I’ve read it four times, and likely will return to it again. Silverlock is among my all time favorite books. While Silverlock encounters these forms for the first time, we readers are delighted and challenged to identify allusions that range from the ancient Gilgamesh Epic to the writings of Swift, Hawthorne and Twain. Grendel’s death is celebrated at Heorot Hall by a skald singing of Bowie Gizzardbane and his heroic final stand at the Alamo. A hostile Don Quixote is diverted with a quest to capture Babe, Paul Bunyan’s blue ox. These literary borrowings are often encountered in surprising combinations. In the Commonwealth, every person, place, and thing encounter (starting with Silverlock’s sunken ship, The Naglfar) is drawn from story, myth, and legend. Thus begins a series of adventures that transforms him (in fits and starts) from a soulless cynic into an enthusiastic aspirant maker of tales. When his ship wrecks leaving him the sole survivor, he embarks on a quest through an unfamiliar land - The Commonwealth Of Letters. He is the prototypical Banal Man of mid twentieth century - a degree in Business Administration, only reads newspapers, with neither knowledge nor interest in literature. Totally unlike the Tolkien clones that dominated the market then, it was a sort of secular Pilgrim’s Progress where, instead of a spiritual journey, the hero embarks on an epic literary quest.Ĭlarence Shandon, aka Silverlock, is that hero. What I had stumbled upon was one of the great, hidden, cult classics of the fantasy genre, a book that inspired other writers in the know. Both book and author were unknown to me at the time, but I was randomly drawn to it by its striking cover art. I serendipitously discovered Silverlock in a Walden’s Books over forty years ago. So when the Delian pairs Silverlock with Golias we are invited to watch the creation of his character in every sense of the word. The first sentence of the book illustrates this: "If I had cared to live, I would have died." And here is this rootless, disconnected piece of human flotsam smacked down in the middle of story with a Capital S.Īs to plot, it's not so much an absence of plot but rather the presence of ALL PLOT and plot devices: love, lust, good, evil, steadfastness, betrayal, war, peace, friendship, compassion, bravery, cowardice, joy, grief, atonement and revenge. He is not even interested in his own story. Here we have the case of a modern man, egocentric, detached, materialistic, and apathetic to everything. To me, after reading this book several times over the last 30 years, the point of this book is simply in praise of "story" how it defines us and uplifts us, how basic it is to the human experience. I do not agree, however, with those who claim that the book is pointless and plotless. I am sympathetic with those who feel that a lack of familiarity with classics of literature an culture leave one on the outside. I have been reading the comments made by other GoodReads members on Silverlock, by John Myers Myers.
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