Summer/Autumn
2006
Lizard Dreaming of Birds
John Gist
High Sierra Books
Gold Beach, OR
Hardcover 217 pp. $24.95
Late in John Gist's dark spiritual quest novel, Lizard
Dreaming of Birds, a character opines, “People like Westerns
because the individual takes precedence. Thrown into the landscape,
they learn of themselves. Nothing's predetermined.” This passage
passes as a fair summation of the plot, environs, and nature of this
challenging second novel. Though it begins with a suicide in an urban
Seattle squat, the majority of the work deals with the tempering of
souls in the peculiar crucible of the West (and to a
lesser extent, the upper Northwest). With its focus on tribulation and
redemption in the context of these particular environments, it is
almost impossible to avoid the comparison of Lizard with the
work of Cormac McCarthy.
Structurally, Gist sets himself a high bar,
presenting us with a series of shifting narratorial POVs—male, female;
Christian, iconoclast; first person, third person. Unfortunately, he
does not always clear the bar on the first jump. On occasion, the
voices of differing characters seem to adhere to a master voice, thus
fuzzing the individuality of certain characters. Given
Gist's obvious gifts as a writer, this isn't always a bad thing,
especially when he waxes effortlessly from plain prose to pulp to
poesy and back again. Lizard is an interesting read, often running on
the literary equivalent of two wheels as it rounds lexical and
theosophical corners seldom successfully traveled. We can't help but
wish that Gist had decided on a single narrative direction and stuck
with it. Still, we can't fault him for firing his rifle at the broad
and complex sky. (It's just so durn big and full of potential.)
The plot revolves around a primary character,
Jubal Siner, a hardened nihilistic skeptic if not a full-on cynic, and
it is Jubal's dark, expansive voice that we find threading its way
through the thought and speech of other characters. The character of
Jubal calls to mind the similar disenchanted narrators of Sartre's Nausea
and Hamsum's Hunger; however, in that this is a spiritual desperation
emblematic of the Americas, Gist's antihero owes more to Castenada and
the aforementioned McCarthy than to Sartre or Hamsun. As such,
salvation seems attainable though not necessarily at a light cost.
Potential readers should be warned: this is not a light read. Lizard
Dreaming of Birds displays the sweat inherent in American
spiritual pathlessness and the confused anguish that rises in the wake
of suicidal action. It is not a perfect book, but it is eminently
worth reading, if only for Gist's exceptional verbal suppleness.
Recommended.
