Terrence Holt - In the Valley of the Kings
From the moment we begin to think, we order, we assemble, we look for patterns to make the inexplicable world around us bearable. It is why Adam, alone in the garden, felt the need to name the beasts him saw, even with no one to communicate with, with no need for names at all except his own desire to make the world make sense.
It is why Terrence Holt, author of the collection “In the Valley of the Kings,” became a writer, then a doctor, then a writer again. It is the attempt to discover where we come from, in the hope that it will tell us where we are going, to see how we break, in order that we might be mended.
Holt’s stories follow characters who are intimately entwined with narrative. They each seek meaning in the world around them and each is confronted with the necessity to create narrative from within.
“They’re about the moment-by-moment process by which our brains convince us that the world exists,” Holt says of the stories in this collection, “and the gaps in that process as well.”
In these stories, the search for narrative becomes a quest, and an often futile one. His protagonists, always the narrators of his stories, are unnamed. Their identities are as unclear as their place in the world. They are constantly striving after something, some idea that just barely eludes explanation.
In “Charybdis,” an astronaut on a doomed mission to Jupiter is simply searching for a word, he says, and finds it within the hold of his ship near the end of his course, but his epiphany leaves him no more assured or comforted than when he started.
The narrator of “Aurora,” again set adrift in space has all the words he needs, but he cannot say how he knows them. Something else chases him around the rings of Saturn, some awareness that he cannot name, some lust for an unknown goal.
“It is not what I do not know: it is that I want to know,” he says. “Nor is it that: it is why I want to know. Nor is it that: it is who might want to know it. It is not that: it is not that: not that, nor that, nor that, nor that.”
Neither is this narrator vindicated at his story’s climax, but it is the search for meaning, the naming of things and ideas that pushes him onward and compels him to make what effort he can to steer the course of his destiny.
This is another prong of Holt’s stories: his characters, though irrevocably damned, find solace if not actual deliverance in the exercise of their volition, the manipulation of their own narrative. Such is the case in “Scylla,” about a ship’s captain who finds the world softened and stripped of meaning by a force called “the Law.” The nature of the Law is such that the means and even the desire to fight it are removed from its victims’ lives. It is simply by accepting the Law that it is allowed to work; it is an idea that enacts itself. The protagonist, in exercising his volition, in denying that a word can hold sway over him, finds the closest thing to victory appearing in Holt’s work.
On the contrary, those who surrender to their fate, who do not seek to make their own meaning, suffer the most. The narrator of the title story follows the trail of an ancient narrative, thinking that it will redeem or even empower him. He does not seek to create narrative, nor take the time to analyze it, only to allow himself to fall into the narrative and let it run its course. But as he finds in a tomb below ground, some stories are only traps and little in the world adheres to rules which fall under our understanding.
This subtle existential horror is present throughout Holt’s book. He never stops to bemoan the plight of man, nor to spell out the presence of this hopelessness, but the atmosphere of every story is dark and suffocating, offering no hope save what can be created by its characters. In their search for meaning, his narrators, at least the wise ones, discover that none exists, that meaning cannot be found but must be made. It is in this way that Holt defies the comparisons so commonly made between himself and Poe or Lovecraft. In their stories, external forces beset their characters, robbing them of their minds. But in Holt’s work, the mind is a defense, not a liability. Though the mind and its facility for capturing meaning may be corrupted to work for its own destruction, it also offers a way out of the pit.
In the book, Holt is obsessed with the ends of things: of lives, of journeys, of worlds. But the beginnings of things are left unaccounted for. The origin of the plague which threatens humanity in the book’s opening story is never explained, nor is the reason for the mission to Jupiter in “Charybdis,” nor why the world is ending in “Apocalypse.” The world, as presented by Holt, simply exists. There are no reasons to be found for circumstances, the only thing of importance is how his characters choose to react to the meaningless chasm before them. The chasm persists regardless; its birth is of no import to Holt. He wants to explore the death of it.
Holt’s stories all center around some unnamed, undefined object. It is a black hole at the center of every story, drawing plot and character inexorably in. But this object never seems like a gap, like something left out of the work. For the action of each story circles the object constantly, much as his astronaut characters are caught in the orbital gravity of the outer planets. By the description of this movement around the object’s perimeter, the reader is made aware of the object’s shape, if not its nature.
It is why Terrence Holt, author of the collection “In the Valley of the Kings,” became a writer, then a doctor, then a writer again. It is the attempt to discover where we come from, in the hope that it will tell us where we are going, to see how we break, in order that we might be mended.
Holt’s stories follow characters who are intimately entwined with narrative. They each seek meaning in the world around them and each is confronted with the necessity to create narrative from within.
“They’re about the moment-by-moment process by which our brains convince us that the world exists,” Holt says of the stories in this collection, “and the gaps in that process as well.”
In these stories, the search for narrative becomes a quest, and an often futile one. His protagonists, always the narrators of his stories, are unnamed. Their identities are as unclear as their place in the world. They are constantly striving after something, some idea that just barely eludes explanation.
In “Charybdis,” an astronaut on a doomed mission to Jupiter is simply searching for a word, he says, and finds it within the hold of his ship near the end of his course, but his epiphany leaves him no more assured or comforted than when he started.
The narrator of “Aurora,” again set adrift in space has all the words he needs, but he cannot say how he knows them. Something else chases him around the rings of Saturn, some awareness that he cannot name, some lust for an unknown goal.
“It is not what I do not know: it is that I want to know,” he says. “Nor is it that: it is why I want to know. Nor is it that: it is who might want to know it. It is not that: it is not that: not that, nor that, nor that, nor that.”
Neither is this narrator vindicated at his story’s climax, but it is the search for meaning, the naming of things and ideas that pushes him onward and compels him to make what effort he can to steer the course of his destiny.
This is another prong of Holt’s stories: his characters, though irrevocably damned, find solace if not actual deliverance in the exercise of their volition, the manipulation of their own narrative. Such is the case in “Scylla,” about a ship’s captain who finds the world softened and stripped of meaning by a force called “the Law.” The nature of the Law is such that the means and even the desire to fight it are removed from its victims’ lives. It is simply by accepting the Law that it is allowed to work; it is an idea that enacts itself. The protagonist, in exercising his volition, in denying that a word can hold sway over him, finds the closest thing to victory appearing in Holt’s work.
On the contrary, those who surrender to their fate, who do not seek to make their own meaning, suffer the most. The narrator of the title story follows the trail of an ancient narrative, thinking that it will redeem or even empower him. He does not seek to create narrative, nor take the time to analyze it, only to allow himself to fall into the narrative and let it run its course. But as he finds in a tomb below ground, some stories are only traps and little in the world adheres to rules which fall under our understanding.
This subtle existential horror is present throughout Holt’s book. He never stops to bemoan the plight of man, nor to spell out the presence of this hopelessness, but the atmosphere of every story is dark and suffocating, offering no hope save what can be created by its characters. In their search for meaning, his narrators, at least the wise ones, discover that none exists, that meaning cannot be found but must be made. It is in this way that Holt defies the comparisons so commonly made between himself and Poe or Lovecraft. In their stories, external forces beset their characters, robbing them of their minds. But in Holt’s work, the mind is a defense, not a liability. Though the mind and its facility for capturing meaning may be corrupted to work for its own destruction, it also offers a way out of the pit.
In the book, Holt is obsessed with the ends of things: of lives, of journeys, of worlds. But the beginnings of things are left unaccounted for. The origin of the plague which threatens humanity in the book’s opening story is never explained, nor is the reason for the mission to Jupiter in “Charybdis,” nor why the world is ending in “Apocalypse.” The world, as presented by Holt, simply exists. There are no reasons to be found for circumstances, the only thing of importance is how his characters choose to react to the meaningless chasm before them. The chasm persists regardless; its birth is of no import to Holt. He wants to explore the death of it.
Holt’s stories all center around some unnamed, undefined object. It is a black hole at the center of every story, drawing plot and character inexorably in. But this object never seems like a gap, like something left out of the work. For the action of each story circles the object constantly, much as his astronaut characters are caught in the orbital gravity of the outer planets. By the description of this movement around the object’s perimeter, the reader is made aware of the object’s shape, if not its nature.