book review: The Eunuch

The Eunuch: A Novel by Charles H. Fischer (Gabbro Head)

The publisher, whom I know and who published an essay of mine in a scholarly anthology a few years ago, sent me an advance copy of this novel and asked me to write something about it when it was formally published, which it now has been. It is very long, about 470 pages, and I confess I have not finished reading it. I took it with me on our drive to Washington state, and read from it assiduously, but I was still less than half done when we got home and other more pressing tasks have swept me away since then, though I was not uninterested in what I was reading.

The book was recommended to me, specifically, because I am a fan of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast and the publisher thought The Eunuch shared a like air of grotesquery. I see the similarity, but I don't think they're really much alike. Peake's grotesquery is Dickensian, while Fischer's is vulgar and lewd (words of description, not condemnation) which Peake's is not. This book is filled with bodily functions, especially both the sexual - for reasons that will be apparent when I describe the setting - and the alimentary. There's much description of strange and repulsive foods, and of toiletry matters - the story is especially loaded with flatulence.

The story is a first-person narrative by a eunuch named Nergal, who is court harem-master to the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II. He wrote it all down in wedges on clay tablets, and this is the translation, though a (fictional) introduction suggests that the translator was rather free with the material. Which I have to wonder about: 470 pages of clay tablets? Fischer, or the fictional translator, is pretty good about using the words wedge or wedging instead of write or writing, and the result can be pretty funny, though occasionally he slips.

It's actually the complexity and intricate weaving of the governmental operations which are more like Gormenghast than the grotesquery, though in the manner of presentation rather than the specific content. The main plot concerns the king's responsibility to mate regularly with the inhabitants of his harem and sire lots of bastards. This will foster the health of his kingdom and make the rains come. Unfortunately this king is getting on in years and is rather impotent, and Nergal, who has to keep track of all this, is spending more time than he wants covering up the problem. Then, one day while he is trying to guide the king's member into doing its duty - yes, he's responsible for that too - the concubine absently caresses Nergal, which causes him to fall in love with her. He's a eunuch, but as has been made clear earlier, he's not entirely devoid of romantic or sexual feelings.

Oh boy. It was soon after that little plot crunch that I had to stop, but things do not look good for anyone concerned, and remember that, though some years after Nebuchadnezzar's death, Babylon fell.

The prose is fairly clear, and the storyline flows, though there's nothing slim or taut about it. It's a rather comic story in its particularly grotesque way. I think there are readers who will really enjoy this novel.