The Maze Maker

by Michael Ayrton

Editorial Review - Kirkus Reviews
Recreating Greek myths is a hazardous undertaking for the contemporary novelist. Mary Renault solved the problem largely through avoiding it. The King Must Die, for instance, historical sensibility of his time than a Clever and seductive romance with quasi-Freudian trimmings. On the other hand, Gide's rendering of the same matter is pretty much a philosophical monologue as spun by a French savant. In The Maze Maker, Michael Ayrton is much more ambitious than either Gide or Renault, but not quite as successful. More or less faithfully following the knotty events of the Daedalus-Icarus legend, Ayrton presents both the frothiness of fable itself and the slow flowering of modern-day ramifications. For Daedalus symbolizes in his various adventures (the famous labyrinth at Crete, the Minotaur, Queen Pasiphae and the Bull, the tragic for whom he had fashioned wings, and the death of Daedalus' son, Icarus, Cumaean Sybil) not only ""the cunning worker"" of ancient days, but also the aspiring scientist or technocrat of our century struggling to achieve absolute sovereignty over Nature or the Gods. In that context, Daedalus' relations with Apollo enter a timeless realm, and the most affecting sections in The Maze Maker are those in which existential parallels are most pronounced. Ayrton's style is gravely lyrical, with touches of Durrell-like elegance. A finely-drawn, fetching tale, though lacking the narrative spell of Renault or Gide's intellectual plays.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Fantasy, Mythology, Novels, Science Fiction Fantasy

278 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Michael Ayrton, was an English artist and writer, known as a painter, printmaker, sculptor and designer, and also as a critic, broadcaster and novelist. He was a stage and costume designer, working with John Minton on the 1942 John Gielgud production of Macbeth from age 19; and a book designer and illustrator, for Wyndham Lewis's The Human Age trilogy and William Golding. He also collaborated with Constant Lambert. His work is in several important collections including the Tate Gallery, London, National Portrait Gallery, London, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Fry Art Gallery, Essex.

Reviews

[Fred Jenkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this one. Ayrton doesn't do anything contrary to the surviving myths, but he adds a lot of filling that does not ring true to me. There is a lot about the mother goddess; Ayrton was clearly heavily influenced by Robert Graves. Apollo is portrayed as a rather petulant cad. The theme of labyrinths is expanded to be a leitmotiv throughout Daedalus' life. Daedalus' introspections and his relationships with Icarus and others are very mid-twentieth century. Ayrton can't seem to make up his mind about what to accept and what to rationalize. His Daedalus clearly accepts the Greek gods as such, but indulges in a lot of wink-wink, nudge-nudge rationalizations of some of the traditional stories about Daedalus, Minos, and others.

Ayrton was a sculptor as well as a writer; he was fascinated by the Daedalus myth and made a number of bronzes based on it. He spends a lot of time on the minutiae of Daedalus' craft and technique. If you are into that sort of thing, fine. I found it rather tedious.

[Ronald Morton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wrote a review - HERE - of one of Ayrton's earlier works, The Testament Of Daedalus. It's a short work - I think the "Testament" itself was around 60-70 pages of the book - but it was a strong showing, and brought a unique (artist's) perspective to the Daedalus and Icarus myth. It would appear to be the work from which Ayrton would eventually create The Maze Maker. Entire passages of Testament show up here, some of the better prose from Testament is also included in this work. Daedalus continues to be a well written and realized character here as well.

That said, this book was considerably weaker. It felt much too long, and dragged through many of its sections. "Part One" of the book covers Daedalus's life from childhood up to the death of Icarus, and takes up roughly half of the book. The whole thing felt like a bloated and overwrought re-working of The Testament Of Daedalus and I was exasperated with the book by the time I reached the second and third parts.

Those parts cover the rest of the Daedalus myth - his building of the temple of Apollo and hanging up his wings, and his time spent in Sicily - and while there were strong parts - the sections that detail the process of the creation of Daedalus's works continue to be the standout sections - most of the second half of the book dragged much as the first half did.

Seeing as both are out of print, and roughly cast the same, if you're looking for an Ayrton work to check out I'd definitely recommend you grab The Testament Of Daedalus instead of this.

[Lewis Carnelian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ayrton’s work struck me as strongly influenced by Graves in the beginning, with its knack for verisimilitude and its leaning towards Graves’ hegemonic, stultifying reductive interpretations of Greek mythos, but as Ayrton falls into a relatively minor reputed episode of Daedalus’s life—the building of the temple of the Apollo at Cumae—it becomes far more phantasmagoric, as if by entering the entrails of Gaea, Ayrton leaves behind Graves’s largely authoritative tone into something more transgressive. It can be difficult to follow, and resembles meditative works of anxiety like Kafka’s unfinished The Burrow, and, when Daedalus emerges, for the book’s final act, the tone changes again, this time to something far more ironic. Ayrton was not primarily a writer, and it shows here: his craft is inconsistent, although his knowledge and ambition are great. This is not to say he is not without a certain style, especially in the latter part, where his irony, humor, and distance resembles that of a Borges or perhaps even Gene Wolfe. But what Ayrton lacks in consistency and craft he makes up in webs of complexity, and an ever-searching mind that clearly endeared the myth of the master builder to him in more ways than one. By no means a great book, but, a memorable one.

[Christian Schwoerke · Rating 3 out of 5]

This fictional autobiography of Daedalus was engrossing, but as I read I was equally bemused and bewildered, uncertain what to feel or to think about the fantastic events he narrates. Ayrton’s methods signal that this story of Daedalus is something other/more than escapist fantasy or a simple re-telling of a classic Greek myth. For instance, the narrator Daedalus directly addresses readers in the Age of Aquarius to inform us with earnest gravity that the gods he speaks of are not metaphors. Nor does this novel appear to be the story of the plight of the (eternal) artist, though there are aspects of Daedalus’ life that suggest the struggles of artists through the ages who’ve sought patronage from royalty and the upper classes. Even accounting for the limited consciousness of an “unreliable” first-person narrator, I was unable to look past/through Daedalus’ statements about Apollo and the Mother/Hera/Demeter/Athena to more rationally explicable phenomena (which might be (mis)taken for the actions of willful and petty immortals/gods).

Ayrton’s writing is forceful, even when Daedalus is himself adrift with his thoughts, mulling some sort of meaning in his life, his actions, and his relations with his son, his patrons, and the gods. There are clear and direct accounts of his life in Athens as a youth, when he and his mother are obliged to flee, then return under the aegis of a relative. In a recurring manner, Daedalus again flees Athens (this time wrongly accused of the murder his nephew Talos committed). He and his Cretan wife and 3-year-old son Icarus settle in Crete, where he is charged by King Minos to build a labyrinth, a task that takes 15 years. Daedalus helps Minos’ wife mate with a bull that is either Poseidon or Apollo, and the offspring is the half-man, half-bull Minotaur, which is condemned to live in one of the central rooms of the labyrinth, where nearby in a similar room King Minos and Ariadne also dwell in a sort of self-imposed exile.

Daedalus is given King Minos’ blessing and he and Icarus take flight on a rising warm air current to leave Crete. After several days aloft, Icarus flies into the embrace of the sun. …At least that is the way Daedalus perceives Icarus’ ambitions, to make himself a hero by challenging Apollo. (The term “hero” is one that Daedalus scorns because those who seek such a title are usually more brain than brawn, concerned only with wielding power, no matter the toll in human life.) Daedalus is carried along in the maze of the sky, as he terms it, and comes to land on a small island, Cumae, where a sudden firestorm drives him underground. He is convinced that Apollo is seeking from him a new altar, and so Daedalus works in another labyrinth of natural tunnels and abandoned mine shafts with a band of barbarians (ie, non-Greeks) to design and fabricate the components for a new temple. At one point, there is contention between Apollo and the Mother/Gaia deity, and Daedalus temporarily reconciles the gods so that the temple can be completed. Once done, however, Daedalus is again on the move, heading further into the west, sailing on a ship controlled by King Aegonus, master of the winds of Aeolus.

Daedalus settles in Sicily and again is allied with a king—Cocalus—and he builds for him fortifications to protect him and his people from a Cretan invasion. Such preparations are apropos, as Daedalus hears rumors that the Cretans, in particular King Minos and the Minotaur, are seeking him out. Daedalus’ fortifications hold out against the Cretans, and Daedalus discovers that the King Minos he kills is but the upstart consort of the real King Minos, and the Minotaur is only Daedalus’ deranged nephew Talos attired in a mechanical apparatus, much improved over the previous version in which he’d appeared when Daedalus was still building the Cretan labyrinth. Once again, in the company of one of Heracles’ sons, Daedalus sets off westward to found a city in Sardinia. At this point, Daedalus concludes his narrative, again directly addressing 20th-century readers: “I, Daedalus, maze maker, shall take this that I have written with me to Sardinia and dedicate it at the entrance to the maze which leads to death. Then you, before you follow me down into Gaia, who is the Mother, will know what is to be known of my journey and the fate of my son, Icarus. Before you follow me, look into the sky-maze and acknowledge Apollo who is the god.”

Daedalus’ life is a succession of patronage, artifice, and flight, the continuous movement through the maze of his life whose bounds are Apollo and the Mother. His message is conveyed to us directly across the millennia, an exemplary tale of a soul several times chastened who extols and bemoans the divine forces that have driven him. Ayrton has entertained with an intriguing portrayal of mythic Greece—especially in the description of the almost hallucinatory period Daedalus spends in Cumae’s underground labyrinth constructing Apollo’s temple—but I remain confounded by the supernatural forces Daedalus asserts are real entities.

[Brian Hanson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A delightful discovery for me, in this, Ayrton's centenary year (2021). The author was an artist who worked in a variety of media, arguably most powerfully in sculpture. His version of the Daedalus myth (1967) has been seen by some as partially autobiographical. It is certainly shot through with the wisdom of hard-won technique. Indeed, it is the particular combination of the airy realms of myth with the down-to-earth solidity of craft technique that makes this book so unique, and such a joy to read. Only on two occasions (one of them, sadly, being the pivotal, watery demise of Icarus) does the language seem to lose touch with sense. In general Ayrton evokes the otherness of the ancient world with admirable clarity.

[Jill Hudson · Rating 3 out of 5]

If novels can be rated on a scale ranging from naff, through realistic, to stylish and ultimately pretentious, this novel comes somewhere between the last two. Its first and last sections are undoubtedly stylish; the middle part is pretty much incomprehensible. The book is all about Daedalus, who made wings for himself and his son Icarus to escape from Crete, but the middle part is all about how he builds a weird temple underground. I have no idea why, and I wasn't sufficiently intrigued to re-read the section and find out. Maybe I failed to recognise a great masterpiece, but I doubt it.

[Yohan Seamands · Rating 1 out of 5]

100 pages in didnt finish. I actually signed back into this app to leave this one star. Its like the author wrote a story in 100 pages and the editor said no i need 400 and he just started dumping in words to seem educated. Hated

[Philip Dodd · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found The Maze Maker by Michael Ayrton to be an enjoyable, engrossing book to read. Write about what you know. Advice that Michael Ayrton heeded when he wrote his novel. For he was a painter and sculptor, who chose to write a story about a sculptor, none other than Daedalus from the world of Greek mythology, the builder of labyrinths, the father of Icarus, who flew too near the sun. Rather than write in the third person a fictional biography of Daedalus, bravely he writes in the first person, as Daedalus, writing his autobiography. He succeeds, as far as I am concerned, for he writes convincingly as Daedalus, being a sculptor himself, one long fascinated by Greek myths. I found it refreshing to read a modern retelling of a Greek myth that was not centred around a warrior, like Achilles, or an adventurer, like Jason, but around an artist, a craftsman, a maker, not a destroyer, a slayer. Cleverly, Daedalus, the narrator, tells the reader that the myths we may have read about him, his son, Icarus, the labyrinth of Crete, Theseus and the Minotaur, for example, do not tell the true story, but in his memoir we are reading, he does.
Because Michael Ayrton thought deeply about the Greek myths, he is able to write with great authority his version of the truth that lies at their root. I particularly liked the detailed descriptions in the book of the building of the labyrinth of Crete and the flight of Daedalus and his son, Icarus, away from Crete. In the book, Daedalus contemplates and explores the mazes he made and the maze of his own life. I liked the way the book is written in what could be called poetic prose. As they are the words of a master craftsman, writing about his life and works, it does not read like forced poetic prose, but prose that naturally flows that just happens, at times, to sound close to poetry. I particularly liked it when Daedalus writes of what he thinks the making of a maze means, as in this paragraph:
"Each man's life is a labyrinth at the centre of which lies his death, and even after death it may be that he passes through a final maze before it is all ended for him. Within the great maze of a man's life are many smaller ones, each seemingly complete in itself, and in passing through each one he dies in part, for in each he leaves behind him a part of his life and it lies dead behind him. It is a paradox of the labyrinth that its centre appears to be the way to freedom."
I first heard of Michael Ayrton in the 1970's, when one of his sculptures of the Minotaur appeared in one of the final episodes of the television drama series, The Glittering Prizes, written by Frederick Raphael, displayed on a table in the house of Adam, played by Tom Conti, in the time when he became a successful novelist. I remember I liked the look of the sculpture. When Michael Ayrton died in the 1970's, Frederick Raphael presented a programme on television in his honour. At the end of it, he quoted some lines from a Greek poem, which he translated into English as: "The wonder. The wonder." I was moved by those words and the Minotaur sculpture stood on the table. Now I am glad to have read his wonderful novel, which I have only recently found out about.I think anyone who enjoys fine writing and Greek mythology, and is interested in how the mind of an artist works would enjoy reading this book.

[Kara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This took a while to get through! It's written in a very heavy linguistic style, which I like, but it does make for tough reading. Also, the print is very small, which is typical of a book printed in the 1970s.

All in all, I really liked it and I'm glad I read it. Any retelling of a fairytale or an ancient myth fascinates me - "a new version of an old scene," to quote Aerosmith - and this was really interesting to read because it is told from the perspective of Daedalus. Most of the myths and legends I've read where he appeared, he's always been more of a supporting feature in the story - he's the father of Icarus, yet we always hear more about Icarus and his flight & subsequent fall. He built the Labyrinth on Crete where the Minotaur was imprisoned, but you usually just hear about Theseus and his adventures in the Labyrinth, not about the man who built it.

It was good. And it smelled like old books should, which (in all honesty) was one of my favorite parts about reading it!

[Dwayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Pride is a wound, and vanity is the scab on it. One's life picks at the scab to open the wound again and again. In men, it seldom heals and often grows septic."
If you like that quote, read this book. Michael Ayrton is extraordinary.

[Donovan Ackley]

Couldn't finish this.....

[Janette]

recommended by Terry Pratchett.