Second Helpings from the Smorgasbord

Back to Silverlock. Still the first chapter, still swimming for our lives...

The stranger clinging to the mast is the survivor of a different shipwreck. He informs Shandon that his ship ran afoul of the Maelstrom and that by diving for the spar they hold, he wasn't dragged down with the rest. This is a reference to the short story, "A Descent into the Maelstrom" by Edgar Allen Poe, which is well worth the pause to read.

When Shandon asks the stranger where they are, the stranger replies, "Somewhere off the Commonwealth is the best I can tell you." He is referring to The Commonwealth of Letters, first named in the play "The Forced Marriage" by Molière (the link takes you to a book of his plays, translated into English from the original French; this one starts on page 215). According to "A Reader's Guide to the Commonwealth" by Fred Lerner and Anne Braude, the Commonwealth of Letters comprises the classics of world literature considered as a body.

Aha! So having met the two main characters, though we know very little about either, we now have the setting of the novel. It takes place in a land which consists of all the great classics of literature... All at the same time. Though there is a certain loose geographical conformity to sequential time as it relates to literary genre--did that even make sense to someone reading this? Maybe I'll attach a graphic of the map once we get that far. (The juxtaposition of some of the different sources has the feel of, as The Doctor says, "wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff." I refer to Doctor Who, which sadly post-dates Silverlock--I'd love to see The Doctor in such a setting.) And while Silverlock might still have been an amusing fantasy novel if it were shorn of all its literary references, it is a truly great picaresque because Myers has opened the door to use elements from ALL of literature (including older picaresques, which makes those sections of Silverlock a sort of meta-picaresque).

[I will interject a note here: Another story which uses a variant on this Commonwealth of Letters setting conceit is the much more recent Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde, though in that series there is an actual (if somewhat nebulous) dividing line between the real world and the world of literature.]

Shandon's companion takes a sort of satisfaction in Shandon's company; it means something to him. He says that he had been worried that land wouldn't be close enough, but since Shandon has come along, they are getting somewhere. "It ties things together in right Delian fashion." My take on this is that nothing happens to literary characters unless readers (external to the story) dive in and experience the adventure beside them--so Shandon's arrival is the motivating force for an adventure with the stranger, and the Commonwealth can't be far away. As for the 'Delian' reference, the stranger refers to the oracle of Delian Apollo. I'll leave that alone for the moment, as it has significance later in the story.

This time, I've managed to cover less than one page of Silverlock. Next time, we can discover the identity of the stranger and his role in the novel, while still clinging to a spar and treading water. When we finally manage to make it to land (I'm guessing at least two or three blog entries from now), we'll have finished the first chapter. I hope this inspires someone to read Silverlock with me and to play the reference game!