Pilgermann

Pilgermann is a complex and somewhat (purposefully) confused portrayal of death and theology. The story involves the final year (maybe two) in the life of a Jewish doctor--he names himself Pilgermann--during the early years of the First Crusade. Pilgermann's story involves sin, punishment (not for the sin of adultery, but for "the" Jewish sin of Christ's crucifixion), pilgrimage, near-death experiences, a significant theological/artistic undertaking, and final life-and-death encounters. Hoban delves deep into all three Abrahamic religions to provide the foundation for this book. His prose is dense and hard to read, but regularly shows brilliance and provides astonishing insights. The book is truly amazing in its depth of knowledge--I regularly stopped to read other material for sources--and in its base humanity. It resonates with anger for the injustices of life, and is blunt in the extreme in its portrayal of death. And yet, I found the story compelling and positive in its whole. Pilgermann is a small character in spirit and accomplishment, a lonely man that seems to have no real past or future. Is he representative of humanity in general, or simply the more cynical and defeated among us? When he is not just passing unanimated through life, he is captured by the present. He is often overwhelmed by the huge universe about him. His only real interest in life seems to be a single encounter with a woman at the beginning of the book. As his story unfolds, it seems that Pilgermann comes to no significant clarity in his life, but is regularly filled with amazing insights and depth of knowledge. This is a book that asks very serious questions, and forces the reader to provide answers. Pilgermann has very little in common with Hoban's Riddley Walker, a book that I have treasured since my youth. The English here is clear, but the story much more complex. Hoban has once again provided a very serious and signficant gem, but on a completely different plane of existence.

Hoban's adult work (which consists are far too few books) is among some of the most brilliant literature I have read, and Riddley Walker and Pilgermann are my favorites. Perhaps less comprehensible then RW, Pilgermann is a narrative of the perpetual quest for that which is unattainable (and this is far too simplistic an explanation for an author who clearly burns through Jung for pleasure reading). The story beings centuries after the main character has died (but continues to exist in one form or another) and recounts his attempts at making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. I am leaving out far too much because the story is filled with a dark and unexplainable nature that sometimes comes out as terribly violent, cruel, or simply boggling. The narrator of course is sidetracked in his quest, sold into slavery (he is made a eunich too incidentally), but at last comes to a certain acceptance of the moment, despite his own wish to continue along on his journey. The story becomes caught up in the construction of 'hidden lion', a massive tile design which becomes a sacred object to the community. From here, Hoban analyses one of his most haunting themes--that of the sacred entering into the common place, it's dilution, and finally it's inevitable desicration. It would be a spoiler to say that much more of the plot itself, but in style the books reads very much as some apocryphal Christian work. There is much citing from the Quran and the book includes a 'reference' page of biblical and other religious references. Ultimately though, Pilergmann is the strangest religiously grounded work I have ever read, making Gnostic works which freaked out Philip K. Dick so much seem comparitively normal. At it's best, Pilgermann captures the hopes and fears of the all-too-small human animal who has only mistakenly assumed that he has the world under his control.