The Daily Tar HeelThursday? raarcrf19,H987711'rUv m
Book Review
6
J.
By JAMES SUROVIECKI
Sports Editor
The novella is a vanishing breed
in today' literature. The tightly
crafted and lean, short novel can no
longer be found on the same shelves
as the overweight sprawling epics
which take up hundreds of flaccid
pages. And it is clear that quantity
is no guarantee of quality.
The case is overstated, of course.
The caliber of an author's work
cannot be measured by the number
of pages he uses to tell his story. There
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about a work in which nothing is I,
wasted, in which the overpowering
sense is of taut precision. Such a work
is John Fuller's stunning Flying to
Nowhere.
On its face, "Flying to Nowhere"
is a mystery, set on a desolate island
Music
both say they have been awed by the
CD's reproduction capabilities. Gil
pin says that he was at a friends house
listening to (Pink Floyd's) The Wall
on CD and was instantly converted
to the new technology. Gilpin's
growing disc catalog bridges musical
genres including records from
upright classical statesmen like
Stravinsky to the down and dirty
proto-punk sounds of The Ramones.
The relatively high price of discs
has pushed Gilpin to make sacrifices
just as Walker does. Plasma dona
tions feed his bankbook and fuel his
collection. Gilpin says this personal
investment is well worth the pleasure
associated with a crisp, durable
reproduction of his favorite music.
The advent of digital technology
has not pushed all connoisseurs to
forsake more dated or less fashion
able musical mediums. Mike Soehn
lein. a prospective MBA student
from Raleigh, is still an outspoken
proponent of reel-to-reel tape
systems.
While overseas years ago, Soehn
lein picked up a reel-to-reel system
in a Honk Kong bargain shop. His
system has been upgraded and
replaced since then to include three
separate tape decks - one which is
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lying to Nowhere ' is
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off the coast of Wales. The island
is home to a miraculous well, a fount
of waters with revitalizing powers. It
is also home to a monastery estab
lished to guide and house the pilgrims
from page 3
compatible with old eight-tracks
and at least 150 recorded reels of tape.
Since reel-to-reel tapes may run
from four to 14 hours, the amount
of music Soehnlcin has recorded
requires him to keep a detailed
notebook of individual entries to
keep all of his tapes organized.
Soehnlein has enlisted the aid of a
friend to computerize his collection.
One tape Soehnlein is particularly
proud of is a survey of "golden oldies"
from the 50s, 60s and early 70s. The
track boasts of over 300 titles and
takes up about 14 hours of tape time.
Having purchased each song origi
nally as a 45 rpm single, he estimates
the monetary value of the tape at
close to $600.
Collectors are perhaps just part of
the recently resurgent musical indus
try. The new Beatles' CD's set a
record upon their release by gener
ating more money for the industry
in one day than in any single day
before. The primary reason for that
financial success probably had as
much to do with the high price of
the four CD package as the Beatles'
continual appeal. And days like
that record-breaking one may keep
the industry rich and thriving, and
collectors such as Walker and Gilpin,
as they say. broke but contented.
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, who journey to the well to be cured.
To this island comes Vane, a
clergyman sent by the bishop, and
his young aide Geoffrey. They arrive
to solve the puzzle of what has
happened to the pilgrims, who seem
to have vanished without a trace.
Vane soon realizes that the monas
tery, under the aegis of its abbot, has
abandoned its original purpose, has
been turned away from the pilgrims
and in toward itself. No pilgrims have
journeyed to the island in quite some
time.
As Vane and the abbot come into
conflict, subtly and quietly, and while
Vane searches for the missing bodies
of the pilgrims beneath the well, the
story shifts from earthly mystery to
mystical allegory. The concrete
questions lose meaning as the distinc
tions between life and death become
clouded, shifting beneath the veil of
the power of the well.
But more than life or death, body
and soul assume importance. The
abbot, alone in his laboratory,
dissects corpses, tenderly cataloging
each organ in his quest for "the
private chamber of the ruling spirit"
that place in the body where the
soul resides.
For the abbot, agnostic heresy
would have no meaning. His heresy
rests in his equation of the spiritual
and the material world. It is not a
Manichaean conception of the light
battling with the omnipresent dar
kness, nor even a Pauline vision of
the spirit struggling in vain against
the demands of the flesh. Rather, the
abbot is concerned with this life
alone, with the soul as a companion
to the body. The resurrection he
desires is in this world, not another.
The metaphor of flight becomes
more potent as the story becomes
more involved. For the girls who
work on the island's one farm, flight
is a matter of sensual liberation, of
transcending this existence.
Thus, in one of the book's most
beautiful passages, the girl Gweno
describes a vision she has. "I'm
wrapped in a leaf and hanging from
a tree on a thread, turning very
slow. . . .It's beautiful and there's the
breath of the wind turning me
slightly. . . .Now the leaf is drying
and crackling. It's crumbling
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For the abbot, though, the desire
to fly is something to be abhorred,
to be conquered. To lie with a woman
is an attempt to fly, as is drunkenness.
The desire to fly "is a false desire of
parting from the earth, our soil and
nature, and the bed of our corrup
tion. A man cannot put himself above
the soil of his germination and
generation, no more than can a
stone."
- Fuller paints the abbot as unable
to grasp the contradiction of the earth
as the ground of our existence, but
also as a den of iniquity. For if it
is so, his attempts to resurrect the
flesh represent nothing more than a
recreation of a being which must not
rise, beyond its earthly bonds. Even
more, in his existence there is no love
and no delight in pleasure, for to
allow such to enter his life would be
an attempt at flight. And so his
inquisitions into the power of the well
become even more disturbing.
The dichotomy can be seen more
clearly in the two different versions
of the legend of the well's origin. As
Gweno tells it, the Saint came to the
island from the sea and was tired and
thirsty. He found a little bird in a
nest, a bird that was parched even
more than he was. So the Saint
stamped on a rock, broke open a
spring and let the bird drink from
it until it flew away.
But as the abbot tells it. Saint
Lleuddad found himself thirsty to the
point of death, saw a bird flying
through the clouds and wished he "
could be a bird. That wish did not
cure his thirst, and as he stopped
wishing to be a bird, the bird fell to
I the ground. A spring from which -
Lleuddad could drink bubbled up
from the place where the bird fell.
: . In the former myth, it is the Saint
who saves the bird and in so doing
; encourages flight. In the latter, the
! fall of the bird the death of flight
saves the Saint.
The combination of monastery
and mystery inevitably conjures up
1 allusions to Umberto Eco's "The
Name of the Rose," and there are
I similarities between the two works.
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lictures
But Fuller's work is more philoso
phical than theological, and the
allegory here is infinitely more
powerful than the mystery. The
grander difference is that Eco's novel
was in some sense about books and
the power that ideas can carry with
them. At the same time, there was
a marvelous sense of life in the
monastery, a sense which Fuller does
not attempt to convey.
Fuller seems more concerned with
the questions of body and soul, with
the confusion of the boundaries
between them. "Flying to Nowhere"
is brilliantly crafted, each chapter
exquisitely drawn with precise care.
It is also devastatingly provocative,
raising fundamental questions about
the nature of life. And in so doing,
it reaches beyond the bonds of the
earth, attempting, fittingly enough,
to fly.
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