Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Lord Byron's Prophecy


When it comes to my sexuality, I consider myself a late bloomer. I didn’t start coming into my own until the last half of my twenties -- which isn’t to say there weren’t clues along the way.

During grade school there was my utter hero worship of Gil Gerard as Buck Rogers, Sam Jones as Flash Gordon (Flash! A-ah! Savior of the Universe!), and Patrick Duffy as The Man from Atlantis. Then in junior high there was the deep swelling of pride in my chest the first time I saw Boy George sing Do You Really Want to Hurt Me? Of course, there was that night at the end of my junior year of college when one of my best friends and I decided to ‘scratch each other’s backs’ as it were (to be clear: no scratching occurred, nor were our backs remotely involved).

I know. I know. That one should have shouted volumes. What can I say? My closet door was locked up tight.

In retrospect, one of my other college-era clues was a mild obsession with the poet Lord Byron. I attended a small, Christian liberal arts college in central Kentucky where sex was rarely mentioned, and homosexuality never mentioned – except, of course, in the most shameful of terms. I remember sitting in my English Romanticism class, junior year, completely bewitched by this brazen English aristocrat who spent his life pursuing any pleasure imaginable with whomever he desired of whichever gender appealed to him at the moment. I would never have dared admit to my classmates that I was absolutely enamored by this handsome, charismatic nobleman who wrote poetry I actually understood (as an English major, I wasn’t much of a poetry fan; prose was more my thing).

Which (three paragraphs later) brings us to Sean Eads’ beautiful book Lord Byron’s Prophecy.

Eads has taken one of Byron’s poems entitled Darkness and used it as a spring board for an exploration of sexuality, family, friendship, abuse, literature & it’s interpretation, and—oh yeah—the end of the world.

Told from three characters’ perspectives, Lord Byron’s Prophecy travels between the early 19th century life of Lord Byron, the mid-twentieth century boyhood of a man who will grow up to be a moderately-accomplished English professor, and the present where that same professor and his college-age son struggle to come to terms with their relationship as well as their past. And then there’s that vision of the end of the world shared by all three men.

I won’t go into further detail for fear of ruining the twists and turns Eads has created but this is a unique book, both beautifully literate and strangely apocalyptic at the same time. His exploration of the professor’s possible dementia is immersive and disquieting, and for this reader completely believable. Similarly, the relationship between the professor’s son and the son’s wife is unsettling but every twist and turn their relationship takes is familiar for anyone that’s experienced a relationship of a certain length.

Lord Byron isn’t short changed either. He’s rendered beautifully, full of the whit and sarcasm and strength of which his writing hints. Powerful yet pompous at the same time.

Rereading this I realize how many contradictions I’m using to describe this book and its characters and perhaps that’s the best part of Eads' novel. He’s given us rich, well-rounded characters in a full-bodied world that deserves to be experienced.

It’s no wonder this book is being nominated for so many awards and repeatedly shortlisted.


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