) A GLOWING DISPLAY OF TERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE: EQUILATERAL BY KEN KALFUS
Imagine Fitzcarraldo
in the Sahara: instead of Klaus Kinski trying to pull a steamboat over
a hill, hellbent on establishing a world-class opera house in the Peruvian
jungle, in this ingenious short
novel, renowned astronomer Sanford Thayer plans to communicate with
the apparently canal-happy inhabitants of Mars. Earthlings were all about
canals at the time (1894) — the Suez Canal opened in 1869 and work on the
Panama Canal began in 1881 — so Martian irrigation on a planet as arid
as any desert on Earth suggests a technologically and most likely morally
advanced race. It makes sense, therefore, to think that an alliance with
our next-planet neighbors might help humanity.
Thinking along these lines, Thayer, his engineer Ballard, and their
assistant Miss Keaton oversee the superimposition across the desert of
an enormous equilateral triangle (each of its sides will be 306.928 miles
long, “precisely 1/73rd of the Earth’s circumference” and five miles wide),
which will be covered in oil and set aflame on the precise day the elegant
burning symbol of terrestrial intelligence will be best viewed across 40
million miles. All it’ll take for our great white trio of intrepid potential
communicators to initiate interplanetary talks is an engineering feat never
before seen on Earth, bankrolled by royalty, with all the hot, heavy labor
falling on the uncomprehending shoulders of approximately 900,000 racial
inferiors (requiring 787,500 gallons of water a day). The drawback of temporary
human suffering among a non-white underclass can’t outweigh the benefit
of establishing far-flung yet possibly influential friends among superior
aliens (no matter their “long flexible appendages”).
Idealism über alles drives both “Fitzcarraldo” and Equilateral,
compelling viewers/readers to root for these refined/freaked protagonists.
In Kalfus’s novel, initiation of interplanetary communication via the elaborately
arduous Equilateral method is such a beautiful idea, based on scientific
observation and rational speculation, that I wished it were non-fiction.
At best, historical novels achieve a documentarian effect. Readers suspend
disbelief, perform a few google searches, and hope citations yield descriptions
of a similar project long-buried by time. It’s fiction, alas, of course,
but it suggests so many currently relevant non-fictional issues — about
the environment, international politics, gender equality, race, technology/know-how,
and the cost of progress when so many are suffering — that it seems more
real than not.
“The construction of the water transport system on which life
on the Red Planet depends would have required fierce determination. It
would not have been put off by bourgeois mortality. Rebellions would have
been subdued, perhaps with force. Vast wars would have roiled the globe’s
surface. They would have included the mechanized butchery that has accompanied
our own military strife, augmented by more advanced and more gruesome weaponry.
So Mars will not judge us harshly. The planet’s history will show that
conflict was ended only through the application of the universal laws of
evolution and natural selection, when the superior and inferior specimens
of the Martian race diverged into separate species, as is inevitable on
Earth. A race of savants and a race of slaves, with breakable necks or
not.”
The SETI
page on Wikipedia reveals that scientists have been trying to contact
extraterrestrial intelligence ever since Tesla tried in 1896. These days,
an estimated $20 million are spent on SETI-related endeavors worldwide.
Just a few days ago NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover announced
evidence of sediment on Mars indicating the former presence of rivers
and streams. So far, the project that made this discovery has cost approximately
$2.5 billion -- nearly as much as the GNP of a dozen African nations. Noncommittal
dramatization of the long-suffering conflict between the higher callings
of science and the necessity of altruism is one of this novel’s strengths,
since the author, generally, seems absent as subject or judge. He’s paring
his fingernails somewhere beyond the text, allowing his characters to live
without authorial possession or interference.
Characters live in part because Equilateral relies on Freytag’s
pyramid, with rising drama/narrative drive created by the ever-nearing
June 17 deadline for the project’s completion. We look forward to savoring
ecstatic descriptions the moment the enormous triangle across the surface
of the desert is set aflame. As the day approaches, obstacles are encountered
as expected in a novel, and for the most part they’re inspired: discovery
of an estimated 400-foot pyramid buried beneath the sand along the route
of one of the Equilateral’s sides, a riveting assassination attempt while
drifting above the desert in a hot-air balloon, and an uprising worthy
of an epic
staring Charlton Heston. Although this is more of a novel of ideas,
interspersed with equal parts light character-based love story and diagram-addled,
scientific-sounding talk, the novel’s more active scenes occur on such
a dramatic scale that they seem to demand cinematic representation.
But even if eventually adapted by Herzog himself, it’d be a shame that
viewers wouldn’t be able to appreciate carefully composed sentences demonstrating
ingenuity and restraint throughout. A scan of any given page reveals precise
vocabulary and phrasing evocative of the era: “A productive race’s industry
and respect for legitimate authority can be engendered no less than its
good dentition.” Luckily, Kalfus never strays from this tone to wink at
the 21st century reader. Despite this steadiness, there is a shifty quality
at times thanks to a point of view that slips into the heads of more than
a few characters. When closest to Thayer the tone seems like the most natural
fit, since its semi-convoluted yet pleasurably flowing pomposities seem
to match his psyche.
Some readers may find it disorientating that this faux-historical record
can access the thoughts of the three major characters, as well as minor
players who appear for only a page or two, especially in a 207-page novel
aerated with section/chapter breaks aplenty and geometric/astronomical
diagrams. Associated generously, such shifting corresponds to the desert’s
sands, the triangulated relationships among the primary players (including
Bint, the “dusky” love interest/Arab servant girl), and the ambiguous patterns
observed across the surface of Mars.
Although set in the desert a quick 510-mile caravan ride from Alexandria,
the novel’s world often felt like it could have emerged from the head of
Donald Barthelme, that is, if his sometimes semi-cloying metafictional
whimsies were exchanged for Kalfus’s clever suggestion of sociopolitical,
existential, and planetary significance.
Further, the novel’s world announces a contemporary American author’s
successful colonization of Mars. From now on whenever the Red Planet crosses
my radar, Equilateral will also come to mind. I’ll think about what lies
beyond vast clear skies; grand ambitions carefully planned; imperfect if
not entirely thwarted glories; unspoken and unreturned longing; and everything
else related to the urge to connect with others, extraterrestrial or not.
Equilateral is ultimately a glowing display of terrestrial intelligence,
the sort of thing Kafka may have had in mind when he wrote that a book
must be an ax to cleave the frozen sea within us. In this case, the overriding
and gorgeously open symbol of an equilateral triangle (“the basis for all
human art and construction”) etched across the desert is the ax Kalfus
wields on ambition, longing, exploitation, astronomical wonder, and distances
between those closest at hand sometimes so difficult to bridge with moving,
meaningful words.
