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The Debut of a Gifted Novelist
The Book of Flying
by Keith Miller
Riverhead Books, 2004
Reviewed by Carolyn Burns Bass
Don’t let the cloying title of this book fool you. The book is not about flying. At least not in the ordinary way. The title does so little for the telling of this tale, I loathe referring to it. I wonder, even, what exquisite title Keith Miller traded away in the publishing deal. For surely an artist as gifted as Miller conceived a title more transcendent.
The dust jacket touts this debut novel as an “ode to stories and storytellers, a celebration of writers and readers, and the books that let our imaginations take flight.” It’s the story of one soul born into a society where books are never opened and the stories within are dead to all but Pico, an orphan raised by a librarian. In the City by the Sea where Pico lives are winged people, elite travelers of the skies who shun the society of the wingless. Pico, born wingless, falls in love with a winged girl, is spurned because of his winglessness, and leaves on a quest to The Morning Town, where a legendary book on how to obtain wings may be found. This book, the object of Pico’s quest, is The Book of Flying.
As Pico journeys toward The Morning Town he serves stories to the hungry he meets, while becoming a legend in the lives of those he leaves behind. The oft-repeated story of his pursuit of wings as a means to gain the acceptance of his winged love becomes a mantra in his own perception, while the power of Pico’s love for the winged girl becomes an icon for those he meets. The journey takes him through places fantasy authors have gone before -- a bandit camp, the challenge at a guarded bridge, a forbidden forest, the city of pleasure where quests are abandoned, a meeting with one’s doppelganger, the cannibalistic feast upon one’s lover, and finally, the arrival at one’s destination. Does Pico get his wings? No surprise, for the book jacket reveals that he learns to fly. How he gets his wings is not a result of his reading The Book of Flying. Obtaining wings, a metaphor for self-realization, results from Pico’s journey in discovering himself. Do his newly grown wings win Sisi, the winged one who fuels Pico’s passion? The dust jacket doesn’t reveal the enigmatic ending and neither will this review.
The inhabitants of Pico’s world are a varying lot of humans, immortals, mutants; a fairly typical fantasy cast. The winged are human, but not. They are ethereal creatures who are presented as living only for flight; they appear to have no lives outside of flying and sleeping. Yet they copulate and give birth. Pico, in fact, was born of winged parents, but abandoned because he was wingless. Myth and magic surround the earth, demon lovers steal dreams, cultured mutants and Wonderland rabbits personify the human condition, while one comrade finds art in murder, another claims art is above morality, and beauty must be worshipped above all.
An undercurrent of sorrow flows below Pico’s journey and every character he meets has a story of woe. Perhaps it’s no wonder that in this wretched world appreciation of art is the highest of human endeavor and pursuit of pleasure becomes artistry in life. Even in the city of pleasure (which Miller calls The City in the Mountains), sorrow is the theme of each character’s story. There is no eternal life to hope for, yet immortals exist in tortured quests, curses, or woebegone existences. Pico unwittingly becomes the anti-savior to several immortals he crosses, releasing them from their eternal torment.
The poetic bliss of Miller’s prose, though coloring to purple in places, continually reminds the reader that this is a story -- or rather stories within stories. The pages did not scream to be turned, but rather whispered line by line for aural perception. Yet many of the stories had sickening, sadistic, brutal characters or events, which cross the line of repugnancy. Miller attempts poignancy through Pico’s acceptance of his fate, but it’s too much of a stretch to accept murder and as an art form and cannibalism a virtue. One could compare The Book of Flying to George MacDonald’s Phantastes without the Christian allegory, but a more contemporary parallel might be drawn to Angela Carter’s sense of the macabre spinning at the core of a godless humanity.
The poet Pico refuses to sell his stories or poems. Like the jealous painter with whom he duels, Pico believes art should not be bought or sold. Miller, consummate storyteller and poet alike, has no problem with that.
A lover of stories, Carolyn Burns Bass is the author of The Nexus, an odyssey into twelfth-century England, where the present meets the past at the gate of eternity. Look her up at Word Art Solutions.
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