What I Am Reading: "Creation" by Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal is my favorite author, and he has been ever since I was a teenager. I also haven't read any of his books since I was a teenager. When I was probably around 13 or 14, my family took a tour of Fort Ticonderoga, in upstate New York. In the gift shop, I perused (but did not purchase) a book called "Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr." I was interested in the cultural archetype of an evil twin, or alternate and corrupted versions of good character (mostly in a Star Wars context); and so the idea of an evil founding father appealed to me. Later, reading up on Wikipedia, I found that Aaron Burr was the subject of a famous novel by a famous writer. I bought it, I read it, I fell in love. The rest is history.

Like all of Gore Vidal's historical fiction, this novel is a "counter-history" about another maligned underdog: the Persians. While I read it, I kept thinking that it would have done me a lot of good to read it when I was a freshman in high school: that year, the odious 300 movie came out, and my friends (and their friends, with whom I was forced to associate by transitive property) loved it. I did not. I would analyze now that, as I started to mature a little at age 14, the testosterone-drenched superhuman Spartans were the type of world I wanted to prove myself superior to. In any event, I didn't find Gore Vidal until a bit later, though he did shape my thinking for a time. My first foray into politics, as I have recounted elsewhere, was counter-establishment, and Vidal's novels fueled that. I think that their historical apostasy and slaying of sacred cows influenced my interest in historiography, as to how we come to adopt our cultural narratives about ourselves (and how counter-narratives can occasionally break to the surface).

The sacred cow slain in this work is Herodotus. The framing story is the life tale of Cyrus Spitama, fictional grandson of Zoroaster, as recounted to his grand-nephew, Democritus, in 445 BC as Spitama is dying in Periclean Athens. He wishes to set the record straight vis a vis Athenian mythologizing of the Greek Wars, and recount his own travels. As a child, Spitama witnesses his grandfather's death at the hands of barbarian raiders; he is sent from Bactria, furthest corner of the Achaemenid Empire, to be brought up at the court of Darius the Great. He is fortunate in that his patron is Hystaspes, satrap of Bactria and Darius' father. At the court, he becomes friends with Xerxes, Darius' son, and Mardonius, also a relative of the king in the complicated, polygamous royal family tree. His mother, Lais, is a Thracian who sets herself up as a witch in court and consorts with an ever-cycling array of Greek conspirators, seeking Persian help to return to their respective seats of power in the west.

After some adventures in court life and in ruling, Spitama is deputized by Darius the Great to make an expedition to India, in an effort to open a trade route that will lead to eventual expansion of the empire. He makes the first of several months-long journeys, all of which are fortunately glossed over in the text. He relates plenty about Indian jungles (dense) and roads (inferior) and the resulting decentralized nature of Indian states. He travels to the state of Magadha, under King Bimbisara, Prince Ajatashatru, and chamberlain / spymaster Varshakara. He observes Indian politics as a disinterested outsider, and how the up-and-coming state of Magadha scuffles politely with the declining Kosala, but feels more threatened by the neighboring republican states (actually oligarchies). Spitama is married to one of Ajatashatru's daughters, Ambalika, who meets her father for the first time in preparation for the honor/transaction. Spitama gets his warmest welcome and most forthcoming political analysis from her grandfather, Prince Jeta. After concluding his mercantile/diplomatic business in Magadha, Spitama proceeds on to Koshala, under King Pasenadi, who would rather be (and still hopes to be) a priest. Spitama has been instructed to warn Pasenadi that his son, Virudhaka, means to kill him and take over the Kingdom. He and Jeta think that this is disinformation, so they do not pass it along; as it turns out, it was cover for Ajatashatru's own overthrow of Bimbisara. As the potential for conflict heats up, Virudhaka does indeed depose Pasenadi as well, and Cyrus Spitama sets out for Persia in the company of a Chinese merchant named Fan Ch'ih.

As Vidal says in a note at the beginning, terminology is bent to achieve the illusion of archaism. China was not called China, though there was a state of Ch'in, while India was actually at the time only the name of a Persian province on the Indus. Vidal takes the liberty of using India as an all-encompassing term for clarity's sale, and uses the anachronistic-on-both-ends "Cathay" to invoke ancient China. Other spellings are probably outdated. Anyway, Spitama returns to Persia to more intrigue; Mardonius' campaigns against the Greeks have both gone well and resulted in his injury, and Xerxes, appointed as the official successor, wishes to build up his prestige with his own military successes. He and Spitama both hope that these successes can be found in India, and this eastern agenda initially looks as if it will find favor in official policy. However, the Greek victory at Marathon (which Spitama sneers at in his retelling to Democritus as a "Persian defeat") forces a new campaign against the Greeks, delayed by the death of Darius and the ascension of Xerxes. Eventually, having been intrigued all along by its own trade with India, Spitama embarks on a new caravan to Cathay.

This mission goes far less well than his earlier one, as he is imprisoned by the militarized, absolutist state of Ch'in. Cathay at the time was in the Warring States period, with many competing Dukes but no actual Son of Heaven. Spitima has to be spirited away by the Duke of Sheh, the pretender to a non-existent ducal seat tolerated by other nobles because of his actual noble lineage. He is subsequently liberated from being one of the Duke's curiosities by his old comrade Fan Ch'in, who is a servant of the Baron K'ang, de-facto leader of the state of Lu (most Dukes are figureheads). Spitima sorts out some intrigue here as well, getting to the bottom of a possible plot by the neighboring state, Key, before being allowed to return home on another caravan. He passes through India on the way to see his old wife and meet his children, and narrowly avoids becoming a captive of the victorious Ajatashatru. His work helping to re-facilitate trade along the Silk Road are mostly unremarked-upon, the details ironed out by others.

Upon his return to Persia, Spitama is informed of the defeat of Mardonius and others in the wars with the Greeks. From then on he witnesses the stagnation of Xerxes' court, as his old friend focuses more on harem intrigues than he does on imperial expansion. He is never able to interest Xerxes in a move to the east; he passes twelve years in relative court serenity until Xerxes is assassinated by collaborators, along with the crown prince, Darius. Eventually, from retirement, Spitama was recalled by Xerxes' younger son, Artaxerxes, who uses him to negotiate a secret treaty with Athens. From here, he is sent to Athens in his old age, to serve as an ambassador and keep the peace. He doesn’t think much of Athenian politics, but after dictating the story, he does have one encounter with Pericles, portrayed with the usual Vidalian amoral respect/bemusement due to Great Men of History, where Spitama provides an assessment of a Greek schemer he knew from his mother’s interactions back at Persian court.

This is, in a nutshell, the story, minus considerable details on court intrigues. However, the novel is entitled Creation because it deals with Spitama's endless quest to find a satisfactory explanation for the creation of the universe, a topic not dealt with satisfactorily in his Zoroastrian cosmology. To this end, he interacts with the Buddha and with Mahavira, an important figure in Jainism, when he is in India; and with Lao Tzu, founder of Taoism, and Confucius when in China. In fact, he is tasked in Lu with ascertaining whether Confucius intends to overthrow the state through the loyalty of Fan Ch'ih and other civil servants, and does his best to resolve ideological tension among Confucius’ disciples. Each religious figure is first introduced through a slight historical variation on their names: Li Tzu, Master K'ung, Gotama, and so on. This is a classic Gore Vidal curve-ball, similar to how, in Lincoln, he uses a different Gettysburg Address text than the one commonly used in school. Spitama learns about reincarnation, Nirvana, and other religious ideas, and tries to square them with Zoroastrianism: wherein the Wise Lord created evil so that some people would choose it, and then punishes those people until eventually all are saved at the end of the world (or something). He makes particular observation of the passing of the polytheism brought by the Aryan peoples to Persia and India, in favor of the monotheism of Zoroastrianism or religious philosophies of Jainism or Buddhism.

While dictating his story, Spitama addresses Democritus numerous times, asking questions and dismissing quibbles. However, toward the end, Democritus speaks in his own voice to include a story of bringing his great-uncle to the agora, where he reveals his despair about never having satisfactorily found an explanation of creation. Democritus later concludes the story in the "afterword" from decades hence by noting how much his great-uncle's learning influenced his own theory of creation, of essential, unguided atoms being created in the ceaseless whirl of necessity (influenced by Anaxagoras, whom Spitama discussed early in the book with some Athenian students).

As you can see, there are many important historical personages who take the stage to air their important ideas, but Gore Vidal handles this all very well, and it never comes across as too didactic or as too serendipitous. Zoroaster's grandson is a convenient vessel for these explorations, and for support of Persia against the grain of the western history and classics that he was taught in school and we are still taught through culture. Both Spitama's story and the book itself are in answer to Herodotus, but many of the characters originate apparently from his work. For example, Lais' father is said to be Megacreon, a man of Abdera who receives precisely one mention in Herodotus. Similarly, appearances are made by figures such as Artemisia, Queen of Halicarnassus and Persian vassal who is made the lover of Mardonius; or Zopyrus, satrap of Babylon who earned the confidence of rebels by having himself mutilated, in order to betray those rebels and crush their revolt. I'm not much of a classicist, but minor roles like these from actual recorded history fire my interest in delving into the classics.

Without rambling too much longer (and also without giving justice to the exploration of creation myths, or lack thereof) I was very happy to inaugurate a run of historical fiction with my favorite author. I often carefully stockpile books by my favorite authors, especially those who are older or who are deceased (Murakami, Umberto Eco, and so on). I'm not much of a re-reader currently, and I know that you can only enjoy a book for the first time once. I thought that the pandemic was a good use of my first Gore Vidal novel in over a decade. My teens are far enough behind that it is my intention upon finally returning to DC someday soon to enjoy his series on American history, Narratives of Empire, all over again.