Blinding Light
by Paul Theroux
(Houghton Mifflin) $26
Paul Theroux’s latest novel, Blinding Light, is, like all novels, about many things. To begin with, the structure of its story is built on the story of Eden, the myth of how the first woman, Eve, tempted the first man, Adam, with the fruit of knowledge. The Bible’s interpretation of the birth of humankind is retold in the novel’s first chapter, “Drug Tour.” Adam corresponds with a writer named Slade Steadman; Eve with a doctor named Ava; and the snake is a German named Manfred Steiger.
The snake’s father was a Nazi, a member of the evil SS; Eve is a “debauched sensualist,” a woman committed to the pleasures of the body; and Adam, the narrator, is a 50-year-old man who has failed to write a second book. His first book, Trespassing, published more than two decades ago, recounted the adventures of a young man traveling to different and difficult parts of the world without a passport. The formula proved to be a huge success, spawning a movie, a TV show, and “a clothing line [that changes] from year to year.” In the bright world of Blinding Light, Trespassing is more than just a book; it’s a self-sufficient economy.
Trespassing does two things to Steadman: It makes him super rich and, as a result, chocks his creativity. The substance of the writer’s life is no longer writing but cashing royalty checks and dating attractive women. The novel begins at the end of his latest affair. Eva, his girlfriend, is sexually bored, he is impotent, and they are flying to the jungles of Ecuador with the purpose of obtaining a hallucinogen called Ayahuasca. She, a doctor, believes the drug will give him the inspiration to finish a second book. The drug, however, is not powerful enough. The German snake slithers down and recommends another hallucinogen that has the Borgesian name the Tiger’s Blindfold. This drug extinguishes Steadman’s physical eyes and transforms his whole being into an all-seeing eye.
“He had no eyes,” explains the narrator, “yet his whole body was an organ of vision, receptive to all images… He was hyper alert as though feverish, and the crystal world was composed not of surfaces but of inner states, what lay beneath the look of things.”
A heavy dose of magical realism courses through the life of this novel. Blinding Light has much in common with “The Aleph,” a short story by Jorge Luis Borges-an Argentine writer often credited, with some justification, as the father of magical realism, and also a writer who was not favorably portrayed in Theroux’s famous travel book The Old Patagonian Express. In “The Aleph,” a poet discovers in his basement a crevice through which “all the places in the world are… seen from every angle” (an Aleph), and is inspired to write a long and mad poem about everything. In Blinding Light, a drug does this trick. It not only helps the writer finish his second book, a “sexual confession in the form of novel” called Book of Revelation, but also returns fire to his relationship with Eva. Of course, all of this success comes with a heavy price.
Two quick and final points (one positive, the other not). Point one: Like Jonathan Raban’s Waxwings and Salman Rushdie’s Fury, Blinding Light is set in the dot-com era, and has near its center a wonderfully drawn scene involving one of the leading figures of that time, Bill Clinton. Later in the book, a rewarding connection is made between the simple blowjob Clinton received from a “chubby Jewish girl in her early twenties” (the president’s deepest secret) and the substance of the Book of Revelation (the narrator’s total confession).
The other point concerns one of the novel’s big themes: regeneration. Though grounded on the story of creation, Blinding Light is not about birth but rebirth. And this rebirth is troubling because of who is reborn (a rich, white Westerner), and where he is reborn (the jungles of a Third World country). True, the jungle in Blinding Light is “fragile and less wild,” as it has been thoroughly penetrated by global capital, but the Savage Queen and tropic-addled Kurtz still live and thrive there.
Theroux’s powers as a writer can never be doubted but it is doubtful that he will ever overcome one of the most powerful occidental fantasies: a senescent North being revived (at the risk of death) by the fresh blood of a wild, young, and vital South.
Paul Theroux will read from Blinding Light at Elliott Bay Book Company (101 S Main St, 624-6600) at 7:30 pm on Fri June 10. It’s free. Call to reserve tickets.
