The Review of Contemporary Fiction
Frenzy by Percival EverettIrving Malin
Percival Everett. Frenzy. Graywolf, 1997. 165 pp. $12.95.
This novel is a brave attempt to define and to employ frenzy. Frenzy is a synonym for ecstasy, rapture, epiphany—that “still point” in which the human suddenly sees the superhuman and also recognizes the gap between daily life and eternity. Everett, in effect, tries to confront holiness. And although he is not completely successful, he deserves our close attention.
Dionysus is one of the strangest pagan gods. He is half man, half god—according to mythology—and he is aware that he can never be complete, despite his excessive, eccentric rituals of transfiguration. His “mortal bookmark” is Vleppo, who tries to explore the meanings of time and love. The novel collapses past and present, fuses wit and horror; it is meant to confuse us, to destroy the safe logic we embrace. Everett’s novel works because of the odd conversations of Vleppo and Dionysus. We don’t know what to make of their exchanges. They, at times, remind me of the confrontations in Merrill’s Sandover. Somehow words take on a strange, new meaning; they are twisted, frenzied, impure. And the single meanings no longer exist—especially when Vleppo tries to explore his consciousness: “And then I was atop my own head, peering through a rather clear window into myself, knowing full well it to be myself, and there in the deepness of me I saw nothing, felt nothing.”
This novel is surely mad. But it knows that it is. It lives. And it makes other novels seem lifeless. [Irving Malin]