The revitalisation of mythology, which has been a feature of Indian English literature of the last several years, is also part of a global movement. At its heart appears to lie a craving for old-fashioned heroes who, however, overcome moral categories of good and bad, right and wrong, and simply overwhelm us with their sheer force of character, made vivid in their physicality. This is the spirit that has re-moulded comic book figures like Batman and Superman into ‘dark knights’ and ‘men of steel’; that has spawned Game of Thrones and other sagas dedicated to power-play; and which animates this new book by the Irish writer, Colm Tóibín — a retelling of the story of King Agamemnon and his murderous family.
In Greek myth, Agamemnon is the king who leads Achilles and the rest of the Greek army to demolish Troy and recover the abducted Helen. Prior to setting out, however, he sacrifices his daughter, Iphigenia, to the gods he worships, deceiving his wife, Clytemnestra, in order to accomplish this. She does not forgive him, and eventually, when a victorious Agamemnon comes home from the battle, he is in turn manipulated and murdered by Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. But Agamemnon’s other daughter is Electra, and she avenges her father’s death by seeing to it that her mother dies at the hands of her son, Electra’s brother, Orestes. And so the story goes on, in various versions, as is usual in mythology.
Mechanics of violence
Now, this kind of material can be dealt with in one of two ways. The first is to mine it for literary entertainment and psychological insights, to develop a sympathetic understanding of the vast and truly tragi-comic human fallibility on display. This is the approach of traditional myth-based literature, from
Milton to Shakespeare to Robert Graves and beyond. The same approach also underpins the scientific statement of, say, Freud’s ‘Electra Complex’. In this way, mythological stories are laughed at, or lamented, or dissected, which is perhaps not very different from the spirit in which they were originally told.
But the second approach to myth is, I submit, unique to our times. It is to be quite uninterested in what lies behind the folly of the characters —and to be utterly captivated instead by the bodies and the blood. Herein, Agamemnon and Co. are not seen as blunderers, but awesome specimens of men and women, acting on impulses that are not noted for their pettiness, but reverenced. Tóibín’s book is of this kind.
It is an easy read, because he writes English well, but mostly because there is little here to challenge the reader. When one already knows the story being told,and the writer has not played with the narrative in any significant way, it begs the question why the book was written. At the very least, the novelisation of a myth ought to open up the interiority of its characters.
Yet a meaningful interiority is conspicuously absent in this book, even though Tóibín frequently employs the first person voice. He is not really interested in why Electra was so attached to her father that her mother’s grief or the loss of her sister could not sway her; or how Orestes felt about stabbing his mother, or in any of the family relationships and psychological complexities. He is too entranced by the mechanics of the acts of violence and betrayal themselves.
House of Names is therefore replete with cryptic exteriority; descriptions of movement and posture that sound like this: “Once, as they were sitting together, Aegisthus came into the room and made a gesture to her that he did not expect Orestes to notice. As his mother tried to return to the topic under discussion, he could see that she was no longer concentrating on him. Soon, she made an excuse, saying that she would have to go and deal with the servants. But Orestes did not believe her; he knew it was something serious.” And hammy dialogue, presented with gravitas, like this: “‘You made us sit and eat while his body lay there, and then pretend that we had not witnessed your pleasure. You made us live as though nothing had happened. You frightened us into silence.’ ‘That’s enough!’ Theodotus shouted at Mitros.”
Offering to the gods
It is all rather underwhelming for the reader, especially since, when it comes to the exteriority of violence and power-play, no book can compete with shows like Game of Thrones .
What finally motivated House of Names is therefore unclear, but we can only conclude that it is the same impulse that lies behind fan-fiction. It seems that Tóibín (who in his 2012 book, The Testament of Mary , had attacked the Christian gospel story) has now grown so enamoured of the gods of human lusts who run through the Greek myths that he simply felt bound to make his own offering to them. For the reader, it is best avoided.
The writer is a novelist whose most recent book is The Persecution of Madhav Tripathi.
