The Lion Of Boaz-Jachin And Jachin-Boaz (2000) - Plot & Excerpts
The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz starts out in the style of a fairy tale or myth, which tends to irk me: real fairy tales and myths are stories worn smooth by a hundred thousand retellings over the course of centuries, which is how they get their primordial feel. Attempts to copy that feeling usually result in a cheap affect that strikes me as cheap and unearned. Luckily, The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz turns into something more interesting before its end. The book gives us two main tales, one focusing on a father and the other focusing on his son, who both are struggling to answer the question of what they want out of life. The two tales share symbols between them, with lions and wheels abounding in the largely physical journey of the son and the largely mental journey of the father. The tale of the son was fine, but gives us a coming of age story where a young man strikes out into the world on his own and likewise is introduced to sexual experiences along the way. In short, it's a story you've read before. It reminded me heavily of As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee, right down to the young man playing a musical instrument for room and board as he travelled, but Lee's story taken from his actual life eclipses this book's fictional version. The father's tale holds up much better, refusing to fall into the standard clichés of a mid-life crisis story even as the father abandons his family and takes a much younger blonde lover. He feels some guilt about his actions (which, in an interesting way, manifest physically) but this isn't a story of a man realizing what he had before and returning to it. There are no platitudes so tired and boring here. Even when the manifested specter of his past appears in the form of a lion which most people cannot see, the book avoids the usual boring practice of relegating the lion to a status of a simple hallucination, instead making the vision capable of physical actions that make the situation much more tense and interesting to both the father and the other characters involved.This short book even manages to develop some other characters as well in just a few pages, like the abandoned wife who you can tell is going to make the same mistakes all over again, or the fishing boat captain that maligns restaurant owners while clearly wanting to be one himself. Unfortunately Hoban's writing worked sometimes, but his setting descriptions sometimes failed to land. I bet it will completely work for some people, but that wasn't the case with me. This is one of those books that I rate 3 stars but which I think is very interesting. Unfortunately, with a beginning with an off-putting style, writing that failed to floor me, and only one of the two main story lines being a stand-out I can't categorize this as a very good or great book, but it has its moments and is, overall, still well worth your time.
It's hard for me to compare this book to anything I've read before, which automatically earns it some uniqueness points. It hints at sci-fi/fantasy, but the only fantastical elements to the story are the extinction of lions (which may not be all that far off in reality) and the fact that maps in Hoban's world are far more revealing and magical than our world's paper maps. The story is told with the soft focus of allegory that is void of place names (ironic in a book about maps?) and slight on detail but heavy on thematic elements.Those big thematic elements seem to revolve around fatherhood, identity, and male virility vs. impotence. The importance of the themes, the message of Hoban's allegorical tale, and the richness of the world he created get pretty muddled and lost throughout the book because of the schizophrenic and dreamlike narration. There seems to be too much to digest, and it's crammed into a blurry story that's somehow about lions and sex and fatherhood all at once. On top of that, it's been relegated to live with its contemporary pulp of seventies sci-fi paperbacks.Through all that, it's still quite the head trip, and a joy to read. Hoban writes about maps in such an enchanting way that I started thinking about my own personal maps and how I could play with them. And as I wrote above, I've never really read anything quite like it (maybe In Watermelon Sugar and I am the Cheese and yes, The Alchemist all jumbled together?), so cheers for that. It's good to know that Hoban was not a one-trick pony, although Bread and Jam for Frances will always be great.Also, RIP.
What do You think about The Lion Of Boaz-Jachin And Jachin-Boaz (2000)?
An early novel from the supremely talented Russell Hoban, this is a well-crafted slice of magic realism set in an unnamed country somewhere bordering the Black Sea in that part of the world so fascinating to outsiders; neither entirely European, Asian nor Arabic.This is a novel about about fathers and sons. Jachin-Boaz makes maps in a small town: all kinds of maps, from the mundane to the more bizarre; for example, a map for voyeurs. He creates the ultimate map for his son, Boaz-Jachin, which will enable him to find everything, but Boaz-Jachin, the dreamer, rejects it because will not help him locate the long-extinct lions. Depressed and disatisfied, Jachin-Boaz leaves his wife and son for the city and makes a new life for himself.Boaz-Jachin meanwhile conjures up a lion, neither entirely real nor entirely metaphysical, from ancient carvings, which stalks his father in the city. He also leaves his home and searches for his father, with only the map, a guitar and his good looks to keep him on track. But, not knowing where to start, he heads off into the unknown, and experiences a picaresque series of surreal encounters and events along the way.The book is is full of humour as well as being quite a serious meditation on love, family relationships, and on what life lacks without mystery. It is also beautifully written, economical in style, concludes well and does not outstay its welcome. Read it, and you'll find yourself wanting to seek out Hoban's other novels too.
—Flying_Monkey
Questo romanzo, edito nel 1973, è il primo dei sedici pubblicati da Hoban che, in precedenza, aveva scritto solo libri per bambini e ragazzi. E' peraltro una favola -ancorché per adulti- e, come tale, piena di simbolismi che necessitano di essere interpretati. A prescindere comunque da qualsiasi interpretazione, la sua lettura risulta estremamente piacevole ed avvincente. Ma è anche un romanzo che tratta di un argomento sempre attuale come quello del rapporto genitore-figli.Continua suhttp://www.lastambergadeilettori.com/...
—La Stamberga dei Lettori
