The Review of Contemporary Fiction

The Pope's Rhinoceros by Lawrence Norfolk
Paul Maliszewski

Lawrence Norfolk. The Pope’s Rhinoceros. Harmony Books, 1996. 574 pp. $25.00.

It was 1515 and Pope Leo, a Medici, wanted a rhinoceros to go with his elephant. He didn’t want to exert himself in acquiring it and didn’t have to, what with sea powers like Spain and Portugal around to exert for him, conquering and collecting in his name. At stake here was the division of the world. The fine print in the next Papal Bull would look favorably on one country or the other. Portugal, one up already, had presented its elephant to the Servant of God. Spain still wanted the bigger, better part of the world, and the Pope said, Well, what have you done for me lately?

This is the historical basis of Lawrence Norfolk’s novel. As in his first, Lemprière’s Dictionary, a small quantity of historical fact is the irritant kernel: when combined with encyclopedic detail and a patience for the unraveling of byzantine plots, a novel happens.

While novels like Norfolk’s frequently inspire a search for connections—How like the twentieth century is the sixteenth! How like the Pope am I!—his remain corseted tightly in their period costumes, as if breathing even a little or wandering outside the well-appointed sets would ruin the illusion. Lacking correspondences, what’s left is the plot, which leaves an adventure story, of which Norfolk’s novel is a very entertaining one. The book contains an obscene wealth of detail on food, furnishings, clothing, habits, and homes, and the middle section, set in Rome, is quite an invention, with jokes, rumors, menus, bazaar protocol, and the social order of things each richly explored. The class structure is a believably complicated mess, both hierarchical and anarchic, in which the Pope can observe that his servants are “the servants of the Servants of the Servant of God,” splitting hierarchic hairs, at the same time that he is beset by the satiric barbs, inside jokes, and askance looks of his court on down to his cooks and the visiting poets.

But at its center the book is a buddy movie, with a wily, street-smart protagonist and an imposing, somewhat dense giant (innocent in demeanor, yet surprisingly capable of wisdom). Admittedly, this is a high-end buddy movie. Norfolk’s treatment of the book’s other animals (human or otherwise, they all think, even the rats) and his unsparing attention to the part of the novel that requires of Africa labor and ample, exotic wildlife put the book into another category. It is as if Robert Louis Stevenson stayed up late reading Edward Said.

Novelists like Norfolk, and there are not many, follow in the impossible footsteps of Pierre Menard, Borges’s character who devotes himself to re-creating the language of Cervantes after the time of Cervantes. Norfolk, strapping himself with sixteenth century cognitive limitations, imagines how it would be to picture a rhinoceros before the existence of the animal is known. He writes of people assembling newer, more terrible beasts from more common animals—like an elephant except with armor, like an ox with a horn. Norfolk is the historical anachronist of the writing world, trading everyday clothes to dress up in the correct costumes, saying the historically right things, and intensely abiding by the old codes. Re-creating a time is an act of tremendous will, and Norfolk provides details in all the right places, but historical reenactments can still be empty theater, however accurate. This novel, while certainly rich in historical detail, lacks a reason for reenacting anything at all. [Paul Maliszewski]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction The Pope's Rhinoceros by Lawrence Norfolk Paul Maliszewski Lawrence Norfolk. The Pope’s Rhinoceros. Harmony Books, 1996. 574 pp. $25.00. It was 1515 and Pope Leo, a Medici, wanted a rhinoceros to go with his elephant. He didn’t want to exert himself in acquiring it and didn’t have to, what with sea powers like Spain and Portugal around to exert for him, conquering and collecting in his name. At stake here was the division of the world. The fine print in the next Papal Bull would look favorably on one country or the other. Portugal, one up already, had presented its elephant to the Servant of God. Spain still wanted the bigger, better part of the world, and the Pope said, Well, what have you done for me lately? This is the historical basis of Lawrence Norfolk’s novel. As in his first, Lemprière’s Dictionary, a small quantity of historical fact is the irritant kernel: when combined with encyclopedic detail and a patience for the unraveling of byzantine plots, a novel happens. While novels like Norfolk’s frequently inspire a search for connections—How like the twentieth century is the sixteenth! How like the Pope am I!—his remain corseted tightly in their period costumes, as if breathing even a little or wandering outside the well-appointed sets would ruin the illusion. Lacking correspondences, what’s left is the plot, which leaves an adventure story, of which Norfolk’s novel is a very entertaining one. The book contains an obscene wealth of detail on food, furnishings, clothing, habits, and homes, and the middle section, set in Rome, is quite an invention, with jokes, rumors, menus, bazaar protocol, and the social order of things each richly explored. The class structure is a believably complicated mess, both hierarchical and anarchic, in which the Pope can observe that his servants are “the servants of the Servants of the Servant of God,” splitting hierarchic hairs, at the same time that he is beset by the satiric barbs, inside jokes, and askance looks of his court on down to his cooks and the visiting poets. But at its center the book is a buddy movie, with a wily, street-smart protagonist and an imposing, somewhat dense giant (innocent in demeanor, yet surprisingly capable of wisdom). Admittedly, this is a high-end buddy movie. Norfolk’s treatment of the book’s other animals (human or otherwise, they all think, even the rats) and his unsparing attention to the part of the novel that requires of Africa labor and ample, exotic wildlife put the book into another category. It is as if Robert Louis Stevenson stayed up late reading Edward Said. Novelists like Norfolk, and there are not many, follow in the impossible footsteps of Pierre Menard, Borges’s character who devotes himself to re-creating the language of Cervantes after the time of Cervantes. Norfolk, strapping himself with sixteenth century cognitive limitations, imagines how it would be to picture a rhinoceros before the existence of the animal is known. He writes of people assembling newer, more terrible beasts from more common animals—like an elephant except with armor, like an ox with a horn. Norfolk is the historical anachronist of the writing world, trading everyday clothes to dress up in the correct costumes, saying the historically right things, and intensely abiding by the old codes. Re-creating a time is an act of tremendous will, and Norfolk provides details in all the right places, but historical reenactments can still be empty theater, however accurate. This novel, while certainly rich in historical detail, lacks a reason for reenacting anything at all. [Paul Maliszewski]

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