Chapter One:
THE PARANOIA OF GUILT"Regret is one of the few guaranteed certainties."
- Jonathan Carroll(Voice of Our Shadow;
Bones of the Moon)
In Part Two of this guide we are going to take a bird's-eye view on the five Jonathan Carroll's novels that were published between the years 1984 (Voice of our Shadow) and 1991 (Outside the Dog Museum), leaving out the most recent one, After Silence, which was published in 1992 and appears to be so dramatically different as to deserve a separate examination in Part Three. Furthermore, for the clarity of the synthesis, we will divide these five into three thematically consistent groups that will be dealt with in separate chapters. Having laid in Part One a foundation to the analysis of the world that Jonathan Carroll's novels evoke, in the following chapters we will concentrate on (1) the general line of development of characteristic ideas and (2) on those elements that are new to Carroll's writing after The Land of Laughs, or that differ in a significant manner from those which have been previously established. This author has chosen to deal with the novels according to a chronological key. It would have also been possible to use a thematical key, but such an arrangement would probably appear more artificial and, as most of the themes recur in most of the novels, we would need to speak of all the books in each thematic section (or arbitrarily single one out), which might lead to confusion. As it is, the chronological, linear analysis provides a well-defined structure which coincides to a large extent with the development of the many themes. How coherent this "superimposed" structure is will become even more clear by the end, when we will witness the destruction of Carroll's world in the novel After Silence.
We will begin with Voice of our Shadow and Bones of the Moon: a pair of novels that distinctively deal with the problems of guilt (and responsibility, which, as primary to the other, is basic to most Carroll's works) and the paranoia which guilt may induce.
The revealing, intimate first person narration is characteristic of all Carroll's works. In Voice the narrator is Joseph Lennox - a middle-aged American living in Vienna. From the first pages it is easy to realize how this novel differs in at least one respect from the previous one: there are no laughs anymore. The lighthearted mood that so much of The Land of Laughs depended upon is entirely gone. Voice of our Shadow begins by setting a somber, dark tone as Lennox recounts the traumas of his youth, and even though the sickening horror will come, as is Carroll's trademark, much later in the story, we are not allowed to expect an ending similarly redemptive as the one in The Land of Laughs.
In a somewhat cryptic manner the key to understanding Voice of Our Shadow is given in the form of a stanza from a poem by John Ashbery, As One Put Drunk into the Packet Boat, which serves as the novel's epigraph:
A look of glass stops youFor Joseph Lennox the postponement was long enough for a twist of uneasiness to develop into a fully-fledged, mind-boggling mania. Voice of our Shadow's Marshall France equivalent, the figure of an (un)dead person who continues to exert enormous influence on the narrator's personality, is Lennox's older brother Ross. Although the novel does not make an explicit point of it, Ross too was an artist of a kind, and a perverse one at that; he was also a radical antithesis of his brother:
And you walk on shaken: was I the perceived?
Did they notice me, this time, as I am,
Or is it postponed again?
When he was a toddler he used to scour the house looking for new things to poke or tear apart. (...) Mother bought him a wood-burning kit for his sixth birthday. He used it properly for a couple of weeks, spelling his name on any piece of scrap wood he could find. Then he spelled ROSS LENNOX on an oak armchair. Mother spanked him and threw the burner away. (...) When she was gone he took it out of the garbage and carefully burned holes in the bottoms of her expensive new leather boots.(47)About himself Joseph admits: "I must have understood [mother's] way very early in life, because I was rarely hit." (VS, p.5) and, more to the point: "In comparison, I was the archangel Gabriel." (VS, p.6) Young Joe was devoid of all of his brother's vices: the appetite for destruction, the dubious skills for manipulating and abusing people, the tendency for violence, breaking the society's rules, possibly crime; he was a walking Uniformity itself: "I kept all my pencils sharpened and my Hardy Boys books in strict alphabetical order." (VS, p.7) The many humiliations he had to suffer from his vicious brother were overshadowed by another aspect of their relationship, the reason why Joe was prepared to withstand the insults and indignities in the first place: vile as Ross was, he fascinated Joe endlessly: "His room was the opposite of mine, but ten times more wonderful, always. Everything was in an uproar, from sneakers on the desk to a radio under his mattress. (...) He'd gotten hold of an immense movie poster advertising Godzilla. That covered one wall in flames, blood and lightning. (...) On the bookshelves were a complete collection of Famous Monsters magazine, a leprous-looking stuffed skunk (...) If a boy's room is an out-of-focus picture of what he'll later turn out to be in life, Ross would have been... an antique dealer? An eccentric? Something unforeseeable, but very special, I think. What I remember best was lying in his bed (whenever he'd permit me in the room - I had to knock before I entered) and letting my eyes run over his shelves and walls of things. Feeling as if I were in some land or on a planet that was impossibly far from our house, from my life. And when I'd seen everything for the hundredth time, I would look at Ross and be delighted that however foreign or strange or cruel, he was my brother and we shared a house, a name, our blood."(48)
Thus, Lennox lived "on the outskirts of hurricane country" throughout his childhood and into adolescence, a time that brought dangers more brutal and imminent. Even as Ross' persecution of his brother escalated, Joe's awe grew only stronger and more despairing, of which the following passage makes a wonderfully clear point:
My parents went out to a new Year's Eve party and made Ross baby-sit for me. Ten minutes after they were out the door, he dared me to slide down the bannister with my eyes closed. I'd gone a couple of feet before I felt something hideous and burning on the back of my hand. I threw both arms up, knocking away the cigarette he'd been singeing me with. Losing my balance, I fell over the side and landed on my arm, which instantly snapped in two places. All I remember besides the pain is Ross' face right up next to mine, telling me again and again I'd better keep my fucking little mouth shut about this.By the age of 18 Ross became a "tough guy", a skillful petty thief and finally a juvenile delinquent, a young mobster with an Italian switchblade in the pocket of his leather jacket. Together with Bobby Hanley, the leader of the pack, tougher but not nearly as smart as Ross, the two teenagers indulged in exploring the darker side of city life.Was I a fool? Yes. Should I have screamed bloody murder? Yes. Did I want my brother to love me just a little? Yes. (VS, p.10)
The tension between the brothers began to grow since Ross caught the thirteen years' old Joe masturbating to a school yearbook picture of Lee Hanley - Bobby's sister. His reaction was as disastrous as it was spiteful:
'I caught you! Lee Hanley, huh? (...) Boy, wait'll Bobby hears this. He's going to chop you into a hamburger. (...) Jeez, wait'll I tell Bobby, man. Shit, I'd hate to be you.' His face was pure triumph.On the fatal day, when all three were out of doors, Ross resumed his teasing and came closer than ever to revealing his younger brother's "dirty secret." Literally fearing for his life, and trying instinctively to prevent Ross from fulfilling his sinister threat, Joe found himself an inadvertent murderer of his brother:From that moment on, the taunts and torture began and didn't end for more than a year. (...) When we were alone he would tell me what a sludge I was to jerk off to a friend's sister. He was as convincing as any angry, unforgiving priest. (VS, p.20)
'Do you know who Joe thinks about when he does it?' (...)Ross' death was deemed an accident and Joseph suffered no consequence of his deed - except the torment of his mind. trying to come to terms with Ross' unwelcoming world, Joseph wrote a story of his brother's and Bobby Hanley's sins, tricks and stunts. The short story (Wooden Pajamas) was so good it was actually made into a play, to be staged off Broadway under a title of Voice of our Shadow. The story, his only literary success, brought Lennox not only a little fame and a considerable amount of money in royalties, but even more guilt, remorse and feeling of inadequacy. For one thing, the story was not essentially his, but his brother's. For another, the script on which the play was based was written by a professional writer and turned out to be utterly removed, very distant indeed, from Lennox's original text. Thus, the authorship of the play which delighted the audiences in the US was uncertain, at least in Joseph Lennox's troubled mind: "I thought it was great at the beginning and horrible from then on. People were convinced I had written the whole thing, and I spent most of the time explaining that my contribution had been little more than, well, microscopic." (VS, p.28) At the same time Joe quite self-consciously pondered upon his feelings about Ross' death:'Okay, so spill it. Who do you think about, Joe? Suzanne Pleshette?'
Before Ross could answer, a high train whistle hooted frighteningly down the track. At that moment I did something I'd never done before. Shouting 'No!' I shoved Ross as hard as I could. So help me God, I was so afraid of what he was going to say I'd totally forgotten where we were.
'Holy shit, Ross, a train's coming!' Without looking our way, Bobby charged toward the other side of the tracks. My brother fell. I stood still and watched. Yes. (VS, pp.21-2)
Guilt can be molded. It is a funny kind of clay; if you know how to handle it right, you can twist and knead and form or place it anyway you want (...) as I got older I had less and less trouble rationalizing the fact that I had murdered my brother. It was an accident. I had never meant for it to happen. He was a monster and had deserved it (...) It all helped me to punch the bare, ghastly fact that I had done it into the shape I wanted. (VS, p.28)Shortly before graduating Lennox moved to Vienna and since then he has led there a simple, lonely life. The lucky break comes when he meets a slightly eccentric American couple there: Paul and India Tate. The beginning of their acquaintance is both innocent and relieving for Joseph but, welcoming, loving and kind as the Tates are, they also form an intimate universe of their own, they share an unusual rapport which Joe understands he cannot share and again his affection towards them develops into idolatry, marked by a perilous desire to be "included", to take part in what is going on in the private world of Paul and India. And, just like in The Land of Laughs, before the roof of this world comes tumbling on Joe's obsessed mind, he realizes that his Vienna days spent along with the Tates are the time of his life:
I began to feel as if I had been fueled with some fabulous high-octane gasoline. I wrote and did research like a mad machine in the morning, played with the Tates in the afternoon, and went home to bed at night feeling that my life couldn't possibly be much fuller than it was right at the moment. I had found the friends I'd been looking for all along. (VS, p.48)For all their cordiality, the novel provides just the slightest hints that India and Paul amuse themselves at Joe's cost, playing on his emotions, prodding him toward the edge of sanity. When Paul is leaving for a fortnight's business trip, he urges Lennox to "take a really good care" of his wife while he's away.(49) However, India and Joe do not become lovers until Paul returns home and begins to toss unfair accusations of infidelity; only then does the angered India make the final decision for herself and for Joe, who is too irresolute, too diplomatic (and outright cowardly, in fact) to take a conclusive step one way or another. Joseph's guilt returns with a vengeance, even more so after Paul, having informed him that he knows about the affair, suddenly dies of a heart attack in a grimly convenient way. Lennox, who has not yet come to terms with his past, must now deal with more remorse as he accuses himself of indirectly killing his best friend by sleeping with his wife. He continues his romance with India despite how disgusted he is with himself but soon his inner torment is overshadowed by an entirely different kind of persecution. Besides being a businessman, Paul was a magician of uncanny skills and now he begins to haunt his unfaithful wife and her lover from beyond the grave. Frightening them with horror and obscenities, he succeeds in preventing them from making love any time they attempt to.(50)
Frustrated and oppressed, Lennox succumbs to India's request that he leave Vienna until she decides whether she wants to continue their relationship and possibly finds a way to appease her husband's irate ghost. In New York Joe falls in love with Karen, a girl younger and much more "regular" than India, whom he rescues when a stalker (in fact, her ex-boyfriend) attacks her at night. Grateful for "the gift from God" Lennox tries to distance himself from the sinister reality of Vienna but when India, desperate from being haunted by her dead husband, pleads for his return, he complies - whether prompted by love or just the sense of responsibility, he cannot tell.
There is literally one joke in Voice of our Shadow, but unlike in The Land of Laughs, the moment brings no relief, it fails to change the gruesome mood. When Joe confesses to having met Karen in New York, India asks:
'Before you go on, tell me her name.'It is during this conversation that Paul appears on the scene again, offering - or rather pretending to offer absolution to his wife and friend and attributing it to Joe's courageous attempts to protect India from the macabre pursuit:
'Karen. Why?'
'Karen Why. Is she Chinese?' (VS, p.174)
'You kept protecting her. Sticking your neck out so far it should have been cut off ten times. You did everything right and loving, and after a while and a lot of pain, it struck home how much you loved her. You didn't have to come back from New York, but you did. (..) It showed me you loved her with everything you've got, and I was amazed. You passed the test, if you can call it that, with flying colors, Joey. You convinced even me. So no more Boy. No more of the dead, Goodbye.'Unfortunately for Lennox, the redemption he seems to have found there (one that, it is understood, he engineered for himself) is very short-lived. Just when he became reconciled with the thought of never seeing Karen again and staying by India's side (because, he was convinced, she needed him and because "it was the right thing to do"), he has to face his lover's wrath. And India takes her anger out on him with no holds barred when she discovers that after Paul's death Joseph took for himself one of Paul's valuable collection of fountain pens:(51)He got up, buttoned his overcoat to the neck, and, with a quick wink for both of us, walked out of our lives. (VS, p.176)
This pen is part of it. I know why you wanted it. Because it was Paul's, and you wanted it to remind you of Paul's magic. Right? I understand. You're like that, Joe. You want part of everyone's magic, but you're too damned wimpy at heart to reach it the hard way, so you snitch Paul's pen, make love to me (...) You even steal your brother's life, put it down on paper, and make it into a million-dollar story. (...) True? You're talented, Joe, no one is arguing that, but have you ever thought maybe your greatest talent is stealing other people's magic and using it for yourself? (...) The only word I can think of is parasite. (VS, pp.179-80)Having heard India say what he himself has been afraid of realizing all his life, Joe falls into the tight grip of ultimate fear, self-pity and despair: "A delight in life (...) I knew I'd never have the delight they did; it tore me apart." (VS, p.183)
Any description of the climax that follows would probably end up ridiculous and longer than the original passage, which will instead be quoted. Believing it may not be too late to set things right again, Joe goes to India's apartment, unsuspecting that this is where he is crossing the border of his fragile sanity:
'Hey, what's up? (...) India?''Play with Little Boy, Joey.(52) (...)
I turned. Paul Tate stood leaning in the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest, the tips of white gloves showing behind his armpits. His top hat was cocked to the side (...)
I began to crouch like a child. There was nowhere to go. Lower. If I got lower, he wouldn't see me. I could hide.
'Play with Little Boy, Joey!' He took off his hat and, in a slow dream.(53) I peeled Paul Tate's face down and off his own: a smirking Bobby Hanley. 'April Fool, scumbag.'
'Joe?' India called from the bed and, a snake to the charmer's pipe, I turned.
She was facing me now, the light unnaturally bright over her naked form. She reached behind her head and, in a quick ripping motion, tore her hair and face away.
Ross. (VS, p.185)
Escaping from the horror (whether we want to take it literally or as a sick projection of his obsessed mind's tribulations), Lennox flies to New York, to Karen, the last flicker of hope in his ruined life. The final scene of the novel takes place, very appropriately, at an underground railway station:(54)
I looked behind me at the steps to see if anyone was coming. No one. Why? When that question began to frighten me, the thin line of a train light showed down the track. I was saved. As it grew larger, I heard someone coming down the stairs. The steps were slow and heavy, tired. The light loomed larger, the steps kept coming. The train sneaked noisily into the station and stopped. The steps did too. The two cars in front of me were completely empty. I reached for the door and was about to pull it open when she spoke.The metaphoric value of these two passages is self-explanatory: There is and will be no redemption for Joseph's dark mind. In the short epilogue we find him living a hermit's life on a scarcely populated, rocky island of Formori (Greece), an equivalent of an insane asylum. In the last words of the novel the concept of ultimate withdrawal into the life of loneliness, the consequence of Joe's frustrating inability to live a wholesome life in a world of human communication, is reduced to fear of everything that a "normal" existence involves: "My house, my bench, the wind, the rain, the sea. I can trust them. I can trust nothing else." (VS, p.189)'Joseph?'
I turned; Karen was there. My Karen.
'Play with Little Boy!'
Ross. (VS, pp.186-7)
Even though in comparison with The Land of Laughs, Voice of our Shadow is very much a one-dimensional novel, its message remains ambiguous as it depends on the reader's understanding of how Joseph Lennox's character is to be construed. Is he a victim of an unfortunate chain of coincidences which echo and amplify the unresolved problems of his traumatic childhood until his guilt-driven psyche, the resonator, can no longer withstand the amplitude? (55) Or - and this is a more radical reading - is he rather a victim of his own darker side which India Tate so perceptively brings to light?(56) It is basically a distinction between Lennox being inherently a "good" or a "bad" person and the novel's final sentence may in fact support the latter option: he can trust "nothing else", which includes himself. If so, then Joe Lennox is not in any way "better" than his late brother Ross (as he likes to think he is): different, yes, but driven by equally destructive desires of his own. Refraining from comments again, Jonathan Carroll leaves this question open.
Carroll's third novel, Bones of the Moon, is exceptional in a twofold way. First, in a sort of literary experiment, its first person narrator is a woman, young and stunningly beautiful Cullen James, whose voice offers a perspective different from that which all other novels present. How well Carroll fares writing from a feminine point of view we will try to decide later on in this chapter. Second, Bones of the Moon begins an unnamed cycle (which continues up to Carroll's most recent novel). The practically simultaneous episodes of this cycle are united by some of the characters who recur in the other novels either as their main protagonists or as background personae: usually, one story's hero or heroine will reappear later on as a secondary character, providing a link to other tales from the Land of Laughs. Thus Jonathan Carroll's world becomes more and more self-contained and it is characteristic that the numerous references to other works of art, so many of which were found in The Land of Laughs, are gradually replaced by the references to persons and events known from other novels of this "cycle."(57)
The story in Bones of the Moon develops along two parallel lines. The first of them narrates in a lively and realistic way the events of a few years in Cullen James' life: the romantic disappointment of her late youth, culminating in the pregnancy she aborted, and the following friendship and marriage with loving, thoughtful and protective Danny James, leading to Cullen's happy motherhood. Interspersed with this flow of events is the sequence of Cullen's dreams: strangely coherent, narrative episodes which, incorporating the incidents and characters from her real life, translate them into a dreamy, nightmarish language, distorting their proportions and granting them deeper, sometimes ominous meanings. This world of dreams, which in typically Carrollian fashion eventually expands to intrude on Cullen's everyday life, is the novel's "dark side of the Moon" or, to stick to the metaphor we've been using, its own Land of Laughs. Partly inviting and warm with its surreal, melancholy, childlike imagery, a world of unwritten fairy tales featuring Mountains of Coin and Brick and a bowler hat-wearing, building-sized dog named Mr Tracy, Rondua (as it is called) slowly reveals its dolorous face with the menace of The Forgotten Machines, the warring armies of iguana-riding knights in the Northern Stroke, and finally the devil himself, the ultimately sadistic murderer, Jack Chili. At the same time this world has to be read (just like the fantasy pervading Voice of our Shadow) as a projection of the heroine's inner conflicts resulting from a traumatic experience she had undergone in the past - in this case, the abortion.(58)
Not feeling loved by her boyfriend and not loving him herself, Cullen terminated her first pregnancy - a decision that at first brought her nothing but relief:
I was too young and sure of my wonderful future to think about losing the child. Somewhere far-off in my mind I knew I wanted to have children later in life, but not now. Not with a man who didn't love me - and not with my mind full of fear and anger and blinking red lights.As time passes, however, Cullen finds herself unable to come to terms with this episode of her life. Low self-esteem, indecision and emotional insecurity are only the most easily perceptible symptoms of the deep-seated guilt, of which she is not yet fully aware. Even after she falls in love with an old-time friend Danny whom she marries and gives a daughter to, Cullen instinctively feels her conflicts are not resolved. Soon after she becomes Danny's wife these conflicts begin to haunt her in form of a sequence of dreams (going on for a few years) in which, besides the bizarre, fairy-tale creatures like Mr Tracy the guide, she is accompanied by a boy named Pepsi, who inhabits Rondua and whom she escorts on his quest the purpose of which remains enigmatic to her. The dreams, however surreal and obscure, are as vivid to Cullen as is her daytime life; the visions and events are in no way sleepy or blurred. Cullen likes to think that her strange dreams are where her artistic ambitions find their fulfillment: she enjoys them and even tries to be proud of her mind's inventiveness - but the sheer eccentricity of dreaming such coherently episodic sequence cannot escape her attention:What I remember most about the whole experience was the serene sense of comfort and soft calm I felt when I woke up in a hospital bed late one August afternoon, childless again.(59)
By turns I was drawn and repelled by a new world which was growing and filling out before me. I didn't know whether or not it was common for people to have continuous dreams; each night a different but contiguous part of some mysterious whole. (BM, p.42)At her husband's sane advice she visits psychoanalysts whose diagnosis is unequivocal: at a loss to explain the sequential nature of her dreams, they do not find it at all dangerous or indicative of any mental disorder and they try to assure her of what is quite evident by that time - that she is a healthy, happy, perfectly normal woman who, by all indications, should not worry about her psyche at all. Naturally, these explications fail to appease Cullen's anxiety and, dissatisfied with science, she seeks help in the world of the occult. Introduced by a friend to "the best palmist in New York", she receives the same answer that the hard-headed doctors could give her. The lines in her hands forecast no death or disaster, and there is only a slightest touch of oddity in what the palmist says:
'You have nothing to worry about. In fact, I'm surprised you're having any kind of trouble. Everything in your hand says you're all right. Your marriage is balanced, but you already know that. Sometimes you wish your husband was a little bit more exciting and zippy, but besides that... Your children have inherited that healthy balance. They also trust you, which is extremely important.'By this time the novel has revealed its affinities and - in this critic's opinion - they are nowhere near as impressive as those of the two previous ones. After the immense richness of The Land of Laughs, after the one-dimensional, yes, but very much ambiguous Voice of our Shadow, Bones of the Moon appears disappointingly flat and what is worse, predictable. With all respect to the caliber of the subject it tackles, its artistic/aesthetic value suffers when the writer's intent becomes all too obvious. As a literary representation of the disorder called post-abortion syndrome, the novel gets almost clinical at times, e.g.: "I was smoking up to two packs a day and climbing; before the abortion it had been less than one" (BM, p.16) More importantly, it is downright embarrassing to see the main character discover with great amazement, past the half point of the story, something that has been evident to the readers all along - namely, that Pepsi is Cullen's unborn son:'You mean my child. I have only one.' (BM, p.85)
'Why are we here, Pepsi?' (...)It is due to such ostensiveness that Bones of the Moon loses a great deal of its appeal. It has probably become clear by now from the two previous analyses that the worlds that Jonathan Carroll evokes in his novels have one notable quality: they are symbolic but not (usually) simply allegorical. Although, as we have demonstrated, their magic ingredient can be interpreted, often in many ways, as representative of particular real-life issues, such a translation into a discursive language is neither definitive, nor necessary for enjoyable reception. We have made it a point to notice that, even when understood figuratively, Carroll's novels do not attempt to be conclusive and that they work by raising the questions rather than settling them. Bones of the Moon seems to be an exception from this rule due to its judgmental nature. In this light it is not at all surprising that as an experiment in "women's writing", this novel has come under attack from some radically-minded readers, notably feminists, which Carroll himself admits. For all her charm and intelligence, Cullen James (nowhere in the novel is her maiden name mentioned!) is not what one would call a liberated - or simply modern - woman: "I didn't want to be independent; I wanted to love someone and feel comfortable with my life," (BM, p.9) she concedes. When a work of art begins to resemble a proclamation, and not an entirely unbiased one, of (the author's?) standing on a fundamentally ethical issue, it runs the risk of alienating the group of readers who disagree with the moral conclusions it offers, and who otherwise would enjoy its artistic value and appreciate it as a voice in a widespread discussion. What may eventually save Bones of the Moon as an artistic endeavor is that it can perhaps afford to lose some of its magic, and still retain enough of it to be engaging for purely aesthetic reasons: the dreamworld of Rondua, oscillating somewhere between Alice's Wonderland and Peter Pan's Never-never Land on the one hand, and that of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings on the other, does have a lot to offer in this respect. Whether or not the readers will accept the novel's implied moral verdict, they may still find pleasure in following Cullen and Pepsi on their quest for the five Bones of the Moon, each representing a certain virtue (love, courage, etc.) and collectively symbolizing the qualities that a prospective ruler of Rondua needs to possess.'Don't you know?'
'Not at all, my love.'
'You have to! This is where I was before you came back, Mom. I lived here. You killed me once. Don't you remember that?' (...)
Pepsi was the child I had had scraped out of me four years before on a sunny summer day. My abortion. My son. Getting rid of my evidence. My son - my dead, wonderful son. (BM, p.126)
As one of the qualities that a critic needs to possess is probably the ability to find concealed meanings in a seemingly self-explanatory text, we will take a brief look at Rondua as a subregion in the domain of the Land of Laughs, to which this critique aspires to be a comprehensive guide. Indeed, some of Cullen's dreams shed illuminating light on the nature of this fabulous but cohesive territory.
First of all, Rondua is a fair but at the same time cruelly arbitrary land. The five Bones of the Moon which need to be found by one who aspires to become its ruler are only one of two sets of these magical bones.(60) Whenever it so happens that two people are in possession of the two sets at the same time, they have to "take a test" that will determine which of them will rule the land. The nature of the test is devilish because, as so much of our own world, it is indeterminate. Jack Chili, the novel's fiend, who currently rules Rondua in a maniacally ruthless way, explains to Pepsi, his adversary and challenger:
What you must also realize is that however 'good' or 'bad' you think you are, there's absolutely no telling who will win. There is no sense to the way things are decided. I'm as frightened by this moment as you are.(61)Appalled by the randomness of this procedure, Cullen protests against calling it a "test", because, she argues, "most tests you can either pass or fail." It is not the question but Jack Chili's answer that is notable, as it seems to come straight from Alice in Wonderland: "It's called a test because that's what they call it" (BM, p.206)
The affinity between Rondua and the magical world of Marshall France in unmistakable. Under Chili's rule, the land has fallen into turmoil and disarray. Even as particular landmarks remain obscure, the overall picture is painfully clear: "The cats are dead now (...) Cats, perfect fossils and freshwater wells (...) Cats, new music and steam on glass. They're all gone. Other things too. Pepsi, you've got to hurry." (BM, p.145) Much more explicit are the ramblings of DeFazio, a Ronduan character whose bitter and knowledgeable nature resembles that of Wonderland's Caterpillar. If any of the readers felt at a loss to interpret the title of Carroll's first novel, his or her curiosity should be satisfied by the following passage:
You've already seen what things are like now. Jack Chili may be in power, but the whole scene back there on land is so chaotic and scattered that it really doesn't matter who's in charge, does it? On the one hand, you have your Sizzling Thumb, Heeg, Solaris and good old mighty Chili himself (...) And there are others too, believe it or not - animal, vegetable and mineral! All of them want to rule. All of them want power. But you know what? Every one of them is just hopeful and silly. Hopeful and silly - perfect adjectives for this hopeless place. The Land of Laughs, if you ask me. Only it so happens, they're the wrong kind of laughs. You know the kind - funny but not so funny? The talentless person who insists on singing at the talent show? Or how about a midget walking down the street with a big cigar in his mouth? You know the kind of laugh I'm talking about. Pathetic.There is a great deal of evil going on in Rondua, and it actually is this evil that provides the direct connection with Cullen's - and consequently ours - reality. When Pepsi and his mother arrive at the destination of their long journey to face the murderous Jack Chili, here is what they witness:
'What's that?'The connection will not only be found in the name of the macabre place. Stepping into the Café, Cullen is shocked to find herself on the 90th street and Third Avenue in New York City - in the parallel, real world, where she is frightened by the letters she receives from "The Axe Boy" - teenager Alvin Williams who, having slaughtered her mother and sister, is confined to an asylum, from which he is about to escape to commit more atrocities.(63)'The Café Deutschland.'
'What do you mean, café?' It did not look like a place where you drank coffee.
'Jack Chili gives names to things.(62) Half the time no one knows what they mean except him. He calls that the Café Deutschland. It's a madhouse for children.'
'My God. What does he do to them?' (...)
'To the children? Nothing at all. Don't misunderstand. It's reputed to be very clean and pleasant inside. The children are treated very well.'
'And?' (...)
'A mad child dreams terrible dreams, doesn't he? Jack Chili enters their sleep, chooses whatever he wants in their dreams, and then those things become his soldiers.' (BM, pp.178-9)
Unfortunately however, just as this powerful passage promises to lift the novel into higher literary (and intellectual) dimensions, we are soon reminded, in a truly abhorrent and over-the-top manner, of its underlying theme. Arriving at the Café, Cullen and Pepsi behold a crowd of children under Jack Chili's custody:
Some had smeared, ruined features - the result of either nature's worst pranks or mad, sadistic surgeons. Black, dead-blood bruises and livid yellow and brown railway-track like scars covered this wrecked human landscape. Some of the children looked like impossible survivors of accidents where they should have been allowed to die quickly if there was any mercy in the world. Every bit of them seemed to be either bandages, brutally exposed, or bleeding freely. (BM, p.198)Needless to say, all of the children have her son's face. Next, she observes herself and her daughter Mae:
I held her in my arms although we were both dead. Shining steel spikes had been driven through my forehead, my arms, and Mae as I held her. One spike went through my pants at the vagina, two through my legs at the ankles. (...) We were recognizable, but the burst puckered flesh made us completely obscene, beyond humanity. (BM, p.200)Not all of Cullen's dreamy visions are so hideous and so conspicuously symbolic. In fact, most of the scenes are suggestive in only general way and do not usually lend themselves to clear-cut interpretations. If the reader still remembers the short and digressive but greatly symbolic (if we want to read it that way) "aeroplane" passage from The Land of Laughs, which in a few words provided a key to understanding at least part of the novel, he or she will notice that most scenes in Bones of the Moon do not allow for such immediate critical dissection:
Several days from our destination, we came to a remote crossroads. Lying in the centre of it were eight dead rabbits, their bodies placed so as to form a macabre furred star. Without any prompting, Pepsi took the first Bone - the one he had carved into a walking stick - and carefully used it to rearrange the pattern into a rough circle. Mr Tracy asked if it shouldn't be a square, but my boy only shook his head and continued the shaping. (BM, p.144)Before we can move on to the next novel, and the next chapter, we need to make good on a promise that has been made and consider what is one of the most significant aspects of Bones of the Moon - the feminine point of view. Without being judgmental we have to admit that the novel has its ups and downs as far as the realization of this concept goes. Carroll manages to present a convincing portrait of a sensitive, intelligent woman, but the naivete and the "softness" of her image seem a little overdone at times. When her friend and husband-to-be, Danny James, arrives at the scene and puts himself to sleep, we read:
I watched him scuff off into the bedroom and lie down, Gulliver-style, on my surprised bed. Then I went into the kitchen and did the dishes with worried hands. (BM, p.19)As in the case of the railway crossing bars "unwilling" to rise before Thomas and Saxony's car in The Land of Laughs, the "surprised bed" here works perfectly as a personification, a projection of Cullen's own surprise with the change in her life. Not only is the observation perceptive, but for some reason "feels" womanly. But the sentence that follows does a lot to spoil the effect by attempting to use the same trick twice - and, in this critic's opinion, fails - because it's only too obviously "just like a woman" (in the ironical, unintended sense) to be doing the washing up while the man is asleep, and also because the "worried hands" are nowhere near as astute as the "surprised bed." The effect is exasperating and it's hard to resist a comment to the effect: "Yes, I know she's worried!" Such awkwardness is not exceptional either to this or to other Carroll's novels following The Land of Laughs and it seems to result from the tendency to be saying too much, of which only Thomas Abbey could never have been accused. A similarly unfortunate inclination which can first be noticed in Bones of the Moon is letting the narrator indulge in overgeneralized, sometimes even pretentious comments, of which the characters of Carroll's later novels are notorious. An example from Cullen James: "Death doesn't make you sad - it makes you empty. That's what's so bad about it." Some readers will find these statements nicely aphoristic, others will shrug at the banality of home-grown philosophy like this, but, for better or worse, this is the direction in which Carroll's writing has been developing since Bones of the Moon.
On the other hand, the following excerpt seems to be quite successful in rendering a believable insight into a woman's mind. Having given birth to her daughter, Cullen reflects on the experience:
The doctor was nice, the labour(64) horrible... and the baby came out wailing, red and looking like some kind of live ripe fruit. (BM, p.51)Again, this short extract consists of two parts. The first, directly descriptive, employs a cliche: anybody could use the adjective "horrible" to refer to the pain of giving birth. It is to Carroll's credit that he chose to limit himself to invoking associations that belong to our "general knowledge" instead of indulging in detailed description of the process and accompanying physical/emotional conditions which are probably untransferable. Immediately, he balances this brusqueness with a metaphorical reflection provoked by the sight of Cullen's newborn baby: something that a father as well as mother can be in authority to speak about. There is a trace of cliche here as well (the child as the "fruit of love"), but it is enriched by strong, Sylvia Plath-like imagery, all of which gives the potentially risky passage a safe margin of credibility.
How much is Bones of the Moon a woman's novel then? Certainly this is its primary aspect, more important than whatever "magical" content it manifests, and thus requires a little different approach. Having pointed out some of the novel's more disputable angles, we can also notice that the feminist criticism it has met can be argued with. In this author's opinion, feminist critics are easily manipulated, as they are inclined to overestimate the relevance of the "surface structure" of things, and to understand it all too literally (their linguistic considerations come to mind here). Even if Bones of the Moon apparently "asks" to be taken verbatim with regard to its anti-abortionist message, having acknowledged it a critic can move further and understand the novel as a sort of a literary essay on motherhood as well as women's self-reliance (despite all clues to the contrary). When we listen to Cullen confess that she "didn't want to be independent" we should suspend judgment and watch the story develop until the conclusion, rather that unconditionally believe her words and assume that this is the novel's credo. A vigilant reader will notice that the development of the story does not allow Cullen to relinquish self-dependence for one short moment. It is true that she seeks help of the authorities in medicine (in one case a devoutly feminist woman psychiatrist) and in occult, she turns for assistance to her male friend Eliot Kilbertus (who is, incidentally, gay, and by the end of the novel dies by Alvin William's hand), but the one man who ought to be most concerned - her husband Danny - remains mostly in the dark about the dangerous lures of his wife's dreamworld. When the story comes to its violent conclusion with Cullen facing the sadistic, maniacal killer Jack Chili, she can rely on no one but herself: Danny is away at the time, taking care of his ill mother. Less conspicuous, but very much ironical twist can also be found in Bones of the Moon as we see Danny perform a trivial trick for Cullen's amusement ("disappearing" a coin down his sleeve) and proudly, if jokingly, call himself "a magician." Those who have read other Carroll's novels, or have at least witnessed the world of Cullen's dreams, know what true magic is supposed to look like: the powerful magic of Jack Chili and, yes, Cullen herself who - in the "real" life - when the filmmaker Weber Gregston makes a particularly vulgar and offensive pass at her, persuades him to stay away with a blast of orange Ronduan light. In such light - if the reader will allow this somewhat frivolous phrasing - Cullen appears as independent and self-reliant as the most vindictive of feminists.