leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper) (07/31/85)
THE GOD OF THE LABYRINTH by Colin Wilson
Mayflower, 1974, $1.95.
A book review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Colin Wilson--whose science fiction has some
intriguing ideas--comes a cropper with his philosophical sex novel. His
character investigates a famous rake as well as a number of odd sexual
cults, and draws some dull conclusions on the nature of the sex drive.
I like Colin Wilson's science fiction in part because of the sheer
audaciousness of his explanations for why people do what they do. In one of
his novels, THE MIND PARASITES, he says that people who formulate degenerate
philosophies--people like the Marquis de Sade--do so because we are
inhabited by parasitic aliens who feed off of negative thought. The idea of
a being so alien that it feeds off of a philosophy and which turns the
course of human philosophy in order to feed is just crazy enough to be fun.
It turned the book into a sort of WAR OF THE WORLDS in which most of the
battles are not in the countryside but physically in the minds of the
characters. Wilson did some unusual things with a science fiction novel.
For quite some time I wanted to see what he did with a sex novel. The book
is THE GOD OF THE LABYRINTH, copyright 1970.
What a disappointment! In Wilson's science fiction, he uses science
fiction concepts the keep the plot flowing. THE GOD OF THE LABYRINTH has a
much weaker storyline and Wilson uses sex to attempt to keep the reader
interested. It does not work. The story is about a literary person much
like Wilson who is hired by a publishing house much like Grove Press to
gather some information about a famous rake much like Frank Harris.
(Actually Wilson deliberately blurs the distinction between himself and
Gerard Sorme, the character, by attributing one of his own books to Sorme.
In an afterword, it is unclear if he is writing as Wilson or Sorme when he
describes his experiences with pornography and the law.) It seems the
publisher wants to put a thin veneer of respectability on a weak piece of
pornography. The more Sorme delves into the life of Esmond Donelly, the
more possessed by Donelly's character he becomes. Sorme extends his study
to a number of strange organizations and cults with odd sexual theories and,
in particular, the Cult of the Phoenix, a sort of Hell Fire Club. Sorme is
a rationalist, at least to the degree that he does not believe in instinct
and wants to find rational explanations for his sexual drive. The book
involves to a great degree his "experimental" investigations into sex.
Yawn. There is some minimal intrigue as he collects information about the
secret Cult of the Phoenix, but mostly the book is just the descriptions of
weird encounter sessions. Sorme's revelations on the nature of the sex
drive are far less profound than the author would have us believe.
With the exception of a few "stimulating" sex scenes, THE GOD OF THE
LABYRINTH is pretty dull. The afterword, however, gives a cogent and
intelligent argument against censorship which is better than the main body
of the book, and is as timely today as when it was written. In a nutshell,
he says sex criminals he has investigated (and he investigated many for his
books) seem to be more the product of sexual inhibition than sexual
openness. Suppression of pornography, he feels, would increase the number
of cases of people rebelling against the "forbidden-ness" of sexual activity
by turning to sexual crime. (No flames, please, I am only quoting Wilson.
I don't want to become embroiled in a discussion that has gone on in depth
elsewhere on the Net.)
Mark R. Leeper
...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper