A CONVERSATION WITH
Nicholas Christopher
Q: How did you first learn about bestiaries? Why did they interest
you enough to write a book about them?
A: I learned about them in high school. I was interested
in the beauty and artistry of illuminated medieval books, and when I came
on bestiaries—with their descriptions and illustrations of fantastical
beasts like the manticore and the hippogriff—I was hooked. Growing
up in New York, I had always been fascinated by the gargoyles and griffins
that adorned the façades and rooftops of buildings, and suddenly I
had an idea of where they had come from—via the human imagination—and
what their cultural ramifications were.
Q: Is there such a thing as the CARAVAN BESTIARY? Did you use any
real bestiaries in your research?
A: I made up the CARAVAN BESTIARY. When I read that the
Gnostics believed complete enlightenment could be achieved if one read the
entire Bible with the Apocrypha and also the complete Book of
Life, which is the original bestiary, it inspired me, for purposes of
my novel, to invent an equivalent of the Apocrypha for the original bestiary.
That is, a book with all the beasts, real and imaginary, banned from Noah’s
ark and lost to history. I used facsimilies of the Revesby, Hertford, and
other bestiaries, many of which I found in libraries, and some on the Internet.
Q: What importance do you think bestiaries hold for us today? Are
these books an antiquated notion in our very modern world?
A: I believe they are very significant. First, they
serve as important source documents in the history of natural science. Europeans,
beginning with ancient Greek and Roman chroniclers like Aelian and Pliny,
who had never seen a tiger, hyena, or crocodile, began cataloging these
beasts they encountered in explorers’ tales. Aelian’s Animalia, for
example, is one of the first zoological encyclopedias in the West. Second,
they tell us a great deal about how the human imagination was at work when
ancient man, trying to order the world around him literally and figuratively,
created myths in which animals, animal hybrids (like the hippogriff, which
is part horse, part griffin; or the peryton, which is a bird with the forelegs
of a deer; or the chimera, which is part lion, goat, and dragon), and purely
invented animals like the phoenix and makara played crucial allegorical roles.
The survival of these myths is important to our understanding the development
of the human psyche and the origin of our collective memories. They are sagas
of redemption, revelation, and illumination that pertain to all men. In short,
the animal myths collected in bestiaries are one chapter of the immense history
of the human soul, which is why every civilization and culture—Tibetan,
Mayan, Persian, Egyptian—produced bestiaries.
Q: You weave a number of historical events and personalities into
this novel: the Black Death, the Crusades, illuminated manuscripts, Gnostic
heretics, ancient historians, the Knights Hospitallers, Lord Byron, Doge
Andrea Dandolo. Why do this? Did you have to stretch any facts to make
them fit?
A: I did this because my story, and the story of bestiaries,
stretched across many centuries, involved numerous historical figures, and
was key to various crucial, even cataclysmic, events such as the Black Death.
It was necessary to provide this historical material, not as colorful background,
but as an integral part of my novel. In all my novels, I try not to stretch
facts to make them fit fictional circumstances; rather, I present the factual
or historical reality as such and weave into it fictional elements that enhance
or explore that reality without distorting it. For example, the episodes
involving the lives of Lord Byron and Doge Dandolo are based in reality;
the circumstances in which I have them encounter and handle the CARAVAN BESTIARY
are otherwise left completely intact. History is essentially a retelling
of infinite numbers of stories, their variations and permutations, around
established facts. In this case, we can state with certainty that there was
a poet named Byron who compiled the first Armenian grammar in English at
San Lazarro in the Venetian lagoon, and a mid-fourteenth century doge named
Dandolo who ruled Venice during the Black Death. To that, I introduce the
CARAVAN BESTIARY. In the end, a novelist must be sure his common sense
informs his use of history and animates the exchanges between his historical
and fictional characters.
Q: Xeno Atlas is a “bestiary hunter” throughout the novel—were
there any real life models upon which his character is based?
A: There were a great many bestiary hunters. I created composites
of them in the characters of Brox, Cava, and Madame Faville, who cover most
of the types I discovered in history: a scholarly adventurer, a renegade
theologian, and an unorthodox art historian. Among the “real” bestiary
hunters I read about, or whose works I found of interest, are: Conrad Gesner,
a 16th century animal encyclopedist who dedicated his life to tracking down
rare bestiaries. Sir Thomas Browne, who catalogued fantastical beasts in
17th-century England, using a dazzling array of sources. In the 19th century
there was Thomas Wright; Charles Cahier, who searched for bestiaries in a
dozen European countries between 1847 and 1877; and E.P. Evans, who made
spectacular finds at the end of the century in the illicit networks of the
antiquarian book underground that flourished in Britain. The closest predecessors
to my hero are all from the 20th century: M.R. James, who
employed modern bibliographic detection techniques to search ecclesiastical
and monastic libraries along the ancient Amber Route, from Wales to North
Africa; P. Ansell Robin, who constructed his Zoological Pedigree in
1932, charting all known bestiaries from ancient times on; and G.C.
Druce, who between 1908 and 1937 scoured university vaults, discovering a
host of forgotten and uncataloged illuminated volumes.
Q: There are numerous locales that are central to the novel: the Bronx,
Vietnam, Hawaii, Venice, Paris, Crete. Why choose these places, and
how did you make them believable for the reader?
A: They were the places my story took me, and more importantly,
took my hero. I did not choose the places so much as they chose us once the
novel was underway. I knew, of course, that the opening would take place
in the Bronx, and I knew that my hero would serve in Vietnam; but the other
parts of his journey fell into place during the four years I spent writing
the novel. That said, nearly all of the sites were places I knew from my
own experience, and in the cases of Venice, Paris, Hawaii, and the Aegean
islands, they were places to which I returned during those four years to
do first-hand research.
Q: Xeno’s distant—both literally and figuratively—father
is a mystery for much of the novel. How is the search for his father paralleled
by Xeno’s search for the CARAVAN BESTIARY?
A: Quite simply, Xeno’s search for his father, and
for the secrets that define his particular family history, are meant to parallel
his search for the CARAVAN BESTIARY. The one mirrors the other. The bestiary
represents a piece of man’s collective internal history, and Xeno’s
father, a mysterious and elusive figure lost to the boy almost from the first,
represents an obviously crucial piece of his own history. As the main proponents
of the plot, I wanted the searches to dovetail.
Q: How did your personal interest in animals manifest itself in the
book?
A: I have always loved animals, been curious about their
lives and habits, and thought of them as compatriots on the planet, not as
the robotic automatons of Descartes’ philosophy. I remember as a boy
reading Plutarch’s writing on the heroism of animals (elephants saving
wounded warriors, dogs carrying babies from burning houses, etc.) which still
crop up in contemporary news stories. Plutarch also wrote about animals’ souls,
feelings, and memories. Anyone who has had a close relationship with a pet,
or with any animal, understands how rewarding such a cross-species
connection can be.
I am horrified at the number of animals facing extinction — the figures
have risen astronomically, unconscionably in the last century. Allowing animals
in the wild to die off, or making their lives impossible, and treating livestock
in a cruel and debased manner, are ways of killing ourselves off, morally and
literally. Two of my main characters in the novel, a biologist working to prevent
extinction and a fierce animal rights activist, say a great deal of what I
might say about the plight of animals and the necessity of saving them. I agree
strongly with Isaac Bashevis Singer, who wrote that until man stops treating
animals savagely, he will treat his own kind the same way, through murder,
war, genocide, and so on. On a happier note, I cannot imagine living in a household
without cats or dogs, and establishing bonds of trust with horses and other
domesticated animals, who can teach us a great deal and provide us with much
joy.
Q: The book’s hero has a great name: Xeno Atlas. Why did you
decide to call him this?
A: I explain it in the novel, and the explanation is perhaps
as mysterious to me, still, as it is to my hero. His mother, who is Italian,
may have insisted he be named “Xeno” because it can be seen as
a form of xenium, a Latin word for “gift” she may have
heard in church or parochial school. His father who is Cretan, on the other
hand, tells him that “Xeno” is close to xenos, the Greek
word for “stranger.” These explanations certainly fit the way
his mother and father respectively thought of Xeno. “Atlas” seemed
a good name for various reasons: its cartographical implications (after all,
he is mapping out a unique journey); the fact it is an uncommon but not obscure
surname in Crete; and because I think every man’s life is an atlas
of sorts, a set of maps, delineating people and places. Most of all, I like
the way “Xeno Atlas” sounds. I agree it’s a great name!
Q: As a native New Yorker, are there parts of your childhood that
made their way into Xeno’s story?
A: I was born in Manhattan, when my parents lived in the
Bronx, and I grew up in and around the city. I had a grandmother who raised
me for a while who put great stock in her dreams and told me fairy tales
and legends, some from books, some, I am convinced, she made up herself.
The sights, sounds, smells of New York from the 1950s and 60s are all vivid
to me still, and were constantly in my mind as I wrote this novel.
Q: You are also a noted poet. How does that writing form inform your
novels?
A: I was a poet first, and I was publishing my work while
still in college. When I began writing fiction in my mid-twenties, I thought
at first that I must keep the two disciplines separate. I wanted to write
fiction that was borne along by strong narratives and fully rounded characters.
I did not want to write a beautifully wrought, but narratively aimless, novel—pejoratively
called “a poet’s novel.” But I soon realized that the precision
and imagistic facility necessary to produce a vivid poem are among the tools
required when one is constructing an extended narrative line and delineating
character. My training as a poet, and the fact I write and publish poetry
as steadily as I ever did, have helped me to strive always for precision
and economy in my novels, no matter how dense or complex the subject matter.
Q: In the book you play a lot with mythology and faith, especially
through the use of animal and human characters that may or may not be real.
What side do you come down on—is there more to this earth than meets
the eye?
A: I don’t know that I come down on any side. I am
not an orthodox religious person nor a materialist who believes the world
is composed of chemical elements of which we and all animals are mere compounds
and variants. But I certainly believe there is more to this world than meets
the eye—mine or anyone else’s. I have witnessed enough magical
and transcendent events in my own life and in the lives of others to think
otherwise. Several lines of the poet William Blake have always stuck with
me: “All deities reside within the human breast.” And: “How
do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way,/Is an immense world
of Delight, clos’d by your senses five?”
Q: What is the one thing you hope readers take away from this book?
A: That the fantastic is a way of getting at what’s
most real, at the essence of things, and that perhaps the most interesting
and most rewarding events occur on that bright, edgy borderline between history
and myth where a novelist, if he’s lucky, might find himself, and from
which he can bring back some stories. I hope they also take away a
renewed or enhanced love for animals, real and imaginary.
To schedule an interview Nicholas Christopher, contact Angela Hayes, Goldberg McDuffie Communications, 212-446-5104, ahayes@goldbergmcduffie.com