Word: novels
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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WHEN A LITERARY CRITIC sets out to write a novel of fantasy, he'd better be sure of his inspiration. The profession has had its share of success in the genre; C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien are only the most celebrated of a long line of academics to turn their esoteric knowledge into imaginative epics. But there is always a danger lurking in the author's fascination with his own private world of symbols: if he gets lost in it, he can easily forget his duty to tell a tale...
Bloom could hide behind the label of allegory easily enough, and claim that his novel is only meant to illustrate a Gnostic view of the universe. But the book is ill-argued and difficult to finish reading, and will not make too many converts...
...part of Creation at all, but an alien being to whom men with true knowledge, or gnosis, seek to return. The doctrines make provocative theology and a fascinating attack on the Gospels, but Bloom can't find enough concrete material there to shape into a good fantasy novel. Instead of focusing on a few key symbols and investing them with emotion, he throws them together and mixes them up, like a Chinese chef tossing ingredients into a wok. Bloom allots most of his characters at least one dream in each chapter, filled with mystic beasts and numbers and events...
Every great fantasy novel has its great crisis, whether a battle, a speech, or a quest fulfilled. When Perscors realizes the power his humanity has over all the abstractions on Lucifer--not a bad way in itself to work out the novel--he shouts "My epiphany is here!" So much for simple human dignity in Bloom's over-intellectualized wasteland...
...that we know the answer. Are we willing to believe Lem, or should we suspect that he is gulling us into accepting his artifice in order to satisfy our expectation of a final solution and our need for one as well? It is not at all clear, for the novel's realism is so intense that the conclusion is entirely unconvincing. We should suspect the patness of his solution but be content in our ignorance by acknowledging Lem's masterful ability to make the alien seem so familiar and the ordinary so frighteningly unknown...