Wizard of the Pigeons by Megan Lindholm

[randy_byers]

It's amazing that it's taken me so long to get to this 1986 book, which seems to have earned classic status by this point. It's a bit strange that it took Loncon 3 selecting her as a guest of honor to prod me into finally reading it. I think one reason I've been wary of the book, despite its Seattle setting, is that the nutshell description of it -- a homeless man is a wizard -- sounded like a condescending liberal dream of the nobility of poverty. Well, it turns out to be pretty much nothing like that at all.

This is a surprisingly gritty novel about life on the street, and in fact it often feels like a horror novel. (I was reminded numerous times of Jessica Amanda Salmonson's Seattle-based horror-fantasy, Anthony Shriek.) Wizard's daily routines in search of food and shelter are described in painful detail. As in many a genre fantasy novel, he is threatened by a Wrongness that is an existential threat indistinguishable from his vulnerability to starvation, sickness, and privation. While his backstory is somewhat melodramatic in nature, the exaggerated fictional universe never undermines the nitty gritty. Wizard's exhausting life is almost exhausting to read about.

Along with the depiction of life on the street, the other great strength of the book is the characters, particularly Wizard himself and his strange nemesis, Lynda. I guess I would go so far as to say that Lynda is the supreme creation of this book. Wizard is a great protagonist, full of contradictions and subtle strengths that power the story, but Lynda is an amazing portrait of a personality type that feels torn bleeding from real life. Her neediness and generosity, non-stop chatter and physical boundary-pushing bristles with an anxious, intruding energy that gave me the heebie-jeebies. She refuses to be incapsulated or contained. It's curious (and marvelous) that she embodies the greatest threat to Wizard, and yet she is never villainous. She made my skin crawl, and yet I always retained a horrified fascination. Truly a brilliant piece of work.

In contrast, Wizard's true love, Cassie (short for Cassandra, one supposes), is an idealized figure who doesn't feel real at all. Yet she works as mythology, and actually another strength of the novel is how her relationship with Wizard, not his self or his soul or his power, turns out to be thing that is existentially threatened. Can't say too much about that without spoilers, but this novel manages to avoid a lot of cliches in the end by treating their relationship as the matter of central importance.

One other curious thing about how this novel struck me is that as a portrait of Seattle it felt a bit touristy at times, and I think that's because it's mainly set around Pioneer Square, which in my mind is a tourist playground and not the real city. But of course it's also a major hang out for homeless people, so I'm guessing that I'm revealing my own biases here. It doesn't help that most of the other places visited, such as the Public Market and the Seattle Center, are also tourist attractions. I dunno. It also has become a catalog of Lost Seattle after nearly thirty years, with references to the Kingdome and to a lone Starbucks by the Market and to the Fun Forest at the Seattle Center.

Well, I thought this was a really great novel. It's about a homeless man who is a wizard (and, yes, a protector of pigeons) and who is threatened by a Wrongness that grows out of his history as an emotionally damaged Viet Nam vet. It's a compelling portrait of life on the street and what it takes to survive it. It's horrific, but it's also very sweet. It deserves its vaunted reputation.