Neuroscientist Christopher Tyler recently made a revelatory discovery when he examined 265 portrait paintings from the last six centuries: each portrait had one of the subject's eyes in the exact center of the frame's width, or within 5 percent of it. This was true even for modern artists such as Picasso, whose faces are often wildly irregular. "With a portrait, you're trying to capture something about the personality, a sense of the feelings of the sitter. And those are probably best expressed by the eyes. So from that perspective they're the most important feature in the portrait," Tyler explained. Jonathan Lethem started out as a visual artist, and the title of his new novel, Girl in Landscape, conveys a painterly quality. Tyler would no doubt appreciate that watching eyes, and the power of the gaze, are central to the themes of the book.
Descriptions of eyes watching and searching begin, permeate, and conclude the book, which Lethem described in a Locus interview as "the point of view of the Natalie Wood character in [the 1956 John Ford film] The Searchers," a powerful portrayal of xenophobia and obsession. In that film, John Wayne spends years searching for his niece, kidnapped by Indians in the Wild West, growing increasingly convinced that she has been sexually and culturally corrupted by them. The Natalie Wood character is thirteen-year-old Pella Marsh, who is grappling with menarche and the dread of moving to an alien planet. Tragedy strikes her family in the opening pages: her father, Clement Marsh, suffers paralyzing despair after losing a political election, and her mother Caitlin dies of a brain tumor, leaving Pella to be the brave one in the family. The new world, to which only a handful of humans have so far relocated, is known as the Planet of the Archbuilders, of whom only a handful remain. When the Marshes settle there, they will each undergo profound shaping experiences as they form and re-form relationships with the human colonists and the natives.
Lethem's stories always feature a collision of genres, and he describes Girl in Landscape as "a Southern Gothic Western set on Mars," which the epigraphs by Shirley Jackson and John Wayne prefigure. The influences of Bradbury's Martian Chronicles and Dick's Martian Time-Slip are also reflected in Lethem's lyrical prose and literally alienating, relativistic points of view. The planet is not Mars, though, except as Bradbury's is: to the white American colonizers, it seems empty and wide open to exploitation, just another Wild West, but to the more perceptive it is rich with ancient numinous magnificence. Its landscape is full of mystery for Pella and her younger brothers, who are frightened of the dazzling sky whose ozone layer, unlike that of Earth, is clean and undamaged; who are intrigued by the native polymorphic plant-food called potatoes, although they are nothing like terrestrial potatoes; who are perplexed by the native household deer, omnipresent darting, spying creatures "more miniature quicksilver giraffe than deer."
But most of all, Pella is worried about her father's determination not to take the drug that counteracts a contagious Archbuilder virus which psychologically transforms humans in a disturbing way: "It's called becoming a witness." The settlers are secretive about the virus, and won't divulge why they disapprove of the Marshes' refusal to take the antiviral pills.
The plot conflicts revolve around Efram Nugent, the John Wayne figure, who hates the natives and arrogantly rules the other settlers by sheer force of personality. The Archbuilders, reminiscent of American Indians with their flower-like fronds, breastplates, and names like Truth Renowned, Rock Friend, and Hiding Kneel, are passive, courteous, and unfathomable, which infuriates Efram, who suspects them of espionage and perversion. His attitude toward the Marshes, especially Pella, is possessive and controlling, for he cannot abide Clement's desire to live peacefully with the aliens. Pella herself has difficulty understanding her feelings about Efram. At first intimidated and repelled by him, she slowly develops a sexual attraction to him.
Each main character suffers inner conflicts, and each in some way exemplifies the sense of sexual ambiguity which characterizes much of the narrative. These themes recall Lethem's 1993 short story "Hugh Merrow," where he introduced the Planet of the Archbuilders. In that story, a painter painfully comes to terms with his bisexuality as he grapples with his confused feelings for his best friends, a married couple. Hugh's agreement to paint a portrait of an Archbuilder leads to an exosexual relationship and, eventually, menage ˆ trois. In Girl in Landscape, likewise, the characters' inner conflicts are accompanied by sexual ambiguity and confusion. Tomboy Pella agonizes over the necessity of entering adulthood and longs for the lost simplicity of youth. The hermaphroditic, childlike Archbuilders carry an odd shame about remaining behind when the rest of their race developed space flight and departed. Even Efram, with his rock-hard, macho hostility, is faintly feminized by his gentle gestures, circuitous insinuating dialogue, and wide hips, and he conceals an appalling secret. Among the other settlers are a pair of lesbians and Hugh Merrow himself, who faces a posse when rumors of his proclivities spread.
In one of many moments of comic relief, Pella thinks of the world as the Planet of Withheld Explanations. Everyone has secrets, everyone hides guilt. In many ways, Girl in Landscape is a treatise on various kinds of guilt. The central issue of actions seen and unseen builds to the startlingly violent climax, and the primary problem of seeing others steadily and seeing them whole leads to Hiding Kneel's revelation to Pella of her own anxiety and guilt, which starts her on the road to courage and healing. As with most of Lethem's novels, the conclusion points toward further untold adventures, but the events he has vividly painted are entirely satisfying. His characters and dialogue are utterly convincing. This story will remain with the reader for a long time.
When you read almost any of Lethem's celebratedly equivocal, often nonrational fictions, you find the temptation to try to organize the text almost irresistible, but his texts resist the attempt. He is an Author of Withheld Explanations. Girl in Landscape is more linear, more accessible to a general audience than his previous three novels: told in simple prose, sliding easily between close third-person and omniscient narration. But-you knew there was a paradox coming-this simplicity requires a lot of reading between the lines, as becomes more apparent on a second reading.
It is a clichŽ in SF reviewing to claim that a novel teaches us to see ourselves and our world with new eyes. This novel justifies the claim. Girl in Landscape encourages us to focus on the gifts and limitations of perception, but Lethem reminds us of its dangers as well. He capitalizes on the inherent drama in spying on others' guilty deeds, on our fears of unseen surveillants, on the mystique of secret languages and signs. Ultimately the novel elicits the reflexivity of information theory itself: even while riveted by the bravura climax and Pella's renewed need for vigilance, we find ourselves watching ourselves reading, we watch ourselves watching ourselves. The genius of Girl in Landscape is that it directs our gaze to a self-portrait.
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