Blood, sweat ... ends in tears
By Mike Peed |
March 3, 2013, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
IT'S unfortunate for Caleb Carr that the craft of writing so often disobeys a beloved American maxim: Hard work pays off. The colossal effort Carr has exerted to produce his latest book, "The Legend of Broken," weighs distressingly on each of the novel's 734 pages, including nearly 80 pages of endnotes. This is a fantasy epic - the tale of a fabled Germanic kingdom during the Dark Ages - but with its convoluted prose, trudging plot and onslaught of unsurprising period detail, it's a perverted one. Sweat drips from the pages. Magic does not rise.
A military historian, Carr is also the best-selling author of "The Alienist," a crime novel set in late 19th-century New York. To teach us about early medieval Europe, he has devised an extravagant piece of performance art. "Some years ago, while doing research at one of our major universities on the personal papers of Edward Gibbon," he explains in his introduction, "I came across a large manuscript in the collection, contained in an unmarked box." This manuscript supposedly told the story of Broken, a once-powerful fief in the Harz Mountains. ("Do not pretend, scholars unborn, that you know of my kingdom; it is as windblown and forgotten as my own bones.") Gibbon, Carr tells us, presented the tale, with extensive annotations, to Edmund Burke (in real life, the great historian's friend). Burke discouraged him, says Carr, and the manuscript was forgotten - until now. It might not be particularly important to know that none of this is true; it's more important to know that the fussy setup fails to deepen, much less enliven, the ensuing narrative. Many novels have successfully employed similar sleights of hand, yet here the trick seems merely like a device meant to facilitate Carr's displays of erudition.
"The Legend of Broken" appears to be meant as an allegory, a cautionary tale for our precarious times. To make his points, Carr has summoned a dream team of soldiers, wizards and tiny forest folk. Thus "the last good man in Broken" teams up with "the greatest sorcerer that ever walked among the Tall" and, with help from "the most skilled tracker" and "the most righteous and powerful of woodland spirits," wages war against the reactionary leaders of the realm. The transgressions these characters inveigh against have clear contemporary echoes, but four years removed from the Bush administration, they feel overworked: heads of state who take their citizenry to war under false pretenses; deputies who torture their enemies indiscriminately; a circle of advisers insulated from dissenting opinion.
All the while, Carr neglects character development and shortchanges narrative tension. The good man, the sorcerer and the tracker all speak with the same stilted syntax, their interiors unknown. Chekhov once said that artists are supposed to ask questions. Carr seems interested only in answers.
A military historian, Carr is also the best-selling author of "The Alienist," a crime novel set in late 19th-century New York. To teach us about early medieval Europe, he has devised an extravagant piece of performance art. "Some years ago, while doing research at one of our major universities on the personal papers of Edward Gibbon," he explains in his introduction, "I came across a large manuscript in the collection, contained in an unmarked box." This manuscript supposedly told the story of Broken, a once-powerful fief in the Harz Mountains. ("Do not pretend, scholars unborn, that you know of my kingdom; it is as windblown and forgotten as my own bones.") Gibbon, Carr tells us, presented the tale, with extensive annotations, to Edmund Burke (in real life, the great historian's friend). Burke discouraged him, says Carr, and the manuscript was forgotten - until now. It might not be particularly important to know that none of this is true; it's more important to know that the fussy setup fails to deepen, much less enliven, the ensuing narrative. Many novels have successfully employed similar sleights of hand, yet here the trick seems merely like a device meant to facilitate Carr's displays of erudition.
"The Legend of Broken" appears to be meant as an allegory, a cautionary tale for our precarious times. To make his points, Carr has summoned a dream team of soldiers, wizards and tiny forest folk. Thus "the last good man in Broken" teams up with "the greatest sorcerer that ever walked among the Tall" and, with help from "the most skilled tracker" and "the most righteous and powerful of woodland spirits," wages war against the reactionary leaders of the realm. The transgressions these characters inveigh against have clear contemporary echoes, but four years removed from the Bush administration, they feel overworked: heads of state who take their citizenry to war under false pretenses; deputies who torture their enemies indiscriminately; a circle of advisers insulated from dissenting opinion.
All the while, Carr neglects character development and shortchanges narrative tension. The good man, the sorcerer and the tracker all speak with the same stilted syntax, their interiors unknown. Chekhov once said that artists are supposed to ask questions. Carr seems interested only in answers.
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