"A deep insight into a person"

Otto de Kat's novel is a "stream of consciousness" novel. It doesn't have a plot like the more common novel. Instead, it is commentary of what the narrator thinks, revealing some of the narrator's memories and impressions. There are other characters in the book, the narrator's father, his mother, brother, several friends, some identified by names, some by code letters, but the narrator is by far the main character. The narrator has a lot to say about his father, whom he loved very much. Otto de Kat writes in the first person, which makes one think the novel is autobiographical, but the publisher listed it as fiction. Perhaps this book is partly autobiographical, partly fiction. Either way, there is a theme in it, a point of view the author wants to get across. The publisher calls this book "a hypnotic novel, told with a cinematic cross-cutting that suspends the reader in the cobwebs of memory and longing that haunt the narrator." I can see that it's going to be hard to find the theme.

Otto de Kat studied theology and literature in Europe. He published poetry and worked as a literary critic before writing this, his first novel. Otto de Kat's poetic side shows in some very vivid scenes worded in a way that makes you almost see what he is describing. The best scene is a description of the narrator, his father, and brother ice skating along a frozen river near their home. I can still see the image: three of them bent over and silent, their hands behind their backs, single file, taking long rhythmic strokes so much in unison that the narrator could easily have placed his hand against his father's hand. The narrator misses his father terribly. His father died young at fifty-nine years old. The narrator says that, through the years, there grew an almost imperceptible desire to cling to his father, like coral to a reef. The narrator realized "His desire to become lost in somebody else was becoming relentless. A form of immaturity." He felt a similar way with his friends and, sometimes, with beautiful women he encountered. This novel is not very cheerful. It shows an unfulfilled side of the narrator, a gloomy, pessimistic view of life.

The narrator touches on religion in a way that makes it obvious he does not believe. That, coupled with his feeling of emptiness, prompts one to wonder what is the driving force in the narrator's mind (or what is the author's theme). The narrator says he feels like "a vanishing speck in the terror of infinite space." He would like to melt into the crowd. "Nothing he believed suited him."

Concerning religion, the narrator said that when he put on his black gown, at Cambridge, to say the Latin grace, he thought "It was a sarcastic mockery. A masquerade." The narrator and his friend, Roy Dawson, when discussing Protestant earnestness, concluded "that the clank of billiard balls hitting one another was more edifying than the psalmody of a professional parson." The narrator remembers how rankled his father became hearing in a sermon that the rich young man "who had been so keen to follow Jesus should have been sent away, sorrowful, told to sell everything he possessed." The narrator opines: "Religion tries to lull us to sleep, science tries to keep us awake and art has gone completely off the rails." The narrator thought that prayers were empty, like the incantations of a rainmaker, nothing but words reaching into the dark: "Father, I am here, where are you?"

Strange that someone who studied theology should express so little understanding about God. This theme is typical of modern Western thought. I can sympathize with the narrator's anguish. Many people feel the same way. The narrator quotes the story of the rich young man in the wrong sequence. The young man was not sent away and then told to sell everything he possessed. He was told to sell what he possessed and then come with Jesus. Would a man like the narrator, who has a relentless desire to become lost in someone else, who felt nothing he believed suited him--would he have been willing to sell everything he possessed and go with Jesus?

Otto de Kat's novel tells the journey of a wounded soul, longing for immortality, for communion with his departed father, for something to cling to like coral to a reef. One thought that occurred to me is that what the narrator longs for has already been offered, if only he could recognize it.

Reviewed by Maurice A. Williams
Posted April 14, 2003