Customer Reviews

The Helmet of Horror: The Myth of Theseus and the Minotaur (The Myths Series)

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

 

 

I found this book very intriguing. I can't say I "enjoyed" it -- Pelevin is one of those genius authors, like S. Lem, that I feel I should like, but actually find very difficult. It is like there is a joke and I don't understand the punchline. And maybe I get all the facts of the joke wrong, too. At any rate, this is a retelling of the Theseus/Minataur myth, and is a part of the incredibly wonderful series retelling the old myths by contemporary top authors. I have loved each book in the series, so far (I especially liked Weight, the retelling of Atlas). Pelevin's book sets the labyrinthe as a computer chat room, with the "thread" followed by various people who find themselves each trapped alone in an identical room. Well, we are all in traps, and we all have illusions, etc. So I recommend this interesting book as a part of the series. I'm going to have to work on my understanding of Pelevin, however.

Audiobook aficionados will think they've stumbled upon nirvana when listening to this update on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur as read by eight of the best and brightest narrators to be found. Not only are they all first rate voice performers with wide ranges of experience but they're also award winners - far too many to mention here.

Russian novelist Victor Pelevin who was named among the Best European Writers under 35 is anything but conventional. Here, he takes an ancient myth and puts a today spin on it by creating eight characters, all assigned pseudonyms, who sign on to a chat room to discuss philosophy. We may remember that the Minotaur lived in a labyrinth and these characters find themselves in a virtual one.

The story opens with Ariadne writing, "I shall construct a labyrinth in which I can lose myself together with anyone who tries to find me - who said this and about what?" This thread is responded to by the other characters who are all in separate spaces, places of which they are not sure - where are they?

This is a sci-fi story which some may find puzzling and others enthralling as two of the characters struggle to find each other and others labor to explore their shared predicament.

- Gail Cooke

To begin with, this is not a retelling of the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. (In my opinion, The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood is a retelling.) It is, rather, a discussion of the Philosophy of Mind between a chorus of stereotypical characters using the details of the myth as a backdrop. It reminds me of a Platonic dialog, examining from different perspectives the methods with which we ascribe meaning to our apprehension of the world around us, and more interestingly, the shortcomings that accompany those methods. Having read it twice, I continue to find it provocative. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys philosophy and labyrinths.

I came to Amazon to read other folks' impression of the content of the book, but, alas, found no posts, so I'm starting one, unwinding Ariadne's thread, as it were, so others would follow it with me. I'm basing my views on the Russian original here. I wanted to understand The Helmet very much. It feels vaguely portentous and significant in some way, and I found myself giving different accounts to authorial metaphors upon rereading it.
Is Thesius the programmer while the others are stuck in VR? Are they WWW AI or real human beings? Whose is the independent reality? Is it theirs? Is it Thesius's? Was there a minotaur or are they the minotaur and were all along? Or perhaps they became the minotaur when the previous minotaur was massacred?
It's like the literary version of Donnie Darko, and like Donnie Darko, it is a paradoxical entrapment, a fairly amusing jumble while it lasts that unravels to nothing. After all is said and done, the ultimate purpose of The Helmet is not to enlighten at all. It is to deconstruct. To destroy: your mental comfort in spirituality, social order, psychological adjustment, idealism, optimism, hope. When viewed through the prism of Pelevin's literary corpus, the metafictional aspects of The Helmet become clear: it is to show how existential "discourse" is a form of mental agony or onanism, if you will, created out and by nothing for no one's benefit. All is meaningless is the message here. In fact the very discourse is the helmet of horror as is the brain creating it, and as one tries to substantiate and justify the existence of the other, both fail miserably. The entirety of The Helmet (the book), therefore, with all its airs and profundity, with all implications of significance and allusions to higher planes of being, is an onanism, a pure escapist onion in metaphysical skin. Not unlike Pelevin.
So why the four stars? During the reading process, you expect some sort of a revelation, a mind-expanding experience, while by the end the story world collapses, and you are left with no more with which you'd started. It isn't a failed expectation either. It's clear that the subject of the book and the book itself are intended to be of no existential consequence, which is, in fact, the lesson. It is that solipsistic speculation -- the author's signature and beloved cash cow -- is a barren womb. Once the concept is understood in a remedial philosophy class, it will yield no more meaning than the minimum number of words required to bring it home. All the literary effluvience and writing mastery in the world will not add weight to it, as anything times zero is zero. Solipsism is self-annihilating, however much it may be true. A book, any book, on this subject is too long. Nothing is easier than cynicism and criticism, gospodin Pelevin, stop it already! Grow up and give us some substance.

Victor Pelevin, bad boy of Russian literature, has written a contemporary retelling of the Theseus and the Minotaur myth. Set in an internet nowhere and consisting of only the comments made by people in a chat room, presumably located in the labyrinth, the book starts out interesting but suffers from a vague ending and a lack of character development.

Borges is clearly a major influence on Pelevin, and it is as if he set out to write a post-national novel in which it isn't clear if any or all of the characters are Russian or anywhere near Russia. There is quite a bit of talk about ways of controlling individuals so that they do what the powers that be want while retaining the illusion of individual choice, which could be about Russia or could be just about anywhere.

When reading Anthony Smith's Nationalism: theory, ideology, history (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010), I came across a statement on the problems of postmodern postnational culture that explains the limits of The Helmet of Horror better than I can: "the skeleton of computerized information technology and the virtual reality it creates must be covered with the flesh and blood of existing cultures, or rather, with selected motifs and elements ('shreds and patches') from those cultures, put together in playful, cynical satire, their original meanings transmuted to fit the ever-elusive present. So, a postmodern and cosmopolitan global culture can only be eclectic, hybrid, fragmentary and presentist, forever being up-dated, forever in search of 'relevance.' Such an esoteric and patchwork culture could only have limited appeal, even when it makes use of popular cultures, and little staying-power and resilience, even though it seeks to avoid pastiche." (146)

The ending is also a disappointment. It reminded me of the last episode of the X-files, which tried to be so ambiguous and so "everything to everybody" that it just flopped.

I don't know if I would have read more in this series had I read Helmet of Horror and/or Lion's Honey first...I liked Helmet more than Honey...but it not on my list of things I could read over and over. The idea of the labyrinth being both a physical thing AND being the internet (specifically a chat room) is certainly intriguing and novel...but the whole thing sort of confused me. I suppose that was rather the point...the tale itself is something of a labyrinth and the tread being something of an in joke with the chat room/message board response system. Overall, I'd say it was well done and I'm sure if I were to read it again, I'd be able to pull more meaning out it, because I was left with the feeling that I'd missed something...so maybe down the line when I get my own copy, I'll reread it and see what else it brings to me. Looking forward to the next one!

The computer screen as stage and instant messaging as action in this lesser work by Victor Pelevin. Certainly no match to his "Buddha's little finger" or "Omon Ra"

I know the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, and I have - very rarely - looked in on chatrooms - rarely, because the chat in the ones I have visited is usually so inane. The book does mirror the inconsequentialness of some of these chatrooms; but if there is some method in the madness of this version of the myth, I'm afraid I just didn't get it. My mind not only does not work this way, but can't understand a mind that does. So I've got lost all right! My fault, no doubt.