BlackOxford's Reviews > Legends of The Fall

Paradise Lost and Found and Lost Again

People, but mostly men, are fairly hapless creatures who engage themselves in situations that they don’t have a clue about - love, marriage and war are favourites. These themes are perennial, epic, even biblical. But it’s all been written about before. Not that many notice the repitition. Here are three stories of classic haplessness and its consequences, written in a suitably hapless manner - with enough machismo, firearms, hunting dogs, and quails, lots of quails, to keep anyone happy over a rainy weekend..

The first story is an update of the Genesis myth about the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden. The principle difference from the original is that Legends of the Fall portrays a gnostic Demi-god not the serpent as the villain. This change allows the disgraced couple to fight back rather than simply submit to their punishments. And fight they do, with the combined cunning of James Bond and Mata Hari. Lots of righteous violence and retribution. I said it was biblical, didn’t I?

Of course this is more than a bit ironic. But is the irony mine or Harrison’s? Either way I think the link to Genesis makes Legends of the Fall at least somewhat interesting as a literary object. A handsome couple are made a good deal less handsome by a god-like international drug-lord and banished from the their idyllic Eden. What the Lord hadn’t counted on was the sexual devotion of the man to the woman - an hormonal mis-calibration on his part perhaps. They were prototypes after all in both cases.

The trick for dealing with a psychopathic god who thinks he holds all the cards, as in he of the Old Testament or his Mexican equivalent, is to be more willing to die than he is. Mere homesickness doesn’t generate such an attitude. In fact one must lack reason altogether lest calculation inhibit action. Abelard’s intelligence is what prevented him from rescuing his Heloise. He simply thought about her too much.

But ultimately, as in Genesis, everyone is disappointed. Even the Lord “lived as a victim, albeit prosperous.” No one comes out alive, do they? What we’re left with are regrets. Didn’t God regret his creation when he sent his flood? And didn’t he then regret the flood? We all tend to get too attached to things.

Then there’s the second tale, somewhat less sad, redemptive even. This one echoes the biblical story of Abraham’s Son Jacob, his adolescent pining, and working, away over years to gain the hand (and other parts) of his beloved Rachel. The accidents of human affection are not often kind. As with Jacob and Rachel, so with Nordstrom and Laura. He sees her, she ignores him. He sees her again, she plots his capture.

Finally the mystery of sex becomes overwhelming and they are blissfully united... until the mystery of its mystery with the same person becomes less mysterious over the years. Revenge is the only reasonable motive to have after years of miserable effort crowned by profound buyer’s regret. But revenge against whom? A victim is, of course, providentially provided, with suitable character flaws to justify his annihilation. But where’s the necessary killer instinct to carry out the task at hand?

Timing is everything. A mid-life crisis is just the thing for sharpening one’s more violent instincts (Jacob’s mid-life crisis is not reported in the Bible, but count on it, it happened). Not that there’s much anyone can do to prepare for the transition: “The most vexing thing in the life of a man who wishes to change is the improbability of change.” Change comes of its own accord; usually in unexpected ways... well, like grace. Walter Mitty might then be transformed into John Wayne in an instance. An unlikely thing, you say? Oh, ye of little faith. Try to remember that this is biblical writing!

The final story of the three is a competent imitation of the two biblical Books of Kings. The insistent, droning, endless telling of events with no clear trajectory is captured eloquently. The characters are merely names which have no substance whatever. Lots of war, and rage, hostile intentions, and complicated family history, very little of which seems reasonable. So once again very biblical.

Movement too, much movement around strange places for no discernible purpose other than the movement itself. This is the Book of Exodus on a global scale, with the state of Montana as the Promised Land after it has been cleared of its native population, and Tristan starring as Moses (Brad Pitt of course in the film version).

Narrative at its worst one might say - pointless, self-indulgent, and without structure. Like a speech by Trump perhaps. A parody of something one hardly thought could be parodied but there’s more talent in the world than one might have thought. Some of it, at least, of questionable literary worth, and not all of that in the Bible.