Maxwell's Demon by Steven Hall

 

I loved reading Maxwell's Demon and listening to the audiobook, and, here's the thing – I loved the novel more each time I reread and relistened since I had a much clearer understanding of what was going on, truly going on, in every scene.

At one point, the tale's narrator, Thomas Quinn, asks someone what he thinks of his novel, The Qwerty Machinegun. Thomas receives the reply: “I can't know anything until I'm at the end, can I?” Perhaps not so coincidentally, this observation also holds true when it comes to Maxwell's Demon, a highly inventive novel where you would be wise to withhold judgement until you've read every single page. Actually, for Maxwell's Demon, it would be advisable to hold off judgement until you've read the entire novel a second time, a reread where, as I noted above, you are given the underlying reality in the closing chapters, revelations turning all preceding events on their head. I acknowledge I'm suggesting a serious commitment to the book, but, I can assure you, the payoff is well worth it. Thank you, Steven Hall; you've written a marvelous novel.

Struggling novelist Thomas Quinn had his first and only novel, something of a dud, published seven years ago. This is most disappointing considering his late father, Dr Stanley Quinn, was among the leading writers of his generation. And wouldn't you know it, his father's protégé, Andrew Black, also published a novel, Cupid's Engine, some years back that proved a rousing international success, selling millions of copies. Thus, we find Thomas on the opening pages in his London flat musing on his plight: stooping to earn tiny amounts of money by occasionally performing as a hack writer for TV shows, his wife, Imogen, engaged in research on far away Easter Island, his unresolved feelings revolving around his father and Andrew Black.

Then it happens, a bizarre phone message from his dead father: 'Why knocks an angel in Bethlehem?'. Not long thereafter, Thomas received a quizzical letter from Andrew Black, of all people. It was his first contact with Black in seven years and included a single Polaroid picture of a dark sphere the size of a baseball with the question: 'What do you think this is?'. And we're off on a postmodern literary thriller touching on all sorts of things: a mysterious second Black novel, the nature of creation, personal identity and memory, mythic archetypes, how stories are constructed – Maxwell's Demon is a humdinger that will bring to mind Thomas Pynchon, John Fowles, Philip K. Dick, Jeff Noon, Mark Z. Danielewski.

Since there's so much covered in the book's 332 pages, I'll make an immediate shift to a Maxwell's Demon highlight reel:

Leaves – More than a dozen pages contain words formed into various tree leaves (a nod to Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, perhaps) on such topics as entropy, Joseph Campbell's Hero With A Thousand Faces and the paradoxes of language. Several additional pages feature symbols and other visual stuff reminding readers they have definitely entered the world of postmodernism, breaks from traditional form that add an undeniable charm to the book.

Thought Experiment – Thomas gives much reflection to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, specifically the way James Clerk Maxwell back in 1850 imagined a microscopic demon opening a trapdoor to let slow-moving (cold) molecules move to the left side of a closed box and fast-moving (hot) molecules move to the right side (the novel includes a number of helpful diagrams for readers to visualize what's going on here). A prime effect of this experiment is to demonstrate how entropy and therefore time can be reversed, which gets back to the novel's unfolding drama filtered through the alembic of Thomas Quinn's increasingly shaken mind.

Letters and Names – Andrew Black and Andrew Black's novel lead Thomas to muse on ancient texts such as the Bible, Gnostic gospels and the Q source. This, in turn, leads Thomas to conjecture various possibilities on the way we perceive letters, words, names, the nature of angles and how all this relates to the very world we inhabit. How much is really out there and how much is a product of our mind and cultural conditioning? These questions are given even more weight as Thomas encounters progressively more strangeness around him.

Second Novel – The thrills of this thriller accelerate when Thomas discovers Andrew Black has written a second novel, Maxwell's Demon. Now we can really chomp into the metafictional muffin, asking ourselves what are the connections between this Black novel with James Clerk Maxwell's demon and the very Steven Hall novel we are reading. Sure, there's a hefty hunk of postmodern zaniness going down here but the British author is keen to point out he still holds a traditional belief in the need for strong characters and stories.

Writers and Readers – Andrew Black has a particular loathing for eBooks and other technologies. It all gets back to what a book is and how a book is read – surely one of the more fascinating aspects of Hall's novel. Likewise, Thomas addresses the connection of writers of novels and readers of novels, pointing out the tricks a novelist can play to change the concept of time and how a novelist can spend two weeks or two years writing a section that a reader can read in ten minutes. In a curious way, these sections can be taken as a meditation on Steven Hall's own commitment to the writer's craft.

Imogen - Thomas reflects: “I've been watching Imogen sleep for most of the morning, through the fuzzy green night vision of Dorm Cam Two. All that time, she'd been lying on her side, facing out, with the duvet pulled up under her chin.” Poor Thomas Quinn. For six months he has been yearning for a physical and emotional nearness to his beautiful wife when all he has is a video feed traveling half way around the globe.

Multiple Levels of Reality – Can you believe Thomas spots Maurice Umber, the main character in Thomas Black's novel, Cupid's Engine, on a street corner? And this is only the beginning. Ah, the interplay of fiction and real life, so called. As if in a tale by Jorge Luis Borges, Thomas Quinn must deal with one level of reality undercutting another, and then another. But through it all, can we say the human heart remains the central pulse in our lives? To answer this question, I urge you to pick up a copy of Maxwell's Demon and give it a good read and reread.



British author Steven Hall, born 1975