While Annabel Lyon's much-acclaimed novel The Golden Mean, has been
received well by critics, I'm afraid it fell short for this reader.
The novel deals with Aristotle's life during his tutelage of
Alexander, who would become The Great. Lyon attempts to paint a
picture of Aristotle's own struggle to find balance between
depression and joy, passion and reason, and in doing so employs a
considerable wealth of research into the historical characters.
However, research into the historical milieu is lacking. In the
opening Lyon's describes:
"I spent yesterday on the carts myself so I could write, though now
I ride bareback, in the manner of my countrymen, a ball-busting
proposition for someone who's been sedentary as long as I have."
Agreed riding bare-back can be a painful experience over the
long-term; however, the glaring inconsistency here is the fact
Aristotle was writing while riding in a cart. In an era of no
suspension, and roughly paved or even dirt roads, the jouncing and
'ball-busting' would have had his backside black and blue, and any
writing would have been rendered illegible. Further, Lyon fails to
illustrate that if paper (papyrus) were used, or more likely
parchment or vellum, all would have required sanding and
burnishing, tasks not easily accomplished on a bouncing, crashing
cart. Moreover, use of any stylus and ink would have been
prohibitive. If, however, a wax tablet had been used, which would
have been more likely the case, even then any legible cipher would
have been an impossibility.
The language of the novel was another point of contention for me.
Altogether very modern, even to the use of the modern phrase,
whapping each other upside the head, the language of the novel
didn't ring true, and consequently a sense of time period and
placement left me feeling disoriented. I wasn't looking for
Shakespearean diction here; far from it. But I was looking for
something a little less modern street.
Around the middle of the novel that modern touch became completely
arresting when Lyons writes a scene wherein he and his wife watch
snow falling, and Aristotle explains to his wife:
"The gods don't send it," I say. "It's part of the machinery of the
world. When the air is cold enough, rain turns to snow. It freezes.
The water atoms attach to each other and harden."
Now, while Democritus, one of the ancient Greek philosophers
credited with the concept of atomic theory, was a contemporary of
Aristotle's, the statement Lyon's writes reads just a bit too
modern and stretches the boundaries of credibility.
As to the tone of the language, it is altogether very vulgar, which
may be an attempt to reflect a male voice. Instead, at least for
this reader, that vulgar tone simply rendered the novel somewhat
adolescent and reliant on the use of shock factor instead of
writing skill.
When analyzing writing skill, there is a profound lack of character
development, so that Aristotle himself is merely a talking head, as
are most of the enormous cast of characters. There's nothing there
for me to hang on to. And that lack of character development
extends to lack of environmental detail, so that what should have
been a very alive, vibrant, sensory plunge into ancient Greece and
Macedon, instead remain a grey slate waiting for colour. There was
no sense of heat or cold, of architecture or furnishing, of
environment or countryside. The only explicit detail Lyon ever uses
is that of periodic, clinical gore, or base sexuality.
It may be that this sensory deprivation was Lyon's attempt to
reflect the lack of depth and character in her protagonist,
Aristotle, but for me it was like reading a green screen, waiting
for the magic to appear.
If Lyon's novel, The Golden Mean, is the standard by which we now
measure excellence, then I am outdated, antiquated and obsolete.