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Steve Erickson

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Arc d'X: A Novel Kindle Edition

by Steve Erickson (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.4 26 ratings

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In a desperate effort to liberate herself, a fourteen-year-old slave—mistress to the man who invented America—finds herself flung into a different time and world
Steve Erickson’s provocative reimagining of American history, Arc d’X begins with the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. With “skin . . . too white to be quite black and too black to be quite white,” Sally is loved only to the extent that she can be possessed, and finds hope only in the promise that her children’s lives will be different from her own. The couple’s paradox-riven union echoes through the ages and in an alternate epoch where time plays by other rules. In Aeonopolis, a theocratic city at the foot of a volcano, priests seek to have Sally indicted, and in an emptied-out Berlin, the Wall is being rebuilt. Dizzyingly imaginative, Arc d’X is an unrivaled exploration of “the pursuit of happiness.”

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Erickson, who has attracted a strong following with his three novels (the most recent was Tours of the Black Clock ) and the memoir Leap Year , has now written his most provocative novel yet, an apocalyptic narrative in which he yokes his grim vision of America to the exalted vision of Thomas Jefferson. The story opens in Paris, where Jefferson is serving as the new country's ambassador to France. The protagonist, however, is not the master of Monticello but Sally Hemings, the slave and concubine he has brought with him. A beautiful young woman with "skin that was too white to be quite black and too black to be quite white," Sally accepts her submission to Thomas, even as she makes him promise to free their children; for him, their relationship embodies all that is paradoxical in the new nation, as "it was the nature of American freedom that he was only free to take pleasure in something he possessed." Their bastard child, so to speak, is America, and soon enough the novel leaps forward two centuries, at least, to a dystopian Los Angeles that represents America at its most wayward. There the spirits of Sally and Thomas are made manifest through any number of characters, as well as through a talismanic stone and cryptic references to "the pursuit of happiness." Dark, chaotic, ruled by religious zealots and policed by Chandleresque lone gunmen, Erickson's dystopia is rather too familiarly rendered; and too often his prose simply disorients the reader when he means to explore the nature of disorientation. But he has written an undeniably prodigious work--its disjunct sentences opening up new worlds of expectation, its grave and agonized obsessions standing out in stark contrast to the lucid principles Jefferson set down in the Declaration of Independence. First serial to Esquire; author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Powerful but at times difficult, this book begins as a historical novel but soon becomes surreal and startlingly visionary. In Paris as the French Revolution seethes around him, Thomas Jefferson is torn between his lofty ideals and his undeniable passion for the quadroon slave Sally Hemmings. Sally's spirit reappears with dire consequences in Aeonopolis, a grim totalitarian city outside time because it sits beyond "the X of the arcs of history and the heart." Erickson's idiosyncratic myths are troubling but palpably real. His complex plot and unorthodox chronology may puzzle many readers, but the persistent recurrence of Jefferson's phrase, "the pursuit of happiness," provides a unifying thread. Erickson skillfully shows that for those in such pursuit, the impulses of freedom and love are frequently in conflict and ever so occasionally harmonious. Recommended for most collections.
- Albert E. Wilhelm, Tennessee Technological Univ., Cookeville
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

A bold and occasionally brilliant interpretation of American history--but marred by a too obvious cerebration that numbs, turning original ideas into mere conceits. Appropriating the rumored liaison between Thomas Jefferson and the slave Sally Hemings, Erickson (Tours of the Black Clock, 1989, etc.) makes that relationship not only a recurring event in the following centuries but uses it as a metaphor for a conflict between the heart and history. For Erickson, this relationship personifies Jefferson's inability to separate history--the need to further human freedom--from the ``pursuit of happiness''--the needs of his heart. This, the novel suggests, is the same conflict that has also shaped America's destiny. And beginning with Jefferson's childhood memory of a slave burned at the stake and ending as the millennium threatens cataclysmic disaster, this conflict is repeatedly reenacted and dissected. In settings that include revolutionary Paris; a sinister city-state ruled by the Primacy; and a millennial Berlin abandoned by most of its inhabitants, characters resembling the original lovers repeat their first encounter. There's a rape that becomes a lasting but flawed love reminding Jefferson of his dereliction of ideals, and Sally of her connivance in her continued enslavement. All encounters, whether in the Fleurs d'X, a bar in the red-light area of the Primacy, or in a deserted Berlin hotel are explorations of the intersection--the arc of x--between ``history's denial of the human heart,'' on the one hand, and, ``on the other, history's secret pursuit of the heart's expression.'' Which makes for relentless intellectualizing and even more constrained characters as America and the lovers never quite resolve their destructive contradictions, and the ``pursuit of happiness'' remains ``the most forbidden artifact of all.'' Much fine writing and many provocative ideas, but nothing connects--ever--even at the many proffered intersections. Clever but cold. (First serial to Esquire) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review

“A brilliantly imaginative novelist of the utmost seriousness and grace. As Arc d’X amply demonstrates, all too few contemporary talents are so admirably equipped for the deep lateral exploration of our dire and marvelous era.” —William Gibson “Steve Erickson is one of the two or three most exciting novelists in the world today, and Arc d’X is his most exciting novel.” —Tom Robbins “Flat-out amazing: an allegory about the nature of freedom, the varieties of slavery, and the ‘collision of time and memory called history.’ Erickson’s tour de force unfolds with pitiless logic, gleaming prose, passionate sympathy. Grade: A.” —Entertainment Weekly “A phantasmagoric tour de force, a brilliant, desperate, sheet-soaking nightmare of a novel.” —Time “As daring, crazy and passionate as any American writing since the Declaration of Independence.” —Thomas Pynchon

About the Author

Steve Erickson is the acclaimed author of several novels, including Tours of the Black Clock, The Sea Came in at Midnight, and Zeroville. Regarded as a central figure in the avant-pop movement, Erickson has been compared to J. G. Ballard and Don DeLillo, and praised by Thomas Pynchon, for his deeply imaginative fiction. In addition to his novels, he has published two works of nonfiction about American politics and culture and has written for the New York Times Magazine, Esquire, and Rolling Stone. The recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, he is presently the film critic for Los Angeles magazine and editor of the literary journal Black Clock.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00CADHIVO
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Open Road Media (April 30, 2013)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 30, 2013
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2377 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 383 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #1,148,208 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #2,504 in Alternative History
- #4,753 in Alternate History Science Fiction (Books)
- #5,192 in Cultural Heritage Fiction

Customer Reviews:
4.4 26 ratings

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Steve Erickson

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Steve Erickson is the author of ten novels — including DAYS BETWEEN STATIONS, TOURS OF THE BLACK CLOCK, ZEROVILLE and SHADOWBAHN — and three nonfiction works. His books have appeared on best-of-the-year lists in Newsweek, the Washington Post BookWorld, the Los Angeles Times, the Village Voice, the Believer, and the New York Times Book Review. Considered a writer's writer, he has been called "a maximal visionary" (Rick Moody), "a brilliantly imaginative novelist of the utmost seriousness and grace" (William Gibson), "one of the few American novelists open to the truly visionary" (Brian Evenson), "as unique and vital and pure a voice as American fiction has produced" (Jonathan Lethem), and "one of America's greatest living novelists" (Dana Spiotta). In 2021 the University Press of Mississippi issued CONVERSATIONS WITH STEVE ERICKSON as part of a series that includes William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, James Baldwin, William S. Burroughs and Toni Morrison, proclaiming Erickson "a subterranean literary figure...[whose] dream-fueled blend of European modernism, American pulp and paranoid late-century postmodernism makes him essential to an appreciation of the last 40 years of American fiction." Erickson was founding editor of the literary journal Black Clock and presently is a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Riverside; he also writes about film, television and music for Los Angeles magazine. He has received the American Academy of Arts and Letters' award in literature, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award.

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4.4 out of 5

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Arcadia

this book has ranked at the top of my all-time favorite novels list

Reviewed in the United States on August 29, 2014

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For more than 30 years, this book has ranked at the top of my all-time favorite novels list. A masterful work of imaginative fiction, it flings American history into the vortex of parallel universe theory with the wild abandon of a passionate lover, and in the act succeeds as few writers ever have in laying bare the raw, fragile, utterly human impuissance of a great man -- the founding father, adroit politician, and third American president Thomas Jefferson.

While most know of Jefferson's historical relationship with the black slave Sally Hemings, few have ever imagined a retelling of the story through a lens such as Erickson's. Passion, lust, and violence compete with dystopian sterility to define the nature of the characters who inhabit Erickson's fractured landscape. Hovering above is the ever-present Authoritarian church where men of equal failings seek to dominate all others through oppression/suppression of that one relentless spark of human persistence -- unbridled sexuality. And while for millennia men have sought to place the moral burden for sexual iniquity upon women, Erickson is twelve steps ahead, exploring the deeper implications of gender equality and competition, ownership and autonomy, lust and self control.

Most enticingly, Erickson asks the more intelligent questions: how are karmic debts repaid? How does a soul progress from a state a selfishness to one of compassion? When and where and how are we ever given a chance at redemption? Arc d'X answers with imaginative and provocative possibilities.

9 people found this helpful

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Melissa

Weird but good in it's way

Reviewed in the United States on July 29, 2019

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I don't even know how to respond to this book. It was confusing and weird. I like weird Nd confusing though. I think that I would have to read it again to grasp all the details i missed along the way which were brought up again near the end. The part in Germany i didn't really understand what was going on,
I think my mind blanked on something that came before that may have made it more clear.

One person found this helpful

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Michael P. McDonough

Mind bending and incredibly thought provoking.

Reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2015

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Steve Erickson is a titanic talent and deserving of far more recognition than he gets. Readers who like Pynchon, Haruki Murakami, Gaddes and "magical realism" will all find much to delight in this work that starts from a fictionalized version of the historical fact that Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson were "lovers" and soars into a spirited and imaginative trip across centuries to an America that could exist. Fantastically entertaining and well worth reading!

6 people found this helpful

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James E. Pacheco

Good book full of sex and other assorted craziness

Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2014

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It's a good book full of surreal scenery. Excellent read! I picked it and couldn't put it down till the gripping end.

5 people found this helpful

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Shane Tiernan

Surreal

Reviewed in the United States on April 12, 2001

Very surreal, with a lot of sex (but most of it used for atmosphere) and a continuously changing narrator that sometimes left me lost. But I loved it. My biggest piece of advice is that if you get bored in the middle, keep reading. Erickson ties everything up in the last 100 pages rather spectacularly.
Don't expect everything to make a lot of sense in this book. People suddenly end up in different times and different places just by walking down a hallway or into a field, characters are found dead in the middle of the novel and then show up in the end as a kind of flashback. Like I said, very surreal and dreamlike. It's not really sci-fi although some of it is set in a somewhat futuristic, noir dystopia.

4 people found this helpful

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Miss Ms K

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on September 30, 2016

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Excellent read!

2 people found this helpful

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Jason Galbraith

Unusual and Unforgettable

Reviewed in the United States on November 22, 2010

"Arc d'X" is conceived as the buildup to a sort of melding of different time periods, which a physicist, in a throwaway sequence, discovers will happen at the end of the second millenium. The major characters spend most of the movie living in separate and discrete centuries, then, at the end, their time periods mingle and they can come in contact with each other.

The three major periods depicted are 1999, the 1780's, and sometime during the Ice Age. Author Steve Erickson makes himself a character in the 1999 segment and at first we think this segment will be about his adventures, but a shocking twist deprives the reader of this. The main characters in the 1780's period are Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Much has been written about their relationship, but I think the reader will find Erickson's take on it (and what it could have led to had Jefferson been just a little more devoted to Sally) quite fresh.

The most interesting by far of the three major stories is the one set during the Ice Age. This is not a story about primitive hunter-gatherers but rather about a technological, urban civilization and the life and loves of one of its denizens, named Etcher. I was first made aware of the existence of this book by an ex-girlfriend in 1994, and Etcher's life story was sufficiently compelling that I gave the book not only to her, but to another woman I loved before her. The Erickson character in the 1999 sequence briefly refers to the "Big One" hitting California and unearthing remains of this civilization. I have spent a great deal of time thinking of other ways in which its existence could be discovered. For example, a computer program could be made to prove that a 10,000 year old hunk of corroded metal halfway between Siberia and Alaska is actually a railway car. That would be a fun story to write; but probably not as fun to read as this one was. Five stars.

5 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

N. Adams

Not without faults but definitely worth a read.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 8, 2012

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See the reviews on the US site to get an idea - note that there are no three star reviews; this is a book people seem to love and hate.
Erikson's prose can take some getting used to; dense and unconventional. Time is not entirely linear in the book. If you're looking for something that you can easily categorise, this isn't it. Ark d'X starts with a re imagining of Thomas Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemmings, his slave and the bold literary conceit of the concept of America being the bastard fruit of their union. Fragments of that relationship re-occur in other characters, places and times as Erikson tries to study ideas of love, duty, freedom and fate.
At times, the prose is overwrought, even torturous but worth sticking with if only for the dizzying ride through the surreal worlds that Erikson creates. His books linger in the mind for days. I've re-read some of his books several times and always found something in them to ponder. Although it's easy to come adrift in this book, it's certainly one of his most complete, I think.
Not a great novel, but a novel full of great ideas and some fantastic passages. If you like Murakami and Lethem and enjoy the more surreal, otherworldly elements of their writing, this is worth a try.

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