How Time Flies

...How Time Flies The Scorpion God By William Golding Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 178 pp $5 95 Reviewed by Peter Glassgold Editor, New Directions For lovers of the genre, reading good historical fiction, like savoring rare wine, is an exquisite, almost decadent pleasure Being a weekend bibbler ot historical fiction whose discreet little sprees have kept him sane through difficult days, I thus opened William Golding's The Scorpion God with the tense anticipation known only to the gormandizer who holds himself under tight rein And, to be sure, the three novellas contained in this collection proved smoothly written, the tempo of the plots was near perfect—just what one would expect from a storyteller of Golding's undeniable craft A faulty historical base, however, undermined the whole "The Scorpion God," the title work, unfolds in what the author clearly believes to be an accurate reproduction of predynastic Egypt Yet he has constructed his tale upon a number of blundering anachronisms and dubious suppositions For example, the sacred King—who is thought to support the sky and make the river rise and fall—is called "Great House," a literal translation ot the hieroglyphic per-aa Unfortunately, this epithet, known to us more familiarly as "pharaoh," originally referred simply to the royal residence, and only later, in the 18th Dynasty (1570-1303 BC), came to be applied to the King's person Golding's claim on authenticity is further weakened by his handling ot the Egyptian custom of dynastic incest Now, it is well known that sibling marriage in the royal family was condoned, and practiced by some, but by no means all, of the pharaohs (Of course in Ptolemaic times, 323-30 BC, unions of this sort became obligatory, but the Ptolemies were ot Macedonian origin, spoke Greek exclusively, and cannot be taken as embodying the normative behavior of the 30 native ruling dynasties that preceded them ) Golding, turning the incest taboo entirely around, makes sexual relations among all members of the royal house the accepted pattern, so that sex with "strangers" is thought alluringly exotic Consider, then, the plight of poor Princess Pretty Flower Repelled by the very idea of going to bed with her little brother, the Prince, a sniveling "little runt," she is humiliated to boot when her father, the Great House himself, ignores her erotic advances What to do...

...Happily, at the end of the novelette the King is dead and the Prince is unwilling to accept the royal power...

...Pretty Flower succumbs to the enticements of the court jester, Liar, who puts himself forward as the new Great House ("The Man who holds the high seat in this country is the man who has you, strange and beautiful woman, for his bed He could burn up the banks of this river from one end to the other, until all men living by it were bowing to your beauty Supposing 1 were Great House...

...The second piece in the collection, "Clonk Clonk," is set in the auspicious prehistoric landscape that the author used so effectively in his full-length novel The Inheritors Disappointingly, it turns out to be simply another version ot "The Ugly Duckhng"/"Cinderella" motit, or, if you will, "The Little Engine Who Could " In this case the hero is a crippled tribal outcast, abandoned by his fellow hunters, he triumphs at last as the chosen mate ot the chief matriarch and is acclaimed by all Golding's fable is infused with details derived from several entertaining but debatable hypotheses, such as the matriarchal theory of social origins (which here accounts for an ignorance of sexual paternity and a pervasive male terror of vagina den-tata), the alleged bisexuahty of the human species, the importance ot personal names and naming rituals among primitives, and the remarkable coordination of the all-male hunting pack This totals up to a pleasant hour's diversion, but one hardly worth the price of the book "Envoy Extraordinary," the third and final piece, was adapted a few years ago into a play called The Brass Butterfly, it had a short run and received generally poor reviews Reading the narrative version, one can see why For all its neat segmentation into five parts, complete with outrageous climax, unpredictable denouement, and punchy conclusion, it is more slapstick than witty and might have been better served by The Three Stooges than by Ahstair Sim, who directed and starred in the production The story's background is the Greco-Roman island retreat of a certain unnamed emperor Phanocles, an inventor from Alexandria, comes to demonstrate his discoveries the pressure-cooker, the steamboat, gunpowder Only the first of these interests our wise, epicurean Caesar Nevertheless, he permits the Alexandrian to build a full-scale paddle-wheel vessel and a primitive cannon, with (surprise') disastrous results A fleet destroyed, the island harbor in smoke, Phanocles begs for another chance, and reveals a fourth invention the printing press Thereupon the emperor immediately dispatches him to China as Envoy Extraordinary Presumably this is why the Roman Empire first declined, then fell, while on the other side ot the world the Chinese, under the T'ang Dynasty, prospered I have spent some time blooding on the possible reasons lor the publisher's decision to bring out The Scorpion God Perhaps the American rights were at stake, and the stones were collected to prevent them from falling into the public domain, or to discourage pirated editions More likely, the idea was to boost Goldmg's popularity, which has been declining steadily since it peaked with Lord of the Flies It would have been better, I think, to let the author's reputation coast a little further without interference than to hasten its descent with the likes of The Scorpion God...