To say this book is gripping and unforgettable does not do justice to the eerie, bizarre story Rupert Thomson has brilliantly conceived, bred and presented to his audience. \The Book of Revelation,"" a 260-page book, weaves a tale that will question your perceptions of gender, domination and sexual abuse.
Three unidentifiable females kidnap a 20-something ballet dancer, who remains unnamed to his readers. Within the first 100 pages, we learn about the outrageous sexual abuse to which he is subjected. From rape to having a dinner served on his naked body (the dessert--unwelcome feliatio furnished by the human dining table), he endures the elitists' almost pretentious and calculated abuses.
After 18 days, he performs a dance chained to the floor by his foreskin and is finally released. Not even half the novel is finished as the reader is brought into a world that does not believe that a male was forced to submit sexually.
Throughout the work, we are presented with dry and simple prose that allows the reader to access the main character's innermost thoughts, emotions and reactions. Although the narrator goes through bouts of denial, self-blame, and petty acceptance, most reactions are superficial. Instead of feeling violence and hatred, he almost starts a friendship with one of the abusers. The account only hits the surface of the dancer's expected reaction.
More anger should have been communicated, but all Thomson furnishes to his reader is confusion. The abused dancer's reactions did not reach an almighty coherent stream of consciousness. This lack created a distance, which was almost a god-sent-like-intention by Thomson.
The choppiness of his miniscule, yet poetic, transitions create a comfortable distance for his readers. This distance is successfully closed by the readers actually experiencing the pain of the loneliness felt by the main character when his girlfriend does not believe the ordeal he has just survived, and the healing provided by the realization of the simple, everyday pleasures the world offers him.
This feat, presenting a painful rhetorical question that very few writers seem to triumphantly exercise over their readers, is what makes Thomson so talented and gifted. He tells a story in an unforgettable way, which entwines ideas, narratives and plots that are not short of nightmarish.
Recently, The Daily Cardinal was able to talk with Rupert Thomson about his haunting novel.
: Where did you get the idea for this book?
: I don't know. Usually I know where I get the idea [for a book]. I really had no idea that [""The Book of Revelation""] was there. That is the strange thing about it because in the process of germination you usually have a sense of something being there which grows and matures in the back of your head, and the process feels kind of organic and reassuring, so when you come to start, you feel it has been thought about for quite a while.
With this book, I can only remember it was the last day of September 1995, and I was just starting in my study and it was raining outside and I was wondering what I was going to do with October, and I suddenly realized there was a book there. It was almost as if someone was standing behind me and a book had tapped me on the shoulder and said, ""I am ready, write me now.""
So literally, the germination process for ""The Book of Revelation"" was less than 24 hours. On the 30th of September I realized the book was there and on the first of October I started the first draft and by October the 29th I had finished the first draft.
: How has the public reacted to this book and you? This is a very different book; usually they have the female being submissive instead of the male.
: Men have been made to feel quite uncomfortable with it. I have only realized this quite recently, but I think that women seem more comfortable with it partly because they identify with the male character.
The man is in a position in which more women are able to identify with than men are. They are more able to identify with the loss of power and for men--this is almost unimaginable.
My publicist would tell her male friends about the book and they would go, ""that sounds amazing. I like the sound of that."" And it is a failure of imagination on their part because as soon as you actually think through what that situation really is you realize it is not a fantasy, it is a nightmare.
: Why did you make your character a ballet dancer?
: He had to be a man that was physically beautiful and who was a public figure so then he could become an object of desire to strangers. That limited me, really. He was either going to be an actor or a dancer. When it was described earlier on how I wrote the first draft, it was decided very quickly that he just became a dancer.
: Why did you choose to leave the main character nameless? Was this hard during the process of writing?
: It wasn't that hard because, actually, the first sentence of the first draft was, ""I am not going to tell you my name."" It did not end up becoming part of the final draft but because I always knew it was going to be a confession and it was a source of great humiliation for the person who was confessing it even years later and very quickly thereafter, I realized it was entry for him to kind of concede to not to mention his name because it would re-enforce that he doesn't want to be identified.
: Why is the book written in third person when he is in the room being tortured and then switched to first person when he is released?
: It is the same kind of thing with the name, actually. I wanted to convey that fact that it was really hard to talk about the experience and, you know, if you use the first person there is a certain amount of confidence implied.
What I wanted to convey with that experience in the room was not only that he did not want to talk about this, but he wanted to pretend that this happened to a third person.
I think that the third person kind of conveyed that. And then the idea of the switch to the first person when he is released is that he would become really direct, immediate, like a detective, like someone on the case.
So this character had to switch from a person that had no control, no authority, to someone who could begin to try and deal with what had happened to him, to try to reconcile, to try and come to terms with what had happened to him. Also, he was in possession of himself again and when he is in the room, he is an object so the third person suits him.
