflection he would have been well-advised to keep private).
I've now read the book twice (in part because I had forgotten much of it, but mostly because I felt sure I must have missed something the first time around), and while I both admire the erudition and enjoy some of the narrative passages, I find much of Delany's avant-garde experimentation unremarkable--and ripe for mockery. To ponder how humans create their own mythology ("Myths always lie in the most difficult places to ignore") runs the risk of inflicting on readers the type of New Age pablum dispensed by Joseph Campbell in his waning years. With its two-dimensional characters and reliance on slangy dialogue, the book just isn't as urbane as this former "child prodigy" thought it was when he was writing it. But who knows? Forty thousand years from now, it might be regarded as a classic of its kind--which, I suppose, is to damn it with faint praise.
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