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Silverlock
Join an unlikely hero as he watches Moby-Dick sink the Pequod, dodges cannibals on Robinson Crusoe's island, raises a glass with Beowulf, and literally goes to Hell and back.
This rollicking adventure begins with a shipwreck on an island where notable characters of literature, history, and folklore coexist — Hamlet and Oedipus, Don Quixote and Doctor Faustus, Becky Sharp and Daniel Boone. From carousing with Robin Hood to crossing swords with the Green Knight and stealing a ride on Huck Finn's raft, our traveler, A. Clarence Shandon, undertakes a whirlwind tour of the classics.
And just as the truths of great stories ennoble those who take them to heart, a selfish and cynical drifter is transformed into the gallant knight known as Silverlock.
This rollicking adventure begins with a shipwreck on an island where notable characters of literature, history, and folklore coexist — Hamlet and Oedipus, Don Quixote and Doctor Faustus, Becky Sharp and Daniel Boone. From carousing with Robin Hood to crossing swords with the Green Knight and stealing a ride on Huck Finn's raft, our traveler, A. Clarence Shandon, undertakes a whirlwind tour of the classics.
And just as the truths of great stories ennoble those who take them to heart, a selfish and cynical drifter is transformed into the gallant knight known as Silverlock.
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1949
83 people are currently reading
1984 people want to read
About the author
John Myers Myers
24 books27 followersMyers was born and grew up on Long Island, New York. He attended the University of New Mexico briefly, but was expelled for being one of the writers in a rebel newspaper, The Pariah. After extensive travel through Europe and the United States, Myers worked for the New York World and San Antonio Evening News. He was also an advertising copywriter. Myers served a short term in the U.S. Army during World War II. In 1943, he married Charlotte Shanahan, with whom he had two daughters. He settled in Tempe, Arizona in 1948. John Myers Myers died October 30, 1988.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 194 reviews
November 6, 2012
I have been reading the comments made by other GoodReads members on Silverlock, by John Myers Myers. I am sympathetic with those who feel that a lack of familiarity with classics of literature an culture leave one on the outside. I do not agree, however, with those who claim that the book is pointless and plotless.
To me, after reading this book several times over the last 30 years, the point of this book is simply in praise of "story"; how it defines us and uplifts us, how basic it is to the human experience.
Here we have the case of a modern man, egocentric, detached, materialistic, and apathetic to everything. He is not even interested in his own story. The first sentence of the book illustrates this: "If I had cared to live, I would have died." And here is this rootless, disconnected piece of human flotsam smacked down in the middle of story with a Capital S.
As to plot, it's not so much an absence of plot but rather the presence of ALL PLOT and plot devices: love, lust, good, evil, steadfastness, betrayal, war, peace, friendship, compassion, bravery, cowardice, joy, grief, atonement and revenge...
So when the Delian pairs Silverlock with Golias we are invited to watch the creation of his character in every sense of the word.
To me, after reading this book several times over the last 30 years, the point of this book is simply in praise of "story"; how it defines us and uplifts us, how basic it is to the human experience.
Here we have the case of a modern man, egocentric, detached, materialistic, and apathetic to everything. He is not even interested in his own story. The first sentence of the book illustrates this: "If I had cared to live, I would have died." And here is this rootless, disconnected piece of human flotsam smacked down in the middle of story with a Capital S.
As to plot, it's not so much an absence of plot but rather the presence of ALL PLOT and plot devices: love, lust, good, evil, steadfastness, betrayal, war, peace, friendship, compassion, bravery, cowardice, joy, grief, atonement and revenge...
So when the Delian pairs Silverlock with Golias we are invited to watch the creation of his character in every sense of the word.
April 29, 2024
I serendipitously discovered Silverlock in a Walden’s Books over forty years ago. Both book and author were unknown to me at the time, but I was randomly drawn to it by its striking cover art. What I had stumbled upon was one of the great, hidden, cult classics of the fantasy genre, a book that inspired other writers in the know. Totally unlike the Tolkien clones that dominated the market then, it was a sort of secular Pilgrim’s Progress where, instead of a spiritual journey, the hero embarks on an epic literary quest.
Clarence Shandon, aka Silverlock, is that hero. He is the prototypical Banal Man of mid twentieth century — a degree in Business Administration, only reads newspapers, with neither knowledge nor interest in literature. When his ship wrecks leaving him the sole survivor, he embarks on a quest through an unfamiliar land — The Commonwealth Of Letters. Thus begins a series of adventures that transforms him (in fits and starts) from a soulless cynic into an enthusiastic aspirant maker of tales.
In the Commonwealth, every person, place, and thing encounter (starting with Silverlock’s sunken ship, The Naglfar) is drawn from story, myth, and legend. These literary borrowings are often encountered in surprising combinations. A hostile Don Quixote is diverted with a quest to capture Babe, Paul Bunyan’s blue ox. Grendel’s death is celebrated at Heorot Hall by a skald singing of Bowie Gizzardbane and his heroic final stand at the Alamo. While Silverlock encounters these forms for the first time, we readers are delighted and challenged to identify allusions that range from the ancient Gilgamesh Epic to the writings of Swift, Hawthorne and Twain.
My first copy of Silverlock that I picked up in that Walden’s Books back in 1982 was a paperback. The copy I now have in my library is a NESFA Press hardback that also includes The Silverlock Companion. The companion is a kind of cheat sheet for the game of ‘Identify that reference.’ After each read of Silverlock I had been able to identify more of Myers’ references, but it wasn’t until I read the companion that I realized to what extent Myers had taken the game. Nearly everyone and everything that Silverlock encounters in the Commonwealth has a literary or mythical origin, all of which are detailed in The Silverlock Companion. Reading it adds value to your experience of the book.
Silverlock is among my all time favorite books. I’ve read it four times, and likely will return to it again. Each time I return to it I discover new, obscure literary references that I missed on previous readings. Its brilliance doesn’t grow old — it is a book for a lifetime.
Clarence Shandon, aka Silverlock, is that hero. He is the prototypical Banal Man of mid twentieth century — a degree in Business Administration, only reads newspapers, with neither knowledge nor interest in literature. When his ship wrecks leaving him the sole survivor, he embarks on a quest through an unfamiliar land — The Commonwealth Of Letters. Thus begins a series of adventures that transforms him (in fits and starts) from a soulless cynic into an enthusiastic aspirant maker of tales.
In the Commonwealth, every person, place, and thing encounter (starting with Silverlock’s sunken ship, The Naglfar) is drawn from story, myth, and legend. These literary borrowings are often encountered in surprising combinations. A hostile Don Quixote is diverted with a quest to capture Babe, Paul Bunyan’s blue ox. Grendel’s death is celebrated at Heorot Hall by a skald singing of Bowie Gizzardbane and his heroic final stand at the Alamo. While Silverlock encounters these forms for the first time, we readers are delighted and challenged to identify allusions that range from the ancient Gilgamesh Epic to the writings of Swift, Hawthorne and Twain.
My first copy of Silverlock that I picked up in that Walden’s Books back in 1982 was a paperback. The copy I now have in my library is a NESFA Press hardback that also includes The Silverlock Companion. The companion is a kind of cheat sheet for the game of ‘Identify that reference.’ After each read of Silverlock I had been able to identify more of Myers’ references, but it wasn’t until I read the companion that I realized to what extent Myers had taken the game. Nearly everyone and everything that Silverlock encounters in the Commonwealth has a literary or mythical origin, all of which are detailed in The Silverlock Companion. Reading it adds value to your experience of the book.
Silverlock is among my all time favorite books. I’ve read it four times, and likely will return to it again. Each time I return to it I discover new, obscure literary references that I missed on previous readings. Its brilliance doesn’t grow old — it is a book for a lifetime.
November 11, 2015
I wanted to love Silverlock and kept holding out that something would suddenly change my mind. Sadly, nothing did. When the premise of this novel, and the unique history, were told to me, I figured this is something I could really enjoy. I have a degree in art history, and minor in classical civilizations. I’ve read many of the works referenced in the books. It seems like most people who enjoy it dismiss those who don’t as not enjoying the references or not wanting to ‘play the game’ of reference hunting. I don’t think this is the case at all. Finding the references, or not, is immaterial so far as I’m concerned. The simple fact is that Silverlock is a poorly written, not very interesting novel that used the same gimmick over and over.
Silverlock tells the story of an average guy from Chicago who finds himself shipwrecked off the coast of a fantasy land where hundreds of characters from myth, legend and literature all live. Along with his guide, a local, he sets off on a journey through this land and has encounters with the population along the way. This concept is hardly new, from the Odyssey to the Aeneid to The Inferno; authors have used literary, historical and legendary characters to populate their worlds. It is an effective way of introducing a character or concept laden with history or baggage quickly and effectively, and giving readers the ‘a-ha’ moment when they figure out who someone is.
But in Silverlock, Myers quickly runs into a few problems, the gimmick becomes the story. There isn’t much of a plot other than man wanders around magical world for a few weeks. Silverlock doesn’t learn anything, he doesn’t accomplish anything, he doesn’t do much of anything. Mostly he’s that friend of a friend that showed up at a party, and doesn’t seem to realize the next day that it is time to go home. He’s pretty effective at it, he holds his own in conversations, he doesn’t ask too many questions, he isn’t a complete bore, but he doesn’t exactly contribute a great deal either.
Most of the references present fall into three categories: the awkward cameo, the diorama, and the name-drop. The name drop happens constantly and for little purpose. Any time a character either steps away from Silverlock for a moment, or wants to tell Silverlock something that happened at some point in the past when he wasn’t present, he finds himself dropping a dozen names into the conversation that really needn’t be there. One or two might make sense—if someone observed Moses and the golden calf, it is sort of necessary to include them in the retelling, but if Puck, Fred Astaire, the Marquise de Merteuil, and the Pillsbury Dough Boy all happened to be walking by Moses and his calf? What good does it do to anybody to mention them other than to…name drop. The diorama tends to be present when Silverlock is traveling from one location to another. Inevitably he’ll come upon a two-dimensional specially staged diorama along the side of the road where a few famous characters will act out some famous moment of literature so he can go ‘Well, isn’t that strange’, mostly so Golias can say “It isn’t strange at all, we’re in the Commonwealth, and now I’ll tell you a name dropping story.” If seeing something—Romeo and Juliet’s balcony scene, or Icarus’ fill-fated flight—had a bearing on the story, it would make total sense, but this never seemed to be the case. Finally, the awkward cameo occurred when Silverlock actually interacted with a diorama. This was the most painful for me to read, because it could have been done so well and carried the story despite the other flaws. It can be a great read to have characters from one work interact with characters from another, and can be done to great effect. Even facing the issue of so many different types of characters from different periods can be easily dealt with by creating a space for them to interact. Sure, Shakespearian characters speak in Shakespearian English, but in the context of your novel, if you run into a few on the road, they should speak however your novel is written. They should integrate seamlessly into the work, and should have a bit of personality based on the works they originally inhabit. Jasper Fforde, among others, has made a career of this sort of thing, and it works well because he can merge a character seamlessly into any format by having them retain their unique character traits, but having their interactions happen in a way appropriate to the story. In Silverlock, they either awkwardly turn into name dropping, characters who just so happen to have the same name as a famous one (see:Puck) but share little or no literary similarity or Silverlock is forced to awkwardly interact with wooden characters parroting slightly re-written lines from their own work (see:The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party).
All of this is worsened by the fact that Myers seemed to feel that dreaded fantasy author need to write long songs/poems/ballads at the slightest provocation, because don’t we all wish we were secretly medieval bards. His writing style is uneven to begin with, and this makes matters worse. A strong plot (or much of any plot) is lacking in this work, and in the end, the entire thing more resembles some shaggy dog story than an actual novel.
What could have saved this work? It is divided into three sections, and perhaps had the second section been the entirety of the work, things would have worked better. It would have been a manageable 200 or so page novel with a plot (the second section concerns a long side trip to help a young man marry the woman he loves). It would have avoided the rambling and somewhat disappointing first hundred pages, and done away with the lengthy decent into Hell that comprises the final third of the book, along with the abrupt ending. It still wouldn’t have been great, but might have gotten three stars.
I understand reading for pleasure and the joy of a good rambling story. I also understand the idea that one shouldn’t take a book seriously. But I see a striking double standard when that is often the defense to those who point out flaws in Silverlock, a book that those same defenders promote because of the fun pulling out the references. I have to wonder how much people loving Silverlock is wanting to jump on the ‘I got the references too’ bandwagon. Perhaps when this was first published it may have made you smart or well-read to get the references, but today in an age where guides to the references exist online and in published form, not to even mention google, ‘getting’ all the references mostly just means you have some time on your hands.
When I found myself dissatisfied with the book, I read dozens of reviews and guides to Silverlock, which seem scattered across the internet. In the end, for me, it was the terrible writing and total lack of anything other than gimmick that turned me off. Perhaps it is because I found the humor flat. Perhaps it is the fact I found the story boring. Perhaps it is the fact I don’t feel the need to pat myself on the back when I recognize a reference in a book, but this book just didn’t do it for me. To those who love the book: Congratulations, I’m sorry I missed out on the fun. However, I found Silverlock to be a terrible written and gimmick-filled disappointment.
Silverlock tells the story of an average guy from Chicago who finds himself shipwrecked off the coast of a fantasy land where hundreds of characters from myth, legend and literature all live. Along with his guide, a local, he sets off on a journey through this land and has encounters with the population along the way. This concept is hardly new, from the Odyssey to the Aeneid to The Inferno; authors have used literary, historical and legendary characters to populate their worlds. It is an effective way of introducing a character or concept laden with history or baggage quickly and effectively, and giving readers the ‘a-ha’ moment when they figure out who someone is.
But in Silverlock, Myers quickly runs into a few problems, the gimmick becomes the story. There isn’t much of a plot other than man wanders around magical world for a few weeks. Silverlock doesn’t learn anything, he doesn’t accomplish anything, he doesn’t do much of anything. Mostly he’s that friend of a friend that showed up at a party, and doesn’t seem to realize the next day that it is time to go home. He’s pretty effective at it, he holds his own in conversations, he doesn’t ask too many questions, he isn’t a complete bore, but he doesn’t exactly contribute a great deal either.
Most of the references present fall into three categories: the awkward cameo, the diorama, and the name-drop. The name drop happens constantly and for little purpose. Any time a character either steps away from Silverlock for a moment, or wants to tell Silverlock something that happened at some point in the past when he wasn’t present, he finds himself dropping a dozen names into the conversation that really needn’t be there. One or two might make sense—if someone observed Moses and the golden calf, it is sort of necessary to include them in the retelling, but if Puck, Fred Astaire, the Marquise de Merteuil, and the Pillsbury Dough Boy all happened to be walking by Moses and his calf? What good does it do to anybody to mention them other than to…name drop. The diorama tends to be present when Silverlock is traveling from one location to another. Inevitably he’ll come upon a two-dimensional specially staged diorama along the side of the road where a few famous characters will act out some famous moment of literature so he can go ‘Well, isn’t that strange’, mostly so Golias can say “It isn’t strange at all, we’re in the Commonwealth, and now I’ll tell you a name dropping story.” If seeing something—Romeo and Juliet’s balcony scene, or Icarus’ fill-fated flight—had a bearing on the story, it would make total sense, but this never seemed to be the case. Finally, the awkward cameo occurred when Silverlock actually interacted with a diorama. This was the most painful for me to read, because it could have been done so well and carried the story despite the other flaws. It can be a great read to have characters from one work interact with characters from another, and can be done to great effect. Even facing the issue of so many different types of characters from different periods can be easily dealt with by creating a space for them to interact. Sure, Shakespearian characters speak in Shakespearian English, but in the context of your novel, if you run into a few on the road, they should speak however your novel is written. They should integrate seamlessly into the work, and should have a bit of personality based on the works they originally inhabit. Jasper Fforde, among others, has made a career of this sort of thing, and it works well because he can merge a character seamlessly into any format by having them retain their unique character traits, but having their interactions happen in a way appropriate to the story. In Silverlock, they either awkwardly turn into name dropping, characters who just so happen to have the same name as a famous one (see:Puck) but share little or no literary similarity or Silverlock is forced to awkwardly interact with wooden characters parroting slightly re-written lines from their own work (see:The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party).
All of this is worsened by the fact that Myers seemed to feel that dreaded fantasy author need to write long songs/poems/ballads at the slightest provocation, because don’t we all wish we were secretly medieval bards. His writing style is uneven to begin with, and this makes matters worse. A strong plot (or much of any plot) is lacking in this work, and in the end, the entire thing more resembles some shaggy dog story than an actual novel.
What could have saved this work? It is divided into three sections, and perhaps had the second section been the entirety of the work, things would have worked better. It would have been a manageable 200 or so page novel with a plot (the second section concerns a long side trip to help a young man marry the woman he loves). It would have avoided the rambling and somewhat disappointing first hundred pages, and done away with the lengthy decent into Hell that comprises the final third of the book, along with the abrupt ending. It still wouldn’t have been great, but might have gotten three stars.
I understand reading for pleasure and the joy of a good rambling story. I also understand the idea that one shouldn’t take a book seriously. But I see a striking double standard when that is often the defense to those who point out flaws in Silverlock, a book that those same defenders promote because of the fun pulling out the references. I have to wonder how much people loving Silverlock is wanting to jump on the ‘I got the references too’ bandwagon. Perhaps when this was first published it may have made you smart or well-read to get the references, but today in an age where guides to the references exist online and in published form, not to even mention google, ‘getting’ all the references mostly just means you have some time on your hands.
When I found myself dissatisfied with the book, I read dozens of reviews and guides to Silverlock, which seem scattered across the internet. In the end, for me, it was the terrible writing and total lack of anything other than gimmick that turned me off. Perhaps it is because I found the humor flat. Perhaps it is the fact I found the story boring. Perhaps it is the fact I don’t feel the need to pat myself on the back when I recognize a reference in a book, but this book just didn’t do it for me. To those who love the book: Congratulations, I’m sorry I missed out on the fun. However, I found Silverlock to be a terrible written and gimmick-filled disappointment.
November 20, 2025
“Shandon. A. Clarence Shandon,” I growled. “Or at least I’ll go by that for the next day or two. After that just call me fish food.”
An American Joe from Chicago meets the Hero With A Thousand Faces. John Myers Myers published his fantasy novel in 1949, the same year as Joseph Campbell’s study of the archetypal hero on a quest. There is no evidence the two writers were aware of each other’s projects, but the coincidence is striking for the book nerd in me.
Myers is a bit of a one hit wonder, but when that wonder is of the calibre of Silverlock, I think it is enough. I think he was way ahead of his time in his metafictional approach to literature and myth, clearing the way for the arrival of a Neil Gaiman, Italo Calvino or Philip Jose Farmer, all of whom will write about the power of story .
Shandon, who will be soon known in the realm of the Commonwealth as Silverlock for the white streak dividing his dark hair, has a rather conventional start to his adventures: he is the sole survivor of a shipwreck after a storm and we finds a stranger in a strange land. Luckily for him, and for the reader, Shandon drifts into the path of another marooned traveler who goes by many (possibly a thousand) names, such as Widsith Amergin Demodocus Boyan Taliesin Golias. For the purpose of this review, we will stick to Golias. He is a native of this strange land, a bard, an adventurer, a magician, a trickster and more. Most importantly, he appears to know the Delian Law of this strange fictional land that includes Broceliande, Heorot, Avalon, Gotham, the Mississippi, Chateau d’If, the Hippocrene and Dante’s Inferno in a geographical jumble similar to the Riverworld of Philip Jose Farmer. Inside the Commonwealth such things as economic, moral, political, social, theological, sentimental, and scientific laws are vain pretenders to authority. so we must be prepared to expect the unexpected, including the Spanish Inquisition.
I couldn’t resist the Monty Python reference, because a good part of my enjoyment in Silverlock’s journey is coming across so many of my literary milestones. The list is extremely long and in no way exhaustive, even for a reader like me who was already passionate about mythology and literary figures... and, yes! Silverlock will come across the Spanish Inquisition on his journeys. I do not consider the following names as spoilers, since almost all the blurbs for the novel give the game away, and I need it for further research into how Myers slotted them into his own narrative:
We start with a giant white whale that is wrecking a sailing ship while Shandon is still drifting in the ocean, and we move in quick succession to Circe’s and Robinson Crusoe’s islands, Vikings, Robin Hood and his band of merry men, Cupid, the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, Beowulf and Hrothgar, Davy Crockett, Natty Bumppo, Don Quijote and Sancho Panza, Manon Lescaut, John Barleycorn, Midas, Queen Semiramis, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the fairies of the Wild Hunt, The Houyhnhnms, Job, Faustopheles, Rodya Raskolnikov, Oedipus, Hamlet, Anna Karenina, Hester Prynne, Prometheus, Gilgamesh, Orpheus, Rhadamanthus, Falstaff, Don Juan, Tartarin ...
Looking up every name for context would have considerably slowed me down, but I am glad I took the time to read about :
Lars Porsena – an Etruscan king,
Izaak Walton as Piscator,
Tamlane from a legendary Scottish ballad,
Nimue as the Lady in the Lake of Arthurian legends,
Bercilak as another name for the Green Knigh,
Ganelon from the Song of Roland,
Alcestis – a Greek myth found also in Eurypides,
Emma – who is apparently a Jane Austen character
I’m sure I’ve missed as many references as I listed here – it just shows how well read Myers was, or how well he did his research.
>>><<<>>><<<
In the beginning, I thought the novel is written just for fun, with a wise-cracking American commenting on literary texts. I had occasion to come back and reconsider an early observation made by Golias, who seems to know his way around the Commonwealth and the Delian Law, made in answer to Silverlock asking for directions:
“There’s no judging in advance. It depends on whether your place is plotted by chance, by choice, or by oracle, you see.”
This means we actually have in our hands three stories for the price of one: the first a picaresque adventure that is just a fun way to discover the Commonwealth; the second a traditional hero’s quest for a lost love and the third a spiritual journey as per Campbell’s definition. This is a gross simplification on my part, because Silverlock is the main actor and narrator in all three and the plots are intertwined.
The reason Shandon is selected for the hero’s journey is not exactly spelled out at the start but we are given plenty of hints of what the trip is all about in the commentaries from Golias:
“In essence this fellow is looking for all there is of life. The great questions for a man are what to do about his time and his passion, and where to find friends and the money to live with them. When he’s found the right answers, he’s got all the four legs a man needs to walk on.
Could anything be more interesting or important?”
Golias is actually speaking about Lucius G. Jones, the young man in need of assistance from the middle part of the journey. Jones is searching for his beloved Hermione, a noble young lady who has been kidnapped by the dastardly Don Rodrigo Ravan. Jones is also a bit reckless and gullible, which causes trouble with ladies of easy virtue and with confidence tricksters, but at least he leads the reader toward more comedy moments, inspired by Apuleius.
It is in the third part that Myers brings out the big guns and gets that wow! exclamation from this jaded reader:
My mind smoldered with the pleasant fire of curiosity.
Anything can happen in this Commonwealth world. After the ‘chance’ of random encounters and the ‘choice’ of a specific quest, Silverlock visits the Pythian oracle and receives a mission to find the Hippocrene, a magical spring that will provide much needed answers / boons after three ritualistic sips. To probably no-one’s surprise, we find ourselves on a journey of self-discovery.
Early Shandon is predatory towards women and more than a little cynical in his outlook on life. By his own words, he is a cold-eyed factualist who saw no reason for acting otherwise than selfishly , and his wisecracks towards the people he meets on the road reinforce this fun but rather unpleasant aspect of his personality. Apparently, the impulse to leave Chicago behind was caused by a midlife crisis, so maybe it is fated that he will be offered a Faustian deal and a ticket to Dante’s Inferno.
At the base of all my woes had been the realization that I had grown for half of my natural life without sinking any roots or putting forth any leaves.
The metafictional aspect of the journey and the psychological insights were a bit of a surprise for me, when the first pages suggested some easy adventure in the Edgar Rice Burroughs manner. Yet there were early warning signs in Silverlock’s running commentary on events:
A man is not dead until he ceases to be curious.
Here, contrary to all my experience, was a bird singing at night. It generated wonder, which can’t cohabit with despair.
Everybody has an idea of himself which augments, aggravates, or modifies the actuality,
The very act of moving from place to place is an anodyne, because suspended in it, in however weak solution, is the hope of moving toward betterment. But with that taken from me, I knew at last what emptiness of being was like.
>>><<<>>><<<
I have probably said enough about the plot in general and hopefully vague terms. I do want to touch on several specific issues that are probably more important to me than to the casual reader, like Myers take on religion. Silverlock is eventually picked up by a barge captained by a certain Lorel , known also as Simon Ananias. I don’t know if his name has any literary significance, but his Ship of Fools is an important milestone, probably used here to show how Silverlock may be lying to himself:
“You see, everybody aboard is a one hundred percent by volume, habitual, congenital, and non-convertible damned fool. And the best part of it is that although each ascribes that character to all the others, there’s not one of them who knows it’s true of himself.”
One of these fools is a religious man. Even knowing the character is borrowed from Moliere, the satire remains particularly sharp in relation to the modern aggressivity of cultists of all colors:
“Tartuffe is not only deacon, but vicar, canon, bishop, pope, and prophet of a religion whose only article of faith is that Tartuffe shan’t have to work for a living. I’ll give odds he’s shaking that sucker down right now in the cause of holy charity.”
Since I’ve mentioned the Spanish Inquisition earlier, I must also include another barbed arrow that hits the target dead center:
“My son,” he said, when we had taken stock of each other, “do you believe in God?”
“My father,” I answered him, “not when I look at you.”
I was going to include Pierre Boulle in my name dropping of authors inspired by Myers, but he in turn is borrowing from Jonathan Swift when he decides to poke fun at claims that man is the pinnacle of evolution:
And just why is it right for men to direct horses? Do you think that they conduct themselves so nobly as to fit them to be the guardians and guides of others?
I haven’t said anything about the literary merits of the novel because I was a little worried at the start that it would feel dated, but I actually enjoyed the pre-war slang expressions and the wit in Silverlock’s commentaries, including some Prohibition references and some black humor:
“Sir,” he said, dropping his voice reverently, “I don’t merely have whiskey; I have Glenlivet.”
“Modern medicine,” I remarked, “holds that he patient is bled most successfully through the jugular. Tilt her head back, Lucius.”
What writer uses today words like ‘spiflicated’ or ‘flim-flammed’? Who uses songs every other chapter beside Tolkien and Pynchon in his latest historical novel? One of the fun projects for an eventual re-read is to try to put the drinking and heroic songs in the novel into context. So far, I could pin down the Siege of Alamo and the Jumping Frog of Talaveras County, but I am sure there are others.
“Making a song is like tying a fly. Granted the proper materials – and it seems to me that you had them to hand – all that is necessary is skill, which is only to be acquired with diligence.” says Piscator
>>><<<>>><<<
I needed a closing quote for the novel, something big to capture the whole essence of the journey, the importance of stories and of storytellers. In the end, I couldn’t decide, so I will present both candidates here:
“Unwilling to see the fine craftsmanship which had gone into the making of humanity wasted, I gave men the powers to know, to do, and to care.”
and, Until the body melts and the brain ceases to gel, a man who has come out whole after having been put through his paces by the Delian Law has a heart for living.
I was going to give the book a four star rating, mostly because I couldn’t accept a modern American man like Shandon, with a Master’s degree in business administration could be so clueless about the literary and mythical figures he meets on the road, but in the process of putting my notes in order, in particular the last two quotes, I think the project merits a little extra praise from a true book lover.
An American Joe from Chicago meets the Hero With A Thousand Faces. John Myers Myers published his fantasy novel in 1949, the same year as Joseph Campbell’s study of the archetypal hero on a quest. There is no evidence the two writers were aware of each other’s projects, but the coincidence is striking for the book nerd in me.
Myers is a bit of a one hit wonder, but when that wonder is of the calibre of Silverlock, I think it is enough. I think he was way ahead of his time in his metafictional approach to literature and myth, clearing the way for the arrival of a Neil Gaiman, Italo Calvino or Philip Jose Farmer, all of whom will write about the power of story .
Shandon, who will be soon known in the realm of the Commonwealth as Silverlock for the white streak dividing his dark hair, has a rather conventional start to his adventures: he is the sole survivor of a shipwreck after a storm and we finds a stranger in a strange land. Luckily for him, and for the reader, Shandon drifts into the path of another marooned traveler who goes by many (possibly a thousand) names, such as Widsith Amergin Demodocus Boyan Taliesin Golias. For the purpose of this review, we will stick to Golias. He is a native of this strange land, a bard, an adventurer, a magician, a trickster and more. Most importantly, he appears to know the Delian Law of this strange fictional land that includes Broceliande, Heorot, Avalon, Gotham, the Mississippi, Chateau d’If, the Hippocrene and Dante’s Inferno in a geographical jumble similar to the Riverworld of Philip Jose Farmer. Inside the Commonwealth such things as economic, moral, political, social, theological, sentimental, and scientific laws are vain pretenders to authority. so we must be prepared to expect the unexpected, including the Spanish Inquisition.
I couldn’t resist the Monty Python reference, because a good part of my enjoyment in Silverlock’s journey is coming across so many of my literary milestones. The list is extremely long and in no way exhaustive, even for a reader like me who was already passionate about mythology and literary figures... and, yes! Silverlock will come across the Spanish Inquisition on his journeys. I do not consider the following names as spoilers, since almost all the blurbs for the novel give the game away, and I need it for further research into how Myers slotted them into his own narrative:
We start with a giant white whale that is wrecking a sailing ship while Shandon is still drifting in the ocean, and we move in quick succession to Circe’s and Robinson Crusoe’s islands, Vikings, Robin Hood and his band of merry men, Cupid, the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, Beowulf and Hrothgar, Davy Crockett, Natty Bumppo, Don Quijote and Sancho Panza, Manon Lescaut, John Barleycorn, Midas, Queen Semiramis, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the fairies of the Wild Hunt, The Houyhnhnms, Job, Faustopheles, Rodya Raskolnikov, Oedipus, Hamlet, Anna Karenina, Hester Prynne, Prometheus, Gilgamesh, Orpheus, Rhadamanthus, Falstaff, Don Juan, Tartarin ...
Looking up every name for context would have considerably slowed me down, but I am glad I took the time to read about :
Lars Porsena – an Etruscan king,
Izaak Walton as Piscator,
Tamlane from a legendary Scottish ballad,
Nimue as the Lady in the Lake of Arthurian legends,
Bercilak as another name for the Green Knigh,
Ganelon from the Song of Roland,
Alcestis – a Greek myth found also in Eurypides,
Emma – who is apparently a Jane Austen character
I’m sure I’ve missed as many references as I listed here – it just shows how well read Myers was, or how well he did his research.
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In the beginning, I thought the novel is written just for fun, with a wise-cracking American commenting on literary texts. I had occasion to come back and reconsider an early observation made by Golias, who seems to know his way around the Commonwealth and the Delian Law, made in answer to Silverlock asking for directions:
“There’s no judging in advance. It depends on whether your place is plotted by chance, by choice, or by oracle, you see.”
This means we actually have in our hands three stories for the price of one: the first a picaresque adventure that is just a fun way to discover the Commonwealth; the second a traditional hero’s quest for a lost love and the third a spiritual journey as per Campbell’s definition. This is a gross simplification on my part, because Silverlock is the main actor and narrator in all three and the plots are intertwined.
The reason Shandon is selected for the hero’s journey is not exactly spelled out at the start but we are given plenty of hints of what the trip is all about in the commentaries from Golias:
“In essence this fellow is looking for all there is of life. The great questions for a man are what to do about his time and his passion, and where to find friends and the money to live with them. When he’s found the right answers, he’s got all the four legs a man needs to walk on.
Could anything be more interesting or important?”
Golias is actually speaking about Lucius G. Jones, the young man in need of assistance from the middle part of the journey. Jones is searching for his beloved Hermione, a noble young lady who has been kidnapped by the dastardly Don Rodrigo Ravan. Jones is also a bit reckless and gullible, which causes trouble with ladies of easy virtue and with confidence tricksters, but at least he leads the reader toward more comedy moments, inspired by Apuleius.
It is in the third part that Myers brings out the big guns and gets that wow! exclamation from this jaded reader:
My mind smoldered with the pleasant fire of curiosity.
Anything can happen in this Commonwealth world. After the ‘chance’ of random encounters and the ‘choice’ of a specific quest, Silverlock visits the Pythian oracle and receives a mission to find the Hippocrene, a magical spring that will provide much needed answers / boons after three ritualistic sips. To probably no-one’s surprise, we find ourselves on a journey of self-discovery.
Early Shandon is predatory towards women and more than a little cynical in his outlook on life. By his own words, he is a cold-eyed factualist who saw no reason for acting otherwise than selfishly , and his wisecracks towards the people he meets on the road reinforce this fun but rather unpleasant aspect of his personality. Apparently, the impulse to leave Chicago behind was caused by a midlife crisis, so maybe it is fated that he will be offered a Faustian deal and a ticket to Dante’s Inferno.
At the base of all my woes had been the realization that I had grown for half of my natural life without sinking any roots or putting forth any leaves.
The metafictional aspect of the journey and the psychological insights were a bit of a surprise for me, when the first pages suggested some easy adventure in the Edgar Rice Burroughs manner. Yet there were early warning signs in Silverlock’s running commentary on events:
A man is not dead until he ceases to be curious.
Here, contrary to all my experience, was a bird singing at night. It generated wonder, which can’t cohabit with despair.
Everybody has an idea of himself which augments, aggravates, or modifies the actuality,
The very act of moving from place to place is an anodyne, because suspended in it, in however weak solution, is the hope of moving toward betterment. But with that taken from me, I knew at last what emptiness of being was like.
>>><<<>>><<<
I have probably said enough about the plot in general and hopefully vague terms. I do want to touch on several specific issues that are probably more important to me than to the casual reader, like Myers take on religion. Silverlock is eventually picked up by a barge captained by a certain Lorel , known also as Simon Ananias. I don’t know if his name has any literary significance, but his Ship of Fools is an important milestone, probably used here to show how Silverlock may be lying to himself:
“You see, everybody aboard is a one hundred percent by volume, habitual, congenital, and non-convertible damned fool. And the best part of it is that although each ascribes that character to all the others, there’s not one of them who knows it’s true of himself.”
One of these fools is a religious man. Even knowing the character is borrowed from Moliere, the satire remains particularly sharp in relation to the modern aggressivity of cultists of all colors:
“Tartuffe is not only deacon, but vicar, canon, bishop, pope, and prophet of a religion whose only article of faith is that Tartuffe shan’t have to work for a living. I’ll give odds he’s shaking that sucker down right now in the cause of holy charity.”
Since I’ve mentioned the Spanish Inquisition earlier, I must also include another barbed arrow that hits the target dead center:
“My son,” he said, when we had taken stock of each other, “do you believe in God?”
“My father,” I answered him, “not when I look at you.”
I was going to include Pierre Boulle in my name dropping of authors inspired by Myers, but he in turn is borrowing from Jonathan Swift when he decides to poke fun at claims that man is the pinnacle of evolution:
And just why is it right for men to direct horses? Do you think that they conduct themselves so nobly as to fit them to be the guardians and guides of others?
I haven’t said anything about the literary merits of the novel because I was a little worried at the start that it would feel dated, but I actually enjoyed the pre-war slang expressions and the wit in Silverlock’s commentaries, including some Prohibition references and some black humor:
“Sir,” he said, dropping his voice reverently, “I don’t merely have whiskey; I have Glenlivet.”
“Modern medicine,” I remarked, “holds that he patient is bled most successfully through the jugular. Tilt her head back, Lucius.”
What writer uses today words like ‘spiflicated’ or ‘flim-flammed’? Who uses songs every other chapter beside Tolkien and Pynchon in his latest historical novel? One of the fun projects for an eventual re-read is to try to put the drinking and heroic songs in the novel into context. So far, I could pin down the Siege of Alamo and the Jumping Frog of Talaveras County, but I am sure there are others.
“Making a song is like tying a fly. Granted the proper materials – and it seems to me that you had them to hand – all that is necessary is skill, which is only to be acquired with diligence.” says Piscator
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I needed a closing quote for the novel, something big to capture the whole essence of the journey, the importance of stories and of storytellers. In the end, I couldn’t decide, so I will present both candidates here:
“Unwilling to see the fine craftsmanship which had gone into the making of humanity wasted, I gave men the powers to know, to do, and to care.”
and, Until the body melts and the brain ceases to gel, a man who has come out whole after having been put through his paces by the Delian Law has a heart for living.
I was going to give the book a four star rating, mostly because I couldn’t accept a modern American man like Shandon, with a Master’s degree in business administration could be so clueless about the literary and mythical figures he meets on the road, but in the process of putting my notes in order, in particular the last two quotes, I think the project merits a little extra praise from a true book lover.
March 19, 2018
Poetry makes the book flow out of the pages into music of this classic lost fantasy with hints of The Princes Bride,Conan & Melvin Peack & Disc world along with Xanth books.
February 27, 2016
For me this book is like the literary version of the song "American Pie" by Don Maclean.
It is a fantastic book, I read this the first time in high school and it has stuck with me ever since. I just bought the re-release of the book and look forward to re-reading it. My recollection was that it was a modern version of something Mark Twain would have writte-Like a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
It is a fantastic book, I read this the first time in high school and it has stuck with me ever since. I just bought the re-release of the book and look forward to re-reading it. My recollection was that it was a modern version of something Mark Twain would have writte-Like a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
January 8, 2018
This book is a classic example of the dangers of overhyping a text. My paperback copy had multiple introductions and at least five pages of rave reviews from numerous sources. No text, no matter how inspired, can be expected to deliver the goods after so much hype.
The book itself never really jelled for me; the characters, although many were familiar from other works, were not written in sympathetic fashion and the conceit of the Commonwealth itself was simply a chance for Myers to run amok with the worlds and characters of frankly better writers. I've seen this sort of thing since, but these days it's usually called "fanfic."
The book itself never really jelled for me; the characters, although many were familiar from other works, were not written in sympathetic fashion and the conceit of the Commonwealth itself was simply a chance for Myers to run amok with the worlds and characters of frankly better writers. I've seen this sort of thing since, but these days it's usually called "fanfic."
October 27, 2016
This is a 'modern' retelling of The Odessy, sort of. It's been too long since I last read it for a proper review, though. First published in 1949, this was a well known classic in the 60s, but seems to have fallen out of favor. I'm not sure why since the writing is quite good.
September 9, 2010
Fascinating. This book has three forewords from three prominent authors in their own right going on about this book. Drum roll... they are right. This delectible morsel is crisscrossed with many ancient myths and woven together in extraordinary fashion. Even better is the musical interludes.. more than I have seen from many other authors of any genre. The only ones who come close are Stephen Donaldson or Tolkien. You will have to read it yourself to appreciate it but I recommend this story even to those who do not normally read fantasy. This story has something for everyone.. even if you want an odd drinking song to sing. =)
February 28, 2012
One of my faves of all time. I took away a different understanding re-reading it now than when I was in college - what perspective a couple of decades can give you! Love it then for the grand adventure and intellectual fun of figuring everyone out. Love it now with an understanding of his journey.
December 18, 2025
The Retro Hugo Awards were started in 1996 to retroactively honor science fiction works from years when the original Hugo Awards were not presented. For various reasons, the Retros have been discontinued by the governing World Science Fiction Society. Because there is still interest in what might have been awarded, the World Science Fiction Convention convened a panel this year to review works published in 1949, the year that the Retros would have covered if still extant.
The panel of experts who presented the 1949 panel at Worldcon named Silverlock by John Myers Myers as one of the top novels published that year (other contenders included Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, What Mad Universe by Fredric Brown, and Earth Abides by George R. Stewart).
Silverlock was ranked #21 in the 1987 Locus poll of All-Time Best Fantasy Novels. It's a classic quest set amongst characters from literature and myth from The Odyssey to Don Quixote to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and everything in between. The narrator, nicknamed Silverlock because of a streak of white hair, is an average guy from Chicago who gets shipwrecked on a Commonwealth of Letters. In the course of trying to get back home he encounters many different characters but since he apparently never read the Classics, he doesn't seem to realize who they are. I'm sure there's an annotated edition of this book that could help readers know who everybody is. I don't think you absolutely need to know who everybody is--they're Easter eggs for those who are well read--the story moves along just fine without that knowledge. However, I suppose one's enjoyment of this book might depend somewhat on how well one can "find Waldo," so to speak. The story itself isn't anything spectacular. Silverlock wanders around, gets captured, escapes, wanders around some more, helps others complete their quests, and so on. There may be a bit of growth in Silverlock by the end, but basically he just serves to move the action along. At the end, Silverlock rides a pegasus back to civilization but the book ends without the reader really knowing what effect, if any, all these adventures have on him.
The panel of experts who presented the 1949 panel at Worldcon named Silverlock by John Myers Myers as one of the top novels published that year (other contenders included Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, What Mad Universe by Fredric Brown, and Earth Abides by George R. Stewart).
Silverlock was ranked #21 in the 1987 Locus poll of All-Time Best Fantasy Novels. It's a classic quest set amongst characters from literature and myth from The Odyssey to Don Quixote to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and everything in between. The narrator, nicknamed Silverlock because of a streak of white hair, is an average guy from Chicago who gets shipwrecked on a Commonwealth of Letters. In the course of trying to get back home he encounters many different characters but since he apparently never read the Classics, he doesn't seem to realize who they are. I'm sure there's an annotated edition of this book that could help readers know who everybody is. I don't think you absolutely need to know who everybody is--they're Easter eggs for those who are well read--the story moves along just fine without that knowledge. However, I suppose one's enjoyment of this book might depend somewhat on how well one can "find Waldo," so to speak. The story itself isn't anything spectacular. Silverlock wanders around, gets captured, escapes, wanders around some more, helps others complete their quests, and so on. There may be a bit of growth in Silverlock by the end, but basically he just serves to move the action along. At the end, Silverlock rides a pegasus back to civilization but the book ends without the reader really knowing what effect, if any, all these adventures have on him.
February 21, 2012
An odd novel. Published first in 1949, it was one of the first fantasy novels of the 20th century. It came out after The Hobbit but before The Lord of the Rings, and J.R.R. Tolkien wasn’t well known in America yet. So Silverlock doesn’t include any of the Tolkien’s influence that so many later American fantasy novelists displayed. In a way, it is a quintessential American fantasy.
The plot revolves around Shandon, a cynical, educated American, who is shipwrecked and thrust into the land of Commonwealth. This strange country doesn’t exist on any map, and it’s populated by stories. The stories intermingle without any regard for the times and ethnicity of origin: Greek myths and Arthurian legends, Cervantes and Shakespeare.
Shandon’s only companion is Golias, a native of Commonwealth and a bard, who for some inexplicable reason takes pity on Shandon and accepts the helpless stranger under his wing. Golias rescues Shandon from tough spots again and again, for no cause I could discern.
Romping through the literary mish-mash, sometimes alone, sometimes with Golias, Shandon brushes against most of the stories but doesn’t really become part of any. He dines with Robin Hood, gets under Circe’s spell, and is attacked by Don Quixote. But no story touches his heart. Even more surprising: despite his university degree, he doesn’t recognize any of the stories, as if American education didn’t include world literature. He doesn't wonder at the marvel of Commonwealth. He is not afraid of being without skills or money or home. He doesn’t try to find his place in the unfamiliar milieu. He doesn’t seem to have any emotions at all.
I can’t say that I liked this novel. It’s built as a quest, with the purpose to show Shandon that his cynicism is misplaced, but the novel never quite succeeds in its goal. Obviously, cynicism is not easy to shake off. Shandon manages to become only a slightly better person by the end. And he almost loses his new-found humanity again, would’ve lost it, if Golias didn’t rush to his rescue one last time.
The writer is as detached as his hero, so even bloody battles come out distant, with no emotional involvement, no fear, and no pain. Another similarity between the writer and his hero: their disdain for women. The female characters in the novel are either bitches or sobbing damsels in distress. The entire novel is very mucho, where the hero mostly thinks about his next meal and always enjoys drinking with his buddies. After drinking usually comes some stupidity, like in real life, and the action starts galloping in a new direction.
To give credit where it’s due, sometimes, the writing surprised a laugh out of me. Some phrases stood out as witty or wise. And there is lots of poetry in this book, songs for every occasion.
Overall, I’d recommend it to sophisticated readers, interested in the history of literature.
The plot revolves around Shandon, a cynical, educated American, who is shipwrecked and thrust into the land of Commonwealth. This strange country doesn’t exist on any map, and it’s populated by stories. The stories intermingle without any regard for the times and ethnicity of origin: Greek myths and Arthurian legends, Cervantes and Shakespeare.
Shandon’s only companion is Golias, a native of Commonwealth and a bard, who for some inexplicable reason takes pity on Shandon and accepts the helpless stranger under his wing. Golias rescues Shandon from tough spots again and again, for no cause I could discern.
Romping through the literary mish-mash, sometimes alone, sometimes with Golias, Shandon brushes against most of the stories but doesn’t really become part of any. He dines with Robin Hood, gets under Circe’s spell, and is attacked by Don Quixote. But no story touches his heart. Even more surprising: despite his university degree, he doesn’t recognize any of the stories, as if American education didn’t include world literature. He doesn't wonder at the marvel of Commonwealth. He is not afraid of being without skills or money or home. He doesn’t try to find his place in the unfamiliar milieu. He doesn’t seem to have any emotions at all.
I can’t say that I liked this novel. It’s built as a quest, with the purpose to show Shandon that his cynicism is misplaced, but the novel never quite succeeds in its goal. Obviously, cynicism is not easy to shake off. Shandon manages to become only a slightly better person by the end. And he almost loses his new-found humanity again, would’ve lost it, if Golias didn’t rush to his rescue one last time.
The writer is as detached as his hero, so even bloody battles come out distant, with no emotional involvement, no fear, and no pain. Another similarity between the writer and his hero: their disdain for women. The female characters in the novel are either bitches or sobbing damsels in distress. The entire novel is very mucho, where the hero mostly thinks about his next meal and always enjoys drinking with his buddies. After drinking usually comes some stupidity, like in real life, and the action starts galloping in a new direction.
To give credit where it’s due, sometimes, the writing surprised a laugh out of me. Some phrases stood out as witty or wise. And there is lots of poetry in this book, songs for every occasion.
Overall, I’d recommend it to sophisticated readers, interested in the history of literature.
January 26, 2022
A difficult book to rate and review, because of its mixture of strengths and weaknesses and also its mixture of tones.
Both a strength and a weakness is that the author has a rich background in classical fantastic and adventurous fiction (from the Epic of Gilgamesh on forward), and references it continually. The first-person narrator does not have this background, and never seems to figure out that he is wandering around a literary landscape; his university degree is in business management. I have some background, but not nearly as much as the author, and while the book works without knowing who all of the minor characters are exactly, sometimes (especially near the end), when the namedrops are coming thick and fast, I did feel at sea, and also as if I was in the presence of a show-off who was setting out to make me feel ignorant. Some of the characters are combinations of several legends in one person, which makes it even more confusing (and difficult to look them up on Wikipedia).
The story does not follow a conventional plot. (I think I detected signs of the Hero's Journey, which I am not a fan of, but it wasn't too obtrusive.) It's a picaresque, "the episodic adventures of a rogue," and involves the viewpoint character facing various adventures, in the course of which he kills several people (in self-defence, but sometimes if he'd been smarter he wouldn't have been in the situation where he needed to), steals a few things (out of desperation, but the same if-he'd-been-smarter caveat sometimes applies), and commits adultery (this was just a straight-up choice on his part and gets no defence from me). He has an old-fashioned outlook on violence and women, not a million miles from, say, Ernest Hemingway, which won't go over particularly well to most present-day audiences.
The events of the story are not just wandering from scene to scene, though, at least not all the way through. He does have goals at various points. The first is to reconnect with his companion, who is every famous bard ever in a single character. Once that's achieved, they set out to help their friend Lucius Jones win his love. This character seems to be a blend of Lucius from the Golden Ass (since he's turned into a donkey at one point, and has to eat roses to change back to human) and possibly Tom Jones, since, while longing after his beloved, he has no hesitation in sleeping with other women if the opportunity presents itself.
The quests escalate as the book goes on, and the third one is to reach the Hippocrene Spring, which makes people into poets when they drink from it. This one is given by an oracle, and involves a descent into the underworld, modelled on Dante's Inferno but guided by "Faustopheles," seemingly a combination of Faust and Mephistopheles. This is where the tone takes a very dark turn, as Faustopheles preaches nihilism and hopelessness, illustrating his points with the characters they encounter. It was a lot more philosophical than the earlier parts of the book, and I felt it didn't fit well; the author, perhaps, was putting down on paper his own darkest thoughts in an attempt to exorcise them.
The character of Silverlock is not a philosopher, and starts the book alienated and uncaring about others, but he picks up some ideals of behaviour from a few encounters along the way (notably including Sir Gawain). While he is never a highly admirable character to me, he does improve, albeit from a very unpromising starting point. He's capable of being fair-minded, a faithful friend, brave, and a protector of the innocent.
The setting never gets much of an explanation, and is a strange mishmash of the whole of literature up to the 19th century (there may have been some early-20th-century material that I missed). Different regions are from wildly different historical periods, and people wander between them, but there doesn't seem to be, say, trade in weaponry, for example. It's meant to make symbolic sense rather than literal sense. Also, the characters that Silverlock encounters always seem to be partway through their stories - the key moments of the stories are happening just as he arrives - which again follows story logic rather than any other kind of logic.
The edition I read has numerous typos (see my notes, but I've no doubt missed some), including a good many missing quotation marks, and some consistent errors. For example, the author uses a comma after "of course" when it's not required, and doesn't use a comma after "Why" as an exclamation beginning a sentence. I didn't notice any vocabulary errors, though, and the interpolated poems are well executed, in contrast to so much fantasy poetry. Apparently this book is a favourite with filkers (people who perform fandom-based songs), and I can see why.
Overall, it's an odd book, and I can see why some people love it and others hate it. I neither loved nor hated it; for me, the best parts made it good enough to make it to my Best of the Year, but in the lowest tier because of its patchy nature. It did make me consider reading (or re-reading) some of the source material, though.
Both a strength and a weakness is that the author has a rich background in classical fantastic and adventurous fiction (from the Epic of Gilgamesh on forward), and references it continually. The first-person narrator does not have this background, and never seems to figure out that he is wandering around a literary landscape; his university degree is in business management. I have some background, but not nearly as much as the author, and while the book works without knowing who all of the minor characters are exactly, sometimes (especially near the end), when the namedrops are coming thick and fast, I did feel at sea, and also as if I was in the presence of a show-off who was setting out to make me feel ignorant. Some of the characters are combinations of several legends in one person, which makes it even more confusing (and difficult to look them up on Wikipedia).
The story does not follow a conventional plot. (I think I detected signs of the Hero's Journey, which I am not a fan of, but it wasn't too obtrusive.) It's a picaresque, "the episodic adventures of a rogue," and involves the viewpoint character facing various adventures, in the course of which he kills several people (in self-defence, but sometimes if he'd been smarter he wouldn't have been in the situation where he needed to), steals a few things (out of desperation, but the same if-he'd-been-smarter caveat sometimes applies), and commits adultery (this was just a straight-up choice on his part and gets no defence from me). He has an old-fashioned outlook on violence and women, not a million miles from, say, Ernest Hemingway, which won't go over particularly well to most present-day audiences.
The events of the story are not just wandering from scene to scene, though, at least not all the way through. He does have goals at various points. The first is to reconnect with his companion, who is every famous bard ever in a single character. Once that's achieved, they set out to help their friend Lucius Jones win his love. This character seems to be a blend of Lucius from the Golden Ass (since he's turned into a donkey at one point, and has to eat roses to change back to human) and possibly Tom Jones, since, while longing after his beloved, he has no hesitation in sleeping with other women if the opportunity presents itself.
The quests escalate as the book goes on, and the third one is to reach the Hippocrene Spring, which makes people into poets when they drink from it. This one is given by an oracle, and involves a descent into the underworld, modelled on Dante's Inferno but guided by "Faustopheles," seemingly a combination of Faust and Mephistopheles. This is where the tone takes a very dark turn, as Faustopheles preaches nihilism and hopelessness, illustrating his points with the characters they encounter. It was a lot more philosophical than the earlier parts of the book, and I felt it didn't fit well; the author, perhaps, was putting down on paper his own darkest thoughts in an attempt to exorcise them.
The character of Silverlock is not a philosopher, and starts the book alienated and uncaring about others, but he picks up some ideals of behaviour from a few encounters along the way (notably including Sir Gawain). While he is never a highly admirable character to me, he does improve, albeit from a very unpromising starting point. He's capable of being fair-minded, a faithful friend, brave, and a protector of the innocent.
The setting never gets much of an explanation, and is a strange mishmash of the whole of literature up to the 19th century (there may have been some early-20th-century material that I missed). Different regions are from wildly different historical periods, and people wander between them, but there doesn't seem to be, say, trade in weaponry, for example. It's meant to make symbolic sense rather than literal sense. Also, the characters that Silverlock encounters always seem to be partway through their stories - the key moments of the stories are happening just as he arrives - which again follows story logic rather than any other kind of logic.
The edition I read has numerous typos (see my notes, but I've no doubt missed some), including a good many missing quotation marks, and some consistent errors. For example, the author uses a comma after "of course" when it's not required, and doesn't use a comma after "Why" as an exclamation beginning a sentence. I didn't notice any vocabulary errors, though, and the interpolated poems are well executed, in contrast to so much fantasy poetry. Apparently this book is a favourite with filkers (people who perform fandom-based songs), and I can see why.
Overall, it's an odd book, and I can see why some people love it and others hate it. I neither loved nor hated it; for me, the best parts made it good enough to make it to my Best of the Year, but in the lowest tier because of its patchy nature. It did make me consider reading (or re-reading) some of the source material, though.
August 27, 2014
I will be the first one to admit it: John Myers Myers is smarter than me. He’s forgotten more about obscure literature than I will ever know.
This book reminds me of nothing more than a small child who has learned an exciting trick. "Look at me! Look at me!" it shouts. And at first you are impressed--hey, that's pretty good! But after a while, when it's just the same trick over and over, the child is still just as excited, but the watcher has started to get tired. "Okay, that's great. Now learn a new trick!"
Here's the trick: Protagonist Hero (character name: A. Clarence Shandon) from real-world Chicago gets shipwrecked in the Commonwealth, where all literature and legends exist at once. There he runs into Don Quixote, the Mad Hatter's tea party of Alice in Wonderland, Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream, Robin Hood and his Merry Men, Beowulf and a host of others, both famous and obscure (mostly obscure). Shandon kind of bounces around the Commonwealth, less having any real mission than meeting as many literary and legendary figures as possible. Oh, and he goes from a tool to a hero.
I appreciate what Myers is trying to accomplish here. And, frankly, if I caught more of the references than it would be much more amusing. But it’s very hard when I rely almost entirely on the glossary to understand things. And it’s not like I’m not decently well-read; but I think only someone like my friend who is getting her PhD in medieval literature will get the lesser-known Dark Ages saga figures.
And what’s up with all the references to eighteenth century novels no one reads anymore and not a single Jane Austen or Bronte sisters reference? Not even Dickens, if I'm not mistaken. It's like Myers wanted to be as obscure and academic as possible.
The story itself is obviously just a showcase for the references and a really blatant classic Hero’s Journey, which means it’s not actually interesting. The premise is amusing enough at first, but when it has neither character nor plot to sustain it, my interest wanes.
On the plus side, I learned that "bivouac" is a real word and not just an outdoor clothing & gear store. It means "encamping." Shandon bivouacs LIKE CRAZY in the Commonwealth.
This book reminds me of nothing more than a small child who has learned an exciting trick. "Look at me! Look at me!" it shouts. And at first you are impressed--hey, that's pretty good! But after a while, when it's just the same trick over and over, the child is still just as excited, but the watcher has started to get tired. "Okay, that's great. Now learn a new trick!"
Here's the trick: Protagonist Hero (character name: A. Clarence Shandon) from real-world Chicago gets shipwrecked in the Commonwealth, where all literature and legends exist at once. There he runs into Don Quixote, the Mad Hatter's tea party of Alice in Wonderland, Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream, Robin Hood and his Merry Men, Beowulf and a host of others, both famous and obscure (mostly obscure). Shandon kind of bounces around the Commonwealth, less having any real mission than meeting as many literary and legendary figures as possible. Oh, and he goes from a tool to a hero.
I appreciate what Myers is trying to accomplish here. And, frankly, if I caught more of the references than it would be much more amusing. But it’s very hard when I rely almost entirely on the glossary to understand things. And it’s not like I’m not decently well-read; but I think only someone like my friend who is getting her PhD in medieval literature will get the lesser-known Dark Ages saga figures.
And what’s up with all the references to eighteenth century novels no one reads anymore and not a single Jane Austen or Bronte sisters reference? Not even Dickens, if I'm not mistaken. It's like Myers wanted to be as obscure and academic as possible.
The story itself is obviously just a showcase for the references and a really blatant classic Hero’s Journey, which means it’s not actually interesting. The premise is amusing enough at first, but when it has neither character nor plot to sustain it, my interest wanes.
On the plus side, I learned that "bivouac" is a real word and not just an outdoor clothing & gear store. It means "encamping." Shandon bivouacs LIKE CRAZY in the Commonwealth.
January 25, 2011
I want someone to explain to me in great detail why this book isn't a rip off of The Complete Compleat Enchanter.
And that book was funnier.
It's kinda cool combining all the stories and stuff, but honesty, it's been done better.
And it didn't need three introductions.
And that book was funnier.
It's kinda cool combining all the stories and stuff, but honesty, it's been done better.
And it didn't need three introductions.
May 24, 2008
This was actually re-read. I read this book years ago and recently decided that I liked it enough to read it again. It's a fun and sometimes funny fantasy adventure through all myths and fantasy adventures that have preceeded it. Well, maybe not all, but there are an awful lot of references to.... just about anything.
Ideal for those who know a little about a lot. Or a lot about a lot.
Ideal for those who know a little about a lot. Or a lot about a lot.
Want to read
July 7, 2025Here's the review to read:
https://file770.com/paul-weimer-revie...
I usually excerpt these, but this one is... complicated. Have a look. 1949 book, with all that implies.
https://file770.com/paul-weimer-revie...
I usually excerpt these, but this one is... complicated. Have a look. 1949 book, with all that implies.
March 31, 2017
I have never even heard of this book before a trusted friend recommended it to me. Another example of why word of mouth is so important. Sing the praises of the books you love!
Why this book is not a classic I know not. If I didn't know this was published in the 1940s, I would have sworn it must have been written within the last two decades. It holds up surprisingly well for a book approaching the century mark.
The mind behind it is incredibly well-read, analytical and insightful. John Myers Myers tackles such complex subjects such as religion and politics in an amazingly cohesive and coherent way. That he does so in an almost flippant manner only emphasizes the depth of his treatise on the subjects.
He makes use of people in history and fiction as characters to deliver his narrative, weaving them into modern-day scenarios, conflicts and dilemmas. Myers employs archaic and modern language to their full effect to highlight history while showing how it is relevant way past its timeline.
The most important proposition I came away with from this book involves man's tendency towards self-importance, largely without basis in fact or nature. It demonstrates how man latches on for dear life to every notion of primacy and anointment to some divine purpose or existence and his eagerness to ignore or deny every indication to the contrary--"man's chief ailment, next to being alive, is delusions of moral grandeur". It seems to posit that we miss the actual potential in life when we cling to unrealistic notions. Yet, ultimately, it suggests that the fight to persist is worth waging on its own merits, regardless of whether or not it serves a grander purpose to life. "The transition from joy to despair is often swift; but joy in its turn does not rush to fill the vacancy left by prolonged misery."
There is no denying the intelligence of the man behind this story and the command he has of the English language as well as history, religion, philosophy, government. The ability to assuredly address complex issues clearly and with mirth demonstrates an exceptional mind. SILVERLOCK makes you think and rethink your own knowledge, beliefs, assumptions. He presents new ways of seeing things and presents them so clearly. Further, he manages to present more than one side of a given issue and make each proposition utterly convincing until you hear the others which he presents as equally compelling.
Why this book is not a classic I know not. If I didn't know this was published in the 1940s, I would have sworn it must have been written within the last two decades. It holds up surprisingly well for a book approaching the century mark.
The mind behind it is incredibly well-read, analytical and insightful. John Myers Myers tackles such complex subjects such as religion and politics in an amazingly cohesive and coherent way. That he does so in an almost flippant manner only emphasizes the depth of his treatise on the subjects.
He makes use of people in history and fiction as characters to deliver his narrative, weaving them into modern-day scenarios, conflicts and dilemmas. Myers employs archaic and modern language to their full effect to highlight history while showing how it is relevant way past its timeline.
The most important proposition I came away with from this book involves man's tendency towards self-importance, largely without basis in fact or nature. It demonstrates how man latches on for dear life to every notion of primacy and anointment to some divine purpose or existence and his eagerness to ignore or deny every indication to the contrary--"man's chief ailment, next to being alive, is delusions of moral grandeur". It seems to posit that we miss the actual potential in life when we cling to unrealistic notions. Yet, ultimately, it suggests that the fight to persist is worth waging on its own merits, regardless of whether or not it serves a grander purpose to life. "The transition from joy to despair is often swift; but joy in its turn does not rush to fill the vacancy left by prolonged misery."
There is no denying the intelligence of the man behind this story and the command he has of the English language as well as history, religion, philosophy, government. The ability to assuredly address complex issues clearly and with mirth demonstrates an exceptional mind. SILVERLOCK makes you think and rethink your own knowledge, beliefs, assumptions. He presents new ways of seeing things and presents them so clearly. Further, he manages to present more than one side of a given issue and make each proposition utterly convincing until you hear the others which he presents as equally compelling.
August 7, 2008
I liked the concept of this book in theory, but I really disliked the book itself. I couldn't have cared less about the protagonist, the Silverlock of the title, and I didn't appreciate reading a book where the protagonist could be comfortably dropped out of the entire novel without significantly changing the point of the story. I think the idea of mashing together characters and themes from famous works of literature has been handled better and in more enjoyable ways in other stories.
Plus? I hate variants of the stupid "And then he woke up" ending. It’s worse than a deus ex machina.
Plus? I hate variants of the stupid "And then he woke up" ending. It’s worse than a deus ex machina.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 13, 2017
What if you were promised a fantastic fantasy adventure, full of danger and thrills and songs, all taking place in a magical, mystical land populated by heroes and villains and monsters, with quests out the wazoo and of course ladies to be saved? Sign me up, you'd probably say. It sure sounds like more fun than sitting in traffic or giving your boss yet another status report.
Then you go and discover that its all a cleverly disguised quiz designed by an English professor with an encyclopediac knowledge of mythological and literary figures both common and obscure . Suddenly the cubicle's looking plenty magical enough.
Through a combination of experience and what can only be described as a growing cynicism against any sort of goodwill or praise, I'm eternally wary of books where most of that praise comes from other authors. Generally you get a Neil Gaiman or a Stephen King or a Grant Morrison telling you how so-and-so is the "best author alive today" or "this work will melt the portions of your brain that can't handle awesome!" and I sort of treat those opinions with the same care and indulgence that one treats an overenthusiastic child who just got a new truck: smile, acknowledge politely and then change the subject as quickly as possible.
This book sports not one but three forwards from three different well-known SF authors, Poul Anderson, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (and an afterword from Anderson's wife, for good measure), all of whom go out of their way to aggressively sell you on the idea that you are about to enter a world of amazing fantastic fun the likes of which your mind has never experienced, one that will change your life and you will treasure to the end of your days. As if to drive the point home, all the praise quotes on the front and back cover are selected from those introductions and if there's one thing I've learned in my life so far its that if someone has to stress to you repeatedly how much fun you're about to have, it may not be as much fun as they say.
Now, in all fairness there's nothing to suggest that any of the four are anything less than sincere and if they are overly enthuasiastic it may only be because they're so thrilled that one of their favorite books is back in print. But unfortunately the exprerience they describe and what the book actually is doesn't quite measure up.
"Silverlock" is a book about a guy with an MBA who falls overboard from a ship and winds up washing ashore on a land called "The Commonwealth". He quickly meets a fellow named Golias who becomes his guide through the land, terms him Silverlock and proceeds to take him through a series of adventures, all of which are supposed to gradually transition Silverlock from a man who is ambevilent about life to one who embraces it fully.
The trick to the book, and the reason why anyone probably remembers it, is that the Commonwealth is populated by hordes of literary, mythological and historical, all of whom Silverlock encounters about every other page. This is supposed to add to the fun, but it seems like the kind of fun people gathering for "Literary Scholar Trivia Night" might have, or all those folks whose greatest joy in reading "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" is being able to identify every single background character no matter how obscure. In a graphic work or even a film that sort of approach can work because you can focus on the plot and main characters while relegating the rest to the background as a way to deepen subsequent readings. In a novel, or at least in this novel, it doesn't quite work that way . . . since Silverlock has to encounter every single character himself it only calls attention to the fact that literally every single page is a reference to another character or work . . . the problem with this from my perspective (keeping in mind that I am reading a book from 1949 from a 2017 filter) is that there's no real reason for all of these characters to be here. We're not thrust into a single world in the past, like if Silverlock fell into ancient Greece and encountered all the old heroes and gods . . . we get ancient heroes like Beowulf and Oedipus, Biblical figures like Job, characters from Shakespeare plays and more modern figures like Daniel Boone (some of the names are changed, I guess to make it more "fun"), all of whom are randomly scattered over the landscape for Silverlock to run into. What's weird to me is that there's never any acknowledgement that these are fictional characters and maybe Myers felt it would take readers out of the story to have Silverlock realize that, which works fine for the more obscure figures but I find it difficult to believe that someone with a graduate college degree would run into Don Quixote and not "Gee, wait, aren't you from a book?", suggesting he's either completely oblivious or the least well-read person in existence. Even Robin Hood doesn't get a flicker of recognition.
This wouldn't be as much of a problem if the spot-the-reference stuff was relegated to the background due to strong plot and characters but Silverlock himself, despite being the narrator, is resolutely colorless, never really conveying the detachment from life that's supposed to be at the heart of the character and what the Commonwealth is gradually supposed to change . . . instead of reluctantly taking part in events to the point where his reluctance becomes an active danger to everyone around him (shades of Matt Wagner's first "Mage" series) he seems to have a "say yes to everything" attitude and goes along with every quest that comes his way, rescuing people in peril and trying to help friends. It makes for a bit of a romp but without any emotional attachment to our narrator, you're just along for the ride as he reels from quest to quest and you try to figure out who's being referenced now. If I got a sense there was some overarching coherency to it, a sense that Myers was delving into the myths and stories that make up our collective folklore in an attempt to make a deeper point about how these stories affect both us and the world we live in that might be easier to take, but everything is crammed in so randomly without rhyme or reason that its hard to say what the point is. Does Silverlock run into Job because Myers is trying to make a point about suffering or maintaining one's faith in suffering or because he just thought it was cool to depict a guy covered in boils? I can't say.
The book does come alive at some points, mostly when a direction appears in the plot. Generally this is when he piggybacks onto someone else's quests (a sequence where a friend is changed into a donkey actually gives the book some energy for a while) but a long section where he gets a lesson in life from the devil in "Faust" via a journey through Hell shows Myers dipping into more macabre territory and shows a little bit of verve. But even here he can't help with being clever at the expense of making a point, with one sequence (and this one bothered me a bit) featuring Silverlock running into Raskolnikov from "Crime and Punishment" purely to highlight his crimes without even attempting to tie in Dostoevsky's themes of redemption to the larger story at hand. In Myers' mind, its just another cool character to prove how well-read he is.
Its that surface skimming of literature that makes the whole affair seem very facile to me . . . its not a madcap enough time to be a true rollicking romp, it doesn't feel satirical and there's no "Mythago Wood" style attempt to explore exactly where stories come from. Its professional fan-fiction in a way, strip mining public domain characters and situations purely to show how clever the author is being. Even the songs, supposedly the other big highlight of the book, didn't particularly grab me, unless that's designed for the kinds of people who read lyric sheets in album liner notes and imagine it set to the music in their heads. I feel bad slagging a book that at least three authors whose works I admire very much found such joy in (two of them are sadly deceased, so at least they can't write me nasty rebuttals) but I can't help but feel the only joy that comes from this book is being able to identify every reference and even then the best you're going to get is a scorecard you can show off to your friends. Whether they'll be impressed or not is another story.
Then you go and discover that its all a cleverly disguised quiz designed by an English professor with an encyclopediac knowledge of mythological and literary figures both common and obscure . Suddenly the cubicle's looking plenty magical enough.
Through a combination of experience and what can only be described as a growing cynicism against any sort of goodwill or praise, I'm eternally wary of books where most of that praise comes from other authors. Generally you get a Neil Gaiman or a Stephen King or a Grant Morrison telling you how so-and-so is the "best author alive today" or "this work will melt the portions of your brain that can't handle awesome!" and I sort of treat those opinions with the same care and indulgence that one treats an overenthusiastic child who just got a new truck: smile, acknowledge politely and then change the subject as quickly as possible.
This book sports not one but three forwards from three different well-known SF authors, Poul Anderson, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (and an afterword from Anderson's wife, for good measure), all of whom go out of their way to aggressively sell you on the idea that you are about to enter a world of amazing fantastic fun the likes of which your mind has never experienced, one that will change your life and you will treasure to the end of your days. As if to drive the point home, all the praise quotes on the front and back cover are selected from those introductions and if there's one thing I've learned in my life so far its that if someone has to stress to you repeatedly how much fun you're about to have, it may not be as much fun as they say.
Now, in all fairness there's nothing to suggest that any of the four are anything less than sincere and if they are overly enthuasiastic it may only be because they're so thrilled that one of their favorite books is back in print. But unfortunately the exprerience they describe and what the book actually is doesn't quite measure up.
"Silverlock" is a book about a guy with an MBA who falls overboard from a ship and winds up washing ashore on a land called "The Commonwealth". He quickly meets a fellow named Golias who becomes his guide through the land, terms him Silverlock and proceeds to take him through a series of adventures, all of which are supposed to gradually transition Silverlock from a man who is ambevilent about life to one who embraces it fully.
The trick to the book, and the reason why anyone probably remembers it, is that the Commonwealth is populated by hordes of literary, mythological and historical, all of whom Silverlock encounters about every other page. This is supposed to add to the fun, but it seems like the kind of fun people gathering for "Literary Scholar Trivia Night" might have, or all those folks whose greatest joy in reading "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" is being able to identify every single background character no matter how obscure. In a graphic work or even a film that sort of approach can work because you can focus on the plot and main characters while relegating the rest to the background as a way to deepen subsequent readings. In a novel, or at least in this novel, it doesn't quite work that way . . . since Silverlock has to encounter every single character himself it only calls attention to the fact that literally every single page is a reference to another character or work . . . the problem with this from my perspective (keeping in mind that I am reading a book from 1949 from a 2017 filter) is that there's no real reason for all of these characters to be here. We're not thrust into a single world in the past, like if Silverlock fell into ancient Greece and encountered all the old heroes and gods . . . we get ancient heroes like Beowulf and Oedipus, Biblical figures like Job, characters from Shakespeare plays and more modern figures like Daniel Boone (some of the names are changed, I guess to make it more "fun"), all of whom are randomly scattered over the landscape for Silverlock to run into. What's weird to me is that there's never any acknowledgement that these are fictional characters and maybe Myers felt it would take readers out of the story to have Silverlock realize that, which works fine for the more obscure figures but I find it difficult to believe that someone with a graduate college degree would run into Don Quixote and not "Gee, wait, aren't you from a book?", suggesting he's either completely oblivious or the least well-read person in existence. Even Robin Hood doesn't get a flicker of recognition.
This wouldn't be as much of a problem if the spot-the-reference stuff was relegated to the background due to strong plot and characters but Silverlock himself, despite being the narrator, is resolutely colorless, never really conveying the detachment from life that's supposed to be at the heart of the character and what the Commonwealth is gradually supposed to change . . . instead of reluctantly taking part in events to the point where his reluctance becomes an active danger to everyone around him (shades of Matt Wagner's first "Mage" series) he seems to have a "say yes to everything" attitude and goes along with every quest that comes his way, rescuing people in peril and trying to help friends. It makes for a bit of a romp but without any emotional attachment to our narrator, you're just along for the ride as he reels from quest to quest and you try to figure out who's being referenced now. If I got a sense there was some overarching coherency to it, a sense that Myers was delving into the myths and stories that make up our collective folklore in an attempt to make a deeper point about how these stories affect both us and the world we live in that might be easier to take, but everything is crammed in so randomly without rhyme or reason that its hard to say what the point is. Does Silverlock run into Job because Myers is trying to make a point about suffering or maintaining one's faith in suffering or because he just thought it was cool to depict a guy covered in boils? I can't say.
The book does come alive at some points, mostly when a direction appears in the plot. Generally this is when he piggybacks onto someone else's quests (a sequence where a friend is changed into a donkey actually gives the book some energy for a while) but a long section where he gets a lesson in life from the devil in "Faust" via a journey through Hell shows Myers dipping into more macabre territory and shows a little bit of verve. But even here he can't help with being clever at the expense of making a point, with one sequence (and this one bothered me a bit) featuring Silverlock running into Raskolnikov from "Crime and Punishment" purely to highlight his crimes without even attempting to tie in Dostoevsky's themes of redemption to the larger story at hand. In Myers' mind, its just another cool character to prove how well-read he is.
Its that surface skimming of literature that makes the whole affair seem very facile to me . . . its not a madcap enough time to be a true rollicking romp, it doesn't feel satirical and there's no "Mythago Wood" style attempt to explore exactly where stories come from. Its professional fan-fiction in a way, strip mining public domain characters and situations purely to show how clever the author is being. Even the songs, supposedly the other big highlight of the book, didn't particularly grab me, unless that's designed for the kinds of people who read lyric sheets in album liner notes and imagine it set to the music in their heads. I feel bad slagging a book that at least three authors whose works I admire very much found such joy in (two of them are sadly deceased, so at least they can't write me nasty rebuttals) but I can't help but feel the only joy that comes from this book is being able to identify every reference and even then the best you're going to get is a scorecard you can show off to your friends. Whether they'll be impressed or not is another story.
January 8, 2020
A rotten sort of man is brought to the land of stories, in order to face himself.
This is exactly the sort of book whose plot I've read too much of: the narrator, who is a complete jerk, is the main problem to be resolved in the story. However, I very much enjoyed this variation, which drags said jerk through everything from the Odyssey to Hell, offering him a final choice as to the disposition of his soul. (The Hell sequence is delightfully, and surprisingly, dark and awful.) What this book does is puncture the illusion of being a reasonably good man when all you've done in life is coast on your entitlements, and show an alternate path to cynical disengagement. I came out of the book refreshed. Of course my description doesn't do the book justice.
This is one of those very rare books where I would say, "Keep reading." (I normally abandon books early on if I'm not having fun.) The narrator is a piece of work, and the book starts out nearly as tiresome to read as the narrator finds his own existence. Of note, there are a bunch of references. It may feel frustrating and belittling at first if you don't "get" them all: the narrator certainly feels that way. Again, I recommend to keep reading. I think the obscurity is intentional; the main guy that the narrator runs into is *very* obscurely named, and a lot of the references would have been mostly-missed by readers even when the book was first written (1949). If it really bothers you, you can look up the main ones on Wikipedia later. I think the point of all the references was to be confusing and almost offputting at first for the majority of readers, then bring them to appreciate plunging into new stories by the end of the book. I may be wrong.
Recommended for fantasy readers, and for those going through a discontentedness of spirit.
This is exactly the sort of book whose plot I've read too much of: the narrator, who is a complete jerk, is the main problem to be resolved in the story. However, I very much enjoyed this variation, which drags said jerk through everything from the Odyssey to Hell, offering him a final choice as to the disposition of his soul. (The Hell sequence is delightfully, and surprisingly, dark and awful.) What this book does is puncture the illusion of being a reasonably good man when all you've done in life is coast on your entitlements, and show an alternate path to cynical disengagement. I came out of the book refreshed. Of course my description doesn't do the book justice.
This is one of those very rare books where I would say, "Keep reading." (I normally abandon books early on if I'm not having fun.) The narrator is a piece of work, and the book starts out nearly as tiresome to read as the narrator finds his own existence. Of note, there are a bunch of references. It may feel frustrating and belittling at first if you don't "get" them all: the narrator certainly feels that way. Again, I recommend to keep reading. I think the obscurity is intentional; the main guy that the narrator runs into is *very* obscurely named, and a lot of the references would have been mostly-missed by readers even when the book was first written (1949). If it really bothers you, you can look up the main ones on Wikipedia later. I think the point of all the references was to be confusing and almost offputting at first for the majority of readers, then bring them to appreciate plunging into new stories by the end of the book. I may be wrong.
Recommended for fantasy readers, and for those going through a discontentedness of spirit.
September 28, 2019
On the cover of Silverlock, Jerry PournelIe is quoted as saying, "You can now have the pleasure of [reading] Silverlock for the first time. I envy you.” Well, Jerry, you can stop envying me. I did not find reading Silverlock pleasurable. (He also suggests that it improves on the re-reading, but I will never know if that is true.)
I did not find Silverlock engaging, enlightening or entertaining. Do you have to like the main character to enjoy the book? I doubt it, although I certainly did not like the misogynistic and chauvinistic Silverlock. I am apparently not learned enough to understand all the smug obscure references, and the weaving together of many stories was not compelling enough to keep my interest while I also wondered what I was missing.
I picked this “classic” for my sci-fi/fantasy book club. I skimmed the last quarter. I suspect this will not be a popular selection. My library is the only one in our system that owns a copy; now I understand why. A classic that deserves to fall out of favor.
I did not find Silverlock engaging, enlightening or entertaining. Do you have to like the main character to enjoy the book? I doubt it, although I certainly did not like the misogynistic and chauvinistic Silverlock. I am apparently not learned enough to understand all the smug obscure references, and the weaving together of many stories was not compelling enough to keep my interest while I also wondered what I was missing.
I picked this “classic” for my sci-fi/fantasy book club. I skimmed the last quarter. I suspect this will not be a popular selection. My library is the only one in our system that owns a copy; now I understand why. A classic that deserves to fall out of favor.
April 17, 2020
This is one of those book that leave you wondering how you had missed it until now. A fast-paced adventure that has you successfully suspending your disbelief in a series of ways, while you encounter a sequence of unique characters – most of which seem oddly familiar and some of which you recognize immediately. An experience that leaves the reader with a sensation similar to waking from a memorably vivid dream.
My enjoyment of this particular edition (Ace Books, 1966) was enhanced by the three Forewords written by Poul Anderson, Larry Niven, and Jerry Pournelle. They prepared me to enjoy this work as a cult classic and to view its setting – The Commonwealth – as representing the literary universe. And in my humanistic perspective, that is equivalent to representing the Western consciousness that has accumulated iconic figures and tales through the centuries.
After finishing this book, I was curious as to how it had been added to my reading list. The credit goes to an NPR review by Tasha Robinson of Patrick Ness’s The Rest of Us Just Live Here in October 2015, in which she discusses characters that slip from one story to another and for that reason likens Ness’s book to Silverlock, Mike Carey’s Unwritten, and Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series. I read the Fforde series a couple years ago, and it did come to mind occasionally while reading Silverlock. They were both amusing in the same manner.
My enjoyment of this particular edition (Ace Books, 1966) was enhanced by the three Forewords written by Poul Anderson, Larry Niven, and Jerry Pournelle. They prepared me to enjoy this work as a cult classic and to view its setting – The Commonwealth – as representing the literary universe. And in my humanistic perspective, that is equivalent to representing the Western consciousness that has accumulated iconic figures and tales through the centuries.
After finishing this book, I was curious as to how it had been added to my reading list. The credit goes to an NPR review by Tasha Robinson of Patrick Ness’s The Rest of Us Just Live Here in October 2015, in which she discusses characters that slip from one story to another and for that reason likens Ness’s book to Silverlock, Mike Carey’s Unwritten, and Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series. I read the Fforde series a couple years ago, and it did come to mind occasionally while reading Silverlock. They were both amusing in the same manner.
March 30, 2020
If you are ever in the need to feel really really highbrow, or just kind of wished you had majored in western lit instead of something that would pay the bills (unless you did, and it is) check out Silverlock by John Myers Myers - its kind of a sideways version of Dante - where instead of going through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven the author and his guide work their way through all of Western literature up from the beginning through about when it was published in the '40s. But the fun part is rarely do they ever give you a title, just clues so you have to figure it out yourself. Not for everyone but it is fun and can give one a delightfully pretentious thrill ride.
January 9, 2020
Oh, what I wouldn’t give to spend a year in the Commonwealth! I felt practically illiterate reading this, jam packed with literary and historical references by the dozens, if not hundreds. Definitely helps to have a resource handy for looking up characters and events. I’d like to tackle this one again someday after getting a better handle on the Western canon, but it’s a helluva great read even if you’re just along for the ride with Silverlock.
May 21, 2023
A man who survives a shipwreck is saved by someone who becomes his guide through the Commonwealth of Letters, where they wash ashore and where they encounter all sorts of characters from mythology and literature.
Meh. Interesting idea, but not carried out very well. The main character is in no way likable, nor are many of the others. And I think the interpretation of the literary and mythological nods could have been more clever/inventive, too.
Meh. Interesting idea, but not carried out very well. The main character is in no way likable, nor are many of the others. And I think the interpretation of the literary and mythological nods could have been more clever/inventive, too.
January 14, 2023
A magical shaggy dog story full of humor and insight. It reminded me of reading The Phantom Tollbooth for the first time.
February 9, 2015
A shipwrecked A. Clarence Shandon (aka Silverlock) is washed ashore in the mythical land of Commonwealth. He is befriended and guided through this land by a fellow named Golias, who seems to specialize in drinking beers and composing and singing ballads. The main fun of the novel is for the reader to identify the various literary and mythological characters who populate Commonwealth, as Silverlock encounters them. Unfortunately, there is not much of a story arc, other than a sequence of encounters with one character after the other, until the final section of the book. For example, I think Golias is actually Bishop Golias, famous from the satirical 12th century latin poem "Apocalypse of Golias ", which should give an idea just how obscure some of these characters are. (Thank goodness for Wikipedia).
In the final section, Silverlock is obliged to follow a quest that takes him to Hell, in the company of Faustopheles. Given the raving introductions, and stories about the book, written by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle for this edition, I think it might be safe to say that this is the inspiration for their 1976 collaboration novel Inferno. With its drinking and filksongs, this book has been kept alive, in and out of publication, by its popularity among hard core fandom.
In the final section, Silverlock is obliged to follow a quest that takes him to Hell, in the company of Faustopheles. Given the raving introductions, and stories about the book, written by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle for this edition, I think it might be safe to say that this is the inspiration for their 1976 collaboration novel Inferno. With its drinking and filksongs, this book has been kept alive, in and out of publication, by its popularity among hard core fandom.
June 6, 2013
Another recommendation from Maureen at "Aliens in this world" and at steal at .99 cents on Amazon.
What a great book. Kind of a cross between the voyages of Odysseus and Dante's Inferno. It borrows from various myths and from works of fiction.
The ship-wrecked Silverlock is a bit of a jerk who is just willing to give up, but not yet. While the normal plot development would be that such a self-centered person would be tested and would grow to become a hero, this only hints at that. Instead we have a much more real character that does grow, but also falls and starts again. Conversion is seldom a straight line and there are plenty of zig-zags in this plot.
I just loved the writing that was often funny regarding character dialogue and the characters thoughts. But this isn't written as a comedic Fantasy, just quite funny at times.
An example of the humor.
"...while I drank, I wasn't in bad shape. I was proud of how straight I could walk, though my shadow wasn't doing so well."
As a fantasy adventure it was quite enjoyable, but there was just so much more depth to it.
What a great book. Kind of a cross between the voyages of Odysseus and Dante's Inferno. It borrows from various myths and from works of fiction.
The ship-wrecked Silverlock is a bit of a jerk who is just willing to give up, but not yet. While the normal plot development would be that such a self-centered person would be tested and would grow to become a hero, this only hints at that. Instead we have a much more real character that does grow, but also falls and starts again. Conversion is seldom a straight line and there are plenty of zig-zags in this plot.
I just loved the writing that was often funny regarding character dialogue and the characters thoughts. But this isn't written as a comedic Fantasy, just quite funny at times.
An example of the humor.
"...while I drank, I wasn't in bad shape. I was proud of how straight I could walk, though my shadow wasn't doing so well."
As a fantasy adventure it was quite enjoyable, but there was just so much more depth to it.
July 30, 2010
This is my third reading of Silverlock. Clarence Shandon, a very cynical business exec, survives a shipwreck, to be washed up on the shores of the Commonwealth of Letters. With the help of a bard named Golias (who is also Orpheus and Taliesin), he gets his bearings, is rescued from Circe, fights battles, and so forth. He meets all manner of characters, all from epic, song, myth and story, from ancient to modern.
A rollicking fun novel, though of little literary consequence by itself; as others have remarked, its value lies in that of a game: you can congratulate yourself on knowing some of the more obvious references (Hamlet, Oedipus) or challenge yourself to track down some of the more obscure (the knave Lorel, Jamshyd). It's a modern Pilgrim's Progress dedicated to the delight of reading, and a great way to stimulate further interest in the classics
A rollicking fun novel, though of little literary consequence by itself; as others have remarked, its value lies in that of a game: you can congratulate yourself on knowing some of the more obvious references (Hamlet, Oedipus) or challenge yourself to track down some of the more obscure (the knave Lorel, Jamshyd). It's a modern Pilgrim's Progress dedicated to the delight of reading, and a great way to stimulate further interest in the classics
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