One can never go home again, wrote novelist Thomas Wolfe, though he could never have anticipated the degree of metaphysical truth that would permeate the statement as envisioned by Rudolfo Anaya.
In his latest novel, Randy Lopez Goes Home, Mr. Anaya weaves together an hypnotic fantasy of images from the many archetypal themes of his earlier writings: the golden carp; los Matachines; the time of the mestizo; and of course La Llorona.
Randy returns to his home village of Agua Bendita in Northern New Mexico after living for years in gringoland (or more politically correct but just as inaccurately, Angloland. "Political correctness" is fair game throughout.) Not only does he not recognize it (nor it him), but he finds the town in an eccentric time warp where past, present and future merge and where the entire world is reflected in a charmingly idiosyncratic kaleidoscope of historical figures. Superficially it is a nickel tour through world mythology, yet the characters and concepts that appear are chosen with precision contributing to a stream of symbols that easily turns philosophic.
Randy's search is not just for his roots but for something real in his own personality and his culture. His quest becomes a dialectic of science and legend--that one need not get lost in the other, that they are both knowledge but gained by different methods, each richer for the other. He discovers cultural identities lost to social homogenization--a world of ubiquitous blue jeans communicated through I-pods, a world where everything that was once lived has becomes its own re-presentation.
Randy (also called the young man named after three saints whose names no one remembers) in his quest building a bridge to reach his Sofia, the beloved Anime, strives almost inadvertently against the triumph of ignorance, the celebration of close-mindedness, sadly as insidious as ever in the world of today. His sidekick Oso, the dachshund, offers rare but short, pithy comments on the situation, always right on target.
Like Leopold Bloom, Randy explores the streets of his town in what becomes a journey through an iconographic landscape where the end is the road itself. Writing during the period of his wife's hospice, Mr. Anaya has created a multi-dimentional (as well as metaphorical) bridge that connects myriad realities in which past, like or present or perhaps even future, is as much "here" as it is "there." In this imaginary microcosm conflict of cultures becomes illumination rather than antagonism.
Mr. Anaya's deceptively simple prose can remind one of Wm Blake such as his Songs of Innocence & Experience where the seemingly naive language creates images of profound beauty and wisdom. Indeed some of the work seems to echo Blake not only in language but in idea. After pointing out the ignorance of the adults, "The child moved away, like a cloud without a home." The novel is generous with quotable aphorisms, such as "Stasis could be a definition of hell, " rich in literary allusion, and teeming with irony and paradox: "She had studied the map of the heavens by living rooted in nature."
And there is humor throughout. "Oso briefly thought of following Cleopatra. She smelled like pepperoni pizza."
But for all the obstacles Randy encounters, dissembling politicians, immoral ideologies passing as practical wisdom, La Muerta (the old bitch in drag), this is a story of the triumph of the human spirit, life's ultimate magic.
