The upcoming release of Blind Man’s Labyrinth may meet with a polarizing reception. The book is a standalone novel, but its history follows the tale told in my first novel, Keziah’s Song. It is not, however, like Keziah’s Song.
My touchstone for what I think might happen is derived from Harold Bloom’s response to Cormac McCarthy’s novel Blood Meridian. Bloom passed away in 2019, but while he lived, he was an American literary critic—perhaps the most famous in the English language— and the Sterling Professor in Humanities at Yale University. It took him three attempts to read Blood Meridian. His first two failed because, in his own words, he “flinched from the overwhelming carnage that McCarthy portrays.[1]”
For the record, Blind Man’s Labyrinth is not as challenging as McCarthy’s tome. But it’s not for the faint of heart either. To use movies as a reference point, if you’re anything like me and enjoyed McCarthy’s other works (The Road, No Country for Old Men, All the Pretty Horses) or understand that the extended D-Day scene in Saving Private Ryan wasn’t gratuitous but instead was critical to the story, then you’re in a good place to open Blind Man’s Labyrinth and enjoy a gripping tale.
So, what exactly is this novel about?
Keziah’s Song could be summarized on one level as a story about Israel freeing itself from the Greek Empire. If we accept that simple characterization of a much more complex novel, then along similar lines, we could describe Blind Man’s Labyrinth as the story of what the Jewish nation did with that freedom. Unfortunately, their independence lasted only one generation—then the Romans took over. I cover the Roman entrance onto the stage in Bitter for Sweet, my third novel, which will be released in early summer, 2022. (Bitter for Sweet is ironically a much happier novel and will not need a trigger warning blog post!)
Back to Blind Man’s Labyrinth. What did Israel do with its brief period of freedom?
Answer: they conducted a brutal civil war. Jerusalem and other southern cities were against the rural and northern territories, Galilee against Judea, Pharisees versus Sadducees, Traditionalists versus Hellenists. Our journey through this landscape of conflict is mediated through the eyes of a boy named Haim.
Haim’s name means life. He is not accidentally named. Blind Man’s Labyrinth is about much more than Israel’s first century BCE civil wars. This novel is also a psychological autobiography—albeit a very figurative one. As a result, this book means more to me than anything I’ve ever written.
As a result, the novel contains literal history but figurative psychology. It has a lot of rough material, but nothing is ahistorical or gratuitous. What the novel portrays happened. As I mentioned in an interview this past summer, I don’t think we do history any favours when we paint it falsely pretty.
So how did Bloom’s third attempt at reading Blood Meridian turn out? His conclusion after the third try was that “…it is the ultimate Western, not to be surpassed.” He goes on to say, “I urge the reader to persevere because Blood Meridian is a canonical imaginative achievement… a universal tragedy of blood….And the book’s magnificence—its language, landscape, persons, conceptions—at last transcends the violence, and converts goriness into terrifying art….”
I’ll repeat myself for the sake of emphasis: Blind Man’s Labyrinth is not as raw as Blood Meridian (though, for the record, I do aspire one day to McCarthy’s brilliance). That being said, some of my readers may dislike Blind Man’s Labyrinth for its portrayal of a period of human history that we may prefer to keep obscure. Freedom squandered is nothing to celebrate. The events of Blind Man’s Labyrinth made the Roman Republic’s subsequent conquest of Israel look like a good idea. The Romans were a better option than self-rule. We’ll cover that story in the novel that follows.
I believe that there are others, however, who will love this novel not for its history, but for the figurative, and yet very real, psychological portrayal of a universal human condition. This is personal for me, but I believe that what is personal for me is also very relatable. Many of us, even the richest and proudest of us, are like Haim – blind souls trying to find our way through a labyrinth, without a guide.
Remember: the psychology here is figurative. Haim was not blind. There was no actual labyrinth in the book. And in case you’re wondering, I’ve never killed anyone. But we’ve all been lost, searched for a way out, felt trapped, killed a relationship or broken a trust or failed to meet our own standards at some point. That’s what I mean when I say that the psychological portrayal here is very personal but also figurative. It is real but not literal.
As with Keziah’s Song, the history captured in Blind Man’s Labyrinth is literal. There was a temple to the goddess Ashtaroth at Ashkelon. The Jewish civil war and the events portrayed happened. Qumran is a real place. Conquests on the eastern side of the Jordan River were as the book describes.
Literal history. Figurative psychology. I hope this post helps to better prepare you for Blind Man’s Labyrinth. I believe its my best work yet, though not what my fiction and non-fiction readers might have come to expect from me. When you’re done reading (or listening to the audio version), I hope you share Bloom’s assessment, talking about Blood Meridian: “…I cannot turn away… now that I know how to read it, and why it has to be read.”
[1] For this an other references to Bloom’s essay, see: https://lithub.com/harold-bloom-on-cormac-mccarthy-true-heir-to-melville-and-faulkner/