City of Saints and Madmen: (Ambergris)

Product Information

Ambergris began in 1992 with "Learning to Leave the Flesh", a short story conceived for the Clarion writers' workshop at Michigan State University. Although it does not reference the city directly, it mentions locations that would reappear in later work, such as Albumuth Boulevard and the River Moth. Considered a "proto-Ambergris story" by the author, "Learning to Leave the Flesh" wouldn't be included in the book until its 2004 edition. Also, I'll let him choose the sheer physical size of his canvas or board. Size doesn’t matter when it comes to building worlds.

This is excellent stuff. Jeff VanderMeer takes influence from the baroque, surreal fantasists of yesteryear, such as Mervyn Peake, Lord Dunsany, or even H.P. Lovecraft (in his less horrific moments), and combines this influence with the more modern elements of steampunk and urban fantasy that can be seen in authors like China Mieville. Out of this mix, he has created his own world, which mostly focuses on the city of Ambergris, a sprawling riverside land that has fallen into functional anarchy after decades of benign neglect by its rulers. In these four novellas, Ambergris is the true main character, rather than any of the people who appear in the stories, and it's the unique elements of Ambergris--the "mushroom dwellers", Albumuth Boulevard, famous composer Voss Bender, Hoegbotton and Sons, etc.--that give this book its narrative unity, despite focusing on completely different characters from one story to another. "Dradin In Love" starts things off with a tale of an apostate priest who has come to Ambergris in search of a job and finds love, in the form of a woman he spies through a third-story window. We are first introduced to Ambergris through the naive and quite possibly insane eyes of Dradin, and what we see colors our opinion both of the city and of Dradin himself. The second story, "The Hoegbotton Guide To The Early History of Ambergris by Duncan Shriek", is completely different in tone, purporting to be a historical overview of Ambergris and maintaining that tone throughout the main text. Said main text is subverted, however, by copious footnotes in which we learn more and more about the character who authors the historical overview, Duncan Shriek. His feuds with other historians and personal place in the history of Ambergris is slowly illuminated through these footnotes, and they make an already interesting fictional history far more entertaining. The third story, "The Transfiguration Of Martin Lake", combines elements of the first two stories, switching as it does from art criticism penned by Janice Shriek, giving a detailed analysis of the major paintings of Martin Lake for yet another Hoegbotton Guide, to a narrative about the life of Martin Lake, specifically an episode that sheds light on why he painted the things he did in the first place. Finally, we end with "The Strange Case of 'X'", a shorter story with an atmosphere of creeping horror and an entertaining if somewhat predictable twist ending. This is the least substantial of the four stories here, and although it is entertaining, it's not as fascinating as the world-building and the mysterious twilight atmosphere of the three preceding stories. In the Hours After Death: Is Nicholas Sporlender the Ambergris manifestation of X? Possibly. But that doesn’t go far in helping me discern the meaning of In the Hours After Death. This is the only story where I feel cut adrift. They hyperreal elements are undeniable, coming as they do from a literary magazine, but what of the walking dead, the adrift soul? Perhaps that is what it means. I wonder if it will come clearer next time I read City of Saints and Madmen. I got the impression that The Strange Case of X was supposed to be a sort of surprising twist story, forcing us to question our assumptions about the nature of reality versus fantasy. However, right from the beginning, I assumed the twist--I’m not saying I cleverly figured it out, but that it never occurred to me that the story might end any other way. It would be as if a story ended with the revelation ‘he was a dog all along!’, when earlier stories were all from the point of view of dogs, and the story in question kept mentioning leashes and chew toys. Perhaps if it were read in isolation, it would work better, but when collected alongside other Ambergris stories, it's hard to imagine reading it any other way.

WARNING: This is not really a review, but City of Saints and Madmen requires something else entirely, and there may be a spoiler or two, but considering the book's form I doubt that will matter.* Whether or not “X” is an alter ego, he has written works with the same titles as components of COSAM.

Probably the most accurate thing I can say about the book is that it's clever. In fact, relentlessly clever, and not always in a good way. It starts off well enough, with a fairly straightforward story ("Dradin in Love") introducing the gritty and complex city. The writing is good, and there are all sorts of in-jokes (I presume I missed many). I found the story dragged a bit, though the ending was strong.With both Wolfe and Vandermeer, you often find yourself going; "Hmm, I thought this was odd, or that rang a bell, but I didn't quite see it at the time. I see now that the author had been teasing me all along." Such lunacy is, of course, tragic and sad in a personage of such raw literary talent, but it is an ancient axiom that genius and madness are the most loving of bedmates. It's not that I don't see it--the book certainly has the right markers: the self-awareness, the meta-fictions, the ironies and self-contradictions, the allusions and in-jokes, the big, rearing ugliness of modern literature. And yet to say that it has those markers doesn't mean much--it's like saying that a math book has equations, it doesn't mean that they add up to anything. Yes, the history of Ambergris is seeped in tragedy and blood and potentially carnivorous fungi, but it remains the cultural, religious, and political hub of the mostly-discovered world, the global headquarters of the one true religion, Truffidism, as well as a scientific haven for squidologists world-wide (many of whom are escaping persecution and ostracism from other realms, perhaps justly deserved). The detail in the stories is lush and rich and entirely believable, and amazingly, it doesn’t get in the way of the main action.

I'm intrigued as to where the city is set, or shall I say, which real-world location it is based on. Yet, there is a need in us to keep going, to keep carving away at our work--especially when we see the errors in it, which we always do. Once you've passed that point of no return, where each additional mark just muddles it a little bit more, it can be almost impossible to stop, to salvage something from it. Much easier to start over--and usually, to make the same mistake again. Shriek is playful, witty and fun; his most fun footnote indulgence is the war of words he seems to have going with his more extreme competitors: the state supporting, conservative Sabon and the state criticizing, “functional anarchist” Lacond. Whatever their form, they represent the aggressive, threatening Other, the Alien, the Aggressor, the part of our Selves that threatens to undermine and destroy us.

For me, a simple juxtaposition is not enough. You don’t sit two or more characters together, unless you expect some chemical reaction to occur and your expectation is satisfied. His elements are all more overtly connected to the theme of Ambergris, a city that doesn’t seem to be as developed as the modern world, but still doesn’t seem to resemble any city from the past, apart from aspects of the Byzantine Empire. Whether the entire story is an expression of Dradin’s psychosis or Dradin is merely psychotic within a crazy story, madness, as the title of VanderMeer’s book suggests, is an integral part of Ambergris. I can’t wait to move on to the History. The Cage" is short, yet very visceral and effective. Probably the most overt horror story of the collection, though they're all varying levels of depraved.