The Shattered Prayer

I don’t think it has EVER taken me longer to read a book in my life, but I’m finally finished with that damned book about the Pilgrims. Long and the short of it? Pilgrims were religious fanatics who needed Native Americans to survive in the “New World” only to betray and annihilate them a generation later. I knew that before reading that book, but at least it is now DONE! In celebration, I turn to the realm of fantasy. And as my nystagmus enables me to wrap the text around me like an inchoate cerement, I immerse myself in the sometimes sabulous words of Stephen R. Donaldson, eschewing all else until I become tabid, roynish, and etiolated.

In other words, I’m reading a new book.

Or rather re-reading an old book in preparation for a new one. I am re-reading “Runes of the Earth” book one in the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. I read the first chronicles when I was a young lad of 11, just a few years after they had been published. To me, they were amazing. I read and re-read those three books over and over again. As a result I fell in love with “the Land” (the world of the series) and all who inhabited it. For the second chronicles, I had to wait as they were published. At 12 I got “The Wounded Land”; at 13 I got “The One Tree” and at 14 I got “White Gold Wielder.” It seemed interminable at that age to have wait an ENTIRE YEAR for the next installment of my beloved series. And it was torturous because in the Second Chronicles, Donaldson had destroyed so much of what made the Land special in the First Chronicles. Seeing my beloved Land so marred was rending to my young adolescent mind. That year long wait between books seemed unmerciful and nigh on endless!

I had no idea what was coming.

Now, he is publishing the Last Chronicles. Book one came out in 2004 (which is why I am re-reading it). Book two, “Fatal Revenant” just came out this month. That’s right. Three whole years in between books. Book three is due out in 2010 and book 4 is due out in 2013. So six years from now, I’ll see how it ends. In some ways, it is worth it. I absolutely adored these books as a kid, so much so that when I read Donaldson’s words now, it is almost as if I am 11, 12, 13, or 14 again.

Of course, when you read Donaldson’s Covenant books, you have to be prepared for the words. There are many of them. Many, many, many, many of them. Most of them words you don’t use in every day conversation. Donaldson was just shy of a Ph.D. in literature, and sometimes you can really tell it with the way that he loves, adores, and chews up words. He ain’t afraid to repeat certain phrases over and over and over again until they become a mantra “Leper Outcast Unclean!” “Don’t touch me!” “Andelaine Forgive!” “Hellfire and damnation!” “He took my son!” “Melenkurion abatha!!”

And he also is not afraid to let words, or rather, the lack of them, become an important plot point in the series. Each time Covenant returns to the Land (and from the Land’s point of view, thousands of years separate his visits), the denizens become more and more cut off from their past. In essence, the stories that sustain us all, our connections to our past, are repeatedly attacked until eventually they simply cease to exist. In the first series, the people of the Land have forgotten much of what happened before “the ritual of desecration.” In fact, they can only remember six of the seven words of power (talk about embarrassing!) In the second series, the Land is so wounded that the struggle to survive has made the people forget, or at the very least, misremember, what happened in the first series. And in the current one, none of the people of the Land know anything past a generation ago. The theme of broken history is central to each book.

Even the names of the characters change depending upon the speaker of the name. In fact, the main villain of the piece is known variously as Lord Foul, the Despiser, Corruption, Fangthane, the Maker, Satansheart, Soulcrusher, a-Jeroth of the Seven Hells, and the Gray Slayer. That list, of course, is incomplete.

But what stands out most about the language in the books is the fact that Donaldson (purposefully and strategically) decided to use arcane and archaic words throughout the text. People are not powerful; they are puissant. Things are not underdeveloped; they are inchoate. When I was a kid, I loved this! Meant I could know words no one else knew (or, in fact, wanted to know).

So, in deference to Donaldson, I dive back into the Land and embrace the story, even if it is an eldritch one filled with gelid prose containing preterite words which may cause readers to move with formication into a febrile state of inanition in which there is need for them to beg for surcease, or at least the chance to be aneled by ones in a chasuble. They may even issue a condign malison for fear their mind will break in crepitation.

But despite this, I asseverate that I remain leal to his works of heirartic verbiage and offer him my devoirs, for to me, the Land is a complete cynosure.

Of course, I hope I am guerdoned for my lealty.

And just so you know, I am in no way mordant in these statements, none of which contains any mendacity.

Unlike the Mayflower book, I just hope I am able to read this tome with all due celerity.

Recently:

• Writing Weekend
• A Coda on CoDA
• Did Plurk Kill the Shattered Prayer?
• Happy Birthday Bea!
• Lois Lane — Unpleasantly Sexy
• Hysterical Blindness
• Welcome back Mojo and Richard.
• Raining. Pouring.
• Those custom Plurk profiles.
• Che Rex Hears a Who