Customer Reviews

Alnilam

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I read this book when it first came out and I was disappointed. But it has a weird way of lingering in the mind. Of all the books I have ever read, I have spent more time thinking about this one than any book other than "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"-- which it doesn't really resemble (well, it is about a father and a son, so I suppose it does resemble it). What was Dickey trying to accomplish? I wonder if I'll ever know. I really would like to do something, though. Someday I want to write the screenplay...I'm kidding. No I'm not. I want to make this book into a movie. FADE IN: Exterior-Night, in the clouds. Pink Floyd's "Learning to Fly" plays in the background. A strange, marionette-like flying machine resembling the Wright Bros. contraption drifts throught the clouds towards the camera. At the controls is a very young man wearing a stylized military uniform with a high peaked cap, the letters A L N I L A M appear behind the craft like giant water towers reflecting the searchlights, the fog rolls in to fill the frame and the camera pulls back to reveal the swirling fog transformed into the reflection in the lenses of the dark glasses of FRANK CAHILL...

Anyone expecting another book like Deliverance will be vastly disappointed. I struggled with this book at first yet I found it had many rewards not offered up by the usual "top ten" hits list of today's pop pulp market. While Dickey fails where someone like Umberto Eco might succeed it is worthwhile to hitch a ride on Dickey's powerful imagination and tough muscular illusory prose. You almost believe a blind man can fly! I'm a sucker for Dickey so became immersed in this book and liked it better than the White Sea which came later and which I found a good cure for insomnia. While Alnilam did not initially "knock me out", I find it staying with me all these years later.

I gave up after reading a hundred pages or so. I'm a huge fan of James Dickey. I'd waited for so long for a second book from him and was so disappointed by this. The plot was vague and boring, and it didn't have that wonderful prose which Dickey used in Deliverance.

The one positive I could say about this book is his idea of portraying the blind and sighted versions simultaneously. It didn't work in this. But the 'idea' is to be admired. He always seems to find some way to push the established boundaries of writing.

(He pushes the boundaries again in the last of his novels, 'To The White Sea'. He has no dialogue at all for ninety odd percent of the book. Very successfully, too.)