Thus, having put off reading Robert Graves' Watch the North Wind Rise (Americian title, the English being Seven Days in New Crete), for decades, I was thrilled, non-plussed, confused, encouraged, and then discarded by it in succession. A Utopian novel, even a great one, provides not solutions, but situations, not final states, but transitions, re-births and revisions, always material that defies stasis.
The protagonist functions as the "strangeness" that allows the Goddess to clean her household. In simplest terms the book embodies the phrase "When it's brown, flush it down." Graves says this much more eloquently, however, and often breaks into verse, making me wish he had done the whole in verse. Once started, the reading progressed like wildfire with much chuckling over the wit, and happy gasps at the bold inventiveness of the story.
As Utopian novels go, an A plus work to my mind. I think I would rather live there, or in Islandia, than here where I am now. However, all Utopias are Dystopias it seems, either straight away, or over time. The pains, frustrations, and deaths that accompany the serving of an inscrutable God or Goddess remain the same. (And what, I wonder, has gender to do with the godhead creater of the vast cosmos?) Well, who knows? But what would a human story be like with no gender in the proportion?
As much as I have valued the White Goddess, now that I am older her sway over me is waning, and I fear she will show me nothing more than her "hag" from here on out. This reading did not dislodge my favorite U/D novel from its ruling throne. The ruler of course is Engine Summer by John Crowley. And because it seems to offer some "reasonable" hope for our development.
I think I may be ready for a letter from Dr. Boots now.
