The Review of Contemporary Fiction
The Angle Quickest for Flight by Steven KotlerAlan Tinkler
Steven Kotler. The Angle Quickest for Flight. Four Walls Eight Windows, 2001. 443 pp. Paper: $15.95.
After a successful run in hardcover, Steven Kotler’s first novel, The Angle Quickest for Flight, has been reissued in paperback. Kotler’s management of language and structure is commendable-no easy task given that the novel has a cornucopia of characters, including an albino Rastafarian who is an expert spelunker and a woman rumored to be the last descendent of Ghengis Khan. The five primary protagonists join forces to find the Sefer ha-Zaviot, a lost mystical tome of the Kaballah reputed to be a textual shortcut to heaven, while a minor protagonist, the enigmatic Johnii, searches for the sixty-fifth hexagram of the I Ching by attempting to “live out” each of the sixty-four known hexagrams. Johnii accomplishes this through study and travel, which includes time surfing. While researching, Johnii discovers that the Vatican has a concealed library, guarded by a secret society, that tolerates no visitors, not even the Pope. The narrative implication is obvious-adventure, with the help of an albino spelunker. While at times the novel tends toward established notions of adventure and quest, for the most part the damage is minimal, given Kotler’s command of narrative form. A slippage occurs for readers familiar with Darren Aronosky’s superb and influential movie; the similarities are at times too thick, particularly during the earlier portions of the novel. In the end, however, Kotler’s authority of subject and character enables readers to overcome the misstep and enjoy this fine first novel. [Alan Tinkler]