Travelogue

By Paul Gray

CREATION by Gore Vidal Random House; 510pages; $15.95

Although he has dabbled elegantly in many literary forms, Author Gore Vidal is probably most impressive as a historical novelist. Not only does he do his homework, but he can make old facts look like contemporary gossip. And he takes wicked pleasure in turning accepted notions about the past upside down. Julian (1964) strikes a blow for paganism and the Roman Emperor who tried to halt the spread of Christianity. Both Burr (1973) and 1876 (1976) portray the U.S. founding fathers and their successors in distinctly unheroic postures. Creation opens on a similarly iconoclastic note. Vidal's target this time is the Athens of Pericles, the cradle of Western democracy.

The vehicle for this latest goring is Cyrus Spitama, 75, emissary of the Persian King Artaxerxes, miserably stationed in Athens "amongst a people as cold and windy as the place itself." When he hears Herodotus lecture at the Odeon, Cyrus decides that the Greek historian has concocted a thoroughly slanted account of the so-called Persian Wars and that it is up to him to set the record straight. Because he has gone blind, Cyrus enlists his nephew Democritus as amanuensis. "So make yourself comfortable," he tells the young man. "I have a long memory, and I shall indulge it."

Vidal fans might, at this point, expect a typically witty send-up of Herodotus and of classical Greece in general. But though he gives the Athenians the back of his hand whenever possible, Cy rus the narrator really has several other missions on his mind. He wants to tell the story of his long life and his decades of service to the Persian Kings Darius the Great and Xerxes. Even more urgently, as a grandson and the last descendant in the male line of the prophet Zoroaster, Cyrus feels obliged to argue theology, to devise an acceptable theory for the creation of the universe and to account for the existence of evil within it.

Pursuing these different ends, Cyrus produces a vast narrative, a virtual travelogue of the 5th century B.C. His services to the Persian Empire involve extensive travels throughout the known world. He goes to India to secure new sup plies of iron for Darius and then to far-off Cathay (China), where he is usually treated as a slave instead of an ambassador. His peripatetic existence throws him constantly into the presence of the powerful and influential. He meets, among others, Buddha, Confucius, an ar ray of Indian mystics and holy men, Pericles, Thucydides, Sophocles. He knows people who knew Pythagoras and Aeschylus. During his last years in Athens, Cyrus hires a young mason to repair a wall. His name is Socrates.

This parade of celebrities is undeniably diverting, but Cyrus is often content to characterize the notables he meets by their names alone. Their singularity rests in who they were, not in how they are described in this narrative. Similarly, Cyrus' spiritual quest for the meaning of life is rendered as a series of set-piece seminars: one sage gives his philosophy, and then Cyrus goes off to seek another, who does the same. For long stretches, the narrator seems to be conducting a survey of ancient thought a la Will Durant: "As I understand Pythagoras--and who does in his complex entirety?--he thought that the single unit was the basis of all things. From the single unit derives number. From numbers, points. From points, lines of connection. From lines, planes and, hence, solids. From solids ..."

Such passages are rarely dull, but they do produce a peculiar lifelessness in the novel as a whole. There is little to propel the reader forward except the expectation of more information. Vidal provides a multitude of incidents but no strong plot to bind them together. Cyrus abjures suspense; he has the habit of introducing characters by telling what finally happens to them first. Aside from the old man's large memory, Creation is unified by a single irony: Cyrus tells of his search for religious certainty to the person who will one day become an eminent philosopher of materialism. Near the end, Democritus interjects: "Matter is all. All is matter." According to his secretary, then, Cyrus spent his life pursuing phantoms.

The readers of this novel are more fortunate. Whatever its flaws, Creation offers a leisurely guided stroll through a complex era. The book is encyclopedic enough to be short on intrinsic pattern; it is also filled with information, oddities and wonder. --By Paul Gray

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