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Asterion
Asterion, the Minotaur
A neo-Gothic hybrid of modern paranormal fantasy and contemporary middle-class realism; a book of suspicion, resentment, confusion, regret, poor memory, and conversation; novel as riddle.
The narrator, inexplicably lost in the Labyrinth, is confronted by Asterion, the Minotaur.
At the same time, the narrator and his wife are vacationing on a Greek island when hotel guests begin to disappear.
A discredited police inspector arrives to unravel the mystery, but his reliance on phrenology may be a greater hindrance than help.
The opening riddle is resolved in the ending.
A neo-Gothic hybrid of modern paranormal fantasy and contemporary middle-class realism; a book of suspicion, resentment, confusion, regret, poor memory, and conversation; novel as riddle.
The narrator, inexplicably lost in the Labyrinth, is confronted by Asterion, the Minotaur.
At the same time, the narrator and his wife are vacationing on a Greek island when hotel guests begin to disappear.
A discredited police inspector arrives to unravel the mystery, but his reliance on phrenology may be a greater hindrance than help.
The opening riddle is resolved in the ending.
222 pages, Paperback
Published March 1, 2014
1 person is currently reading
265 people want to read
About the author
Paul Majkut
24 books33 followersPaul Majkut, born in East St. Louis, Illinois, now lives in San Diego, California.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 17, 2014
My troubled friend, Steve Ward, had a dream in 1978. The revolution had failed and those of us who remained in Berkeley watched the movement unravel into the conflicting identity and single-issue politics of bourgeois democracy. This was not Steve’s concern. His problems were closer to home and the dream he told seemed like as good a place as any to start a novel, so the seed in the shell was planted and I began work.
Writing a novel about his dream was my idea. He didn’t object. What little creative energy he had was spent developing the paragraph as a fiction form, what today is known as “flash fiction.”
Steve’s dream was a single scene. A man lost in a maze. Caution should be taken by the reader not to interpret Asterion, the Minotaur as an analysis of my friend. Nor should the reader believe they have discovered me in its lines. The lines of this novel are not prison bars. They imprison neither Steve nor me—except in the sense that anything written contains an author and what he or she experiences and thinks. Though Steve was an advocate of psychological cures and took part in group therapy for many years, I was and am not enraptured by psychology. What he saw as revelation, I saw as hokum.
Asterion, the Minotaur is about the reader, not the writer. It is the reader who is imprisoned in these lines.
Research, preparation, and the association of ideas inevitably led me to the story of the Minotaur, Asterion. Before Steve told me his dream, I had already fixed on the idea of writing a novel placed in a location I had never visited. It was important that the location be one I experienced only in imagination.
The first draft of the novel was finished that year, placed in a manila folder, and lost in the labyrinth of papers and books that collect and have accompanied me as a miasma of words through life—like the balloons that follow the sad clown in the nightclub scene in La Dolce Vita.
In 1993, I was invited by a small press to contribute a novel to the small line of books it was publishing. At the time, I was vainly trying to hold together the fading embers and remnants of the progressive movement as the editor of a weekly, The San Diego Review. In reality, I was disinterring an ideological corpse that had decomposed into its body-politic parts more than two decades before.
I accepted the publisher’s invitation, but did not send Asterion. I send another, more recent and much longer novel, Sandstorm. All was agreed, a contract signed, and a schedule made. In the meantime, a major publisher that I had approached inquired about Sandstorm. An editor wanted to see it. Opportunity knocked.
I called the small press and said I had a better novel and wanted to substitute it for Sandstorm. The small press agreed, but wanted the same length. Don’t ask me why the publisher made that a condition. I should have resisted. Instead, I agreed.
Asterion was the only other novel ready, but it was only half the length of Sandstorm. In haste, I fattened it by feeding unrelated tales I had written as a feature columnist to the characters. I put these tales into the mouths of the characters in Asterion. The characters gagged on the unsavory digressions and the plot became incoherent. The novel’s theme, its first and last sentence—“What you cannot speak about truthfully, you must pass over in silence”—was lost in the glare of what was published. Steve’s dream dissipated in my publishing opportunism and my story became a book, not a novel.
The present novel is the original Asterion, the Minotaur. Although this is the second, revised edition, it is the original, shorn of overgrowth, trimmed, and as presentable as self-indulgent fiction can be. Sandstorm, now retitled Sand, is also available.
Finally, I praise the striking art contributed to Asterion by Blair Chalpin. Blair is an extraordinary artist. He was one of The San Diego Review group at the time, which also included Jan Piruncik, Ted Frank, and Gabriela Romani, my lasting friends.
When I asked Blair to draw art for the novel, he told me he would like to experiment with one-line illustration, a method he was playing with at the time. The idea is that the pen never leaves the paper. Each illustration is one continuous line.
If anything is true of Asterion, it is these drawings that make the novel memorable.
Writing a novel about his dream was my idea. He didn’t object. What little creative energy he had was spent developing the paragraph as a fiction form, what today is known as “flash fiction.”
Steve’s dream was a single scene. A man lost in a maze. Caution should be taken by the reader not to interpret Asterion, the Minotaur as an analysis of my friend. Nor should the reader believe they have discovered me in its lines. The lines of this novel are not prison bars. They imprison neither Steve nor me—except in the sense that anything written contains an author and what he or she experiences and thinks. Though Steve was an advocate of psychological cures and took part in group therapy for many years, I was and am not enraptured by psychology. What he saw as revelation, I saw as hokum.
Asterion, the Minotaur is about the reader, not the writer. It is the reader who is imprisoned in these lines.
Research, preparation, and the association of ideas inevitably led me to the story of the Minotaur, Asterion. Before Steve told me his dream, I had already fixed on the idea of writing a novel placed in a location I had never visited. It was important that the location be one I experienced only in imagination.
The first draft of the novel was finished that year, placed in a manila folder, and lost in the labyrinth of papers and books that collect and have accompanied me as a miasma of words through life—like the balloons that follow the sad clown in the nightclub scene in La Dolce Vita.
In 1993, I was invited by a small press to contribute a novel to the small line of books it was publishing. At the time, I was vainly trying to hold together the fading embers and remnants of the progressive movement as the editor of a weekly, The San Diego Review. In reality, I was disinterring an ideological corpse that had decomposed into its body-politic parts more than two decades before.
I accepted the publisher’s invitation, but did not send Asterion. I send another, more recent and much longer novel, Sandstorm. All was agreed, a contract signed, and a schedule made. In the meantime, a major publisher that I had approached inquired about Sandstorm. An editor wanted to see it. Opportunity knocked.
I called the small press and said I had a better novel and wanted to substitute it for Sandstorm. The small press agreed, but wanted the same length. Don’t ask me why the publisher made that a condition. I should have resisted. Instead, I agreed.
Asterion was the only other novel ready, but it was only half the length of Sandstorm. In haste, I fattened it by feeding unrelated tales I had written as a feature columnist to the characters. I put these tales into the mouths of the characters in Asterion. The characters gagged on the unsavory digressions and the plot became incoherent. The novel’s theme, its first and last sentence—“What you cannot speak about truthfully, you must pass over in silence”—was lost in the glare of what was published. Steve’s dream dissipated in my publishing opportunism and my story became a book, not a novel.
The present novel is the original Asterion, the Minotaur. Although this is the second, revised edition, it is the original, shorn of overgrowth, trimmed, and as presentable as self-indulgent fiction can be. Sandstorm, now retitled Sand, is also available.
Finally, I praise the striking art contributed to Asterion by Blair Chalpin. Blair is an extraordinary artist. He was one of The San Diego Review group at the time, which also included Jan Piruncik, Ted Frank, and Gabriela Romani, my lasting friends.
When I asked Blair to draw art for the novel, he told me he would like to experiment with one-line illustration, a method he was playing with at the time. The idea is that the pen never leaves the paper. Each illustration is one continuous line.
If anything is true of Asterion, it is these drawings that make the novel memorable.
June 1, 2014
A Greek island, a group of tourists looking for adventure and romance, a marriage in conflict, and a phrenologist detective who appears to try to solve the mystery when some of these tourists start to disappear.
A mystery shrouded by another mystery—that of the Minotaur’s labyrinth. In the labyrinth, a character identified as the narrator—he is also one of the tourists—tries to escape Asterion (the Minotaur) through the tortuous passageways of the labyrinth. This novel is a lot more than a detective story. It is also a philosophical discourse and a moral commentary on humans and their animal nature.
An intriguing novel where you, the reader, must conclude what the narrator is really seeking and saying.
A mystery shrouded by another mystery—that of the Minotaur’s labyrinth. In the labyrinth, a character identified as the narrator—he is also one of the tourists—tries to escape Asterion (the Minotaur) through the tortuous passageways of the labyrinth. This novel is a lot more than a detective story. It is also a philosophical discourse and a moral commentary on humans and their animal nature.
An intriguing novel where you, the reader, must conclude what the narrator is really seeking and saying.
September 26, 2014
Slow b ut I think that's what makes this novel better. The minotaur is as real as the other characters even if he is segregated away. The ending comes as a surprise because it is no surprise at all but just a repeating of the beginning.
September 26, 2014
There are comic parts to this novel especially the fat detective who is a phrenologist and looks at peoples heads for bumps to solve a mystery that is not a mystery unless the narrator being trapped in the labyrinth with the minotaur is the real mystery. I don't know why I like this novel but I do.
September 26, 2014
The minotaur has a name. Asterion. I think he is the god of confusion or should be if his appearance in this novel is accurate. He also gives the narrative a way out, even if the narrator doesn't understand it until the end. The tourists on the island are all interesting minor interests.
September 26, 2014
Of very high literary quality that comes back weeks later because it has invaded the reader's subconscious. Craft at its experimental best.
March 23, 2024
Bizarre but compelling revision of the minotaur myth. A dissatisfied couple holidaying on an island near Crete become embroiled with odd characters and disappearances, intertwined with a narrative of the minotaur philosophising on truth, humanity and myth. Liked the nod to Borges' House of Asterion as well. I read this on Internet Archive, sadly I have not been able to find a copy for sale.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews