''Arc d'X'' (1993), by Steve Erickson, is an avant-pop

novel A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...

. Upon publication in 1993 it received wide attention particularly from other novelists such as Thomas Pynchon, Tom Robbins and

William Gibson William Ford Gibson (born March 17, 1948) is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as ''cyberpunk''. Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, his ...

, and has been translated into Italian, Japanese and other languages.

Plot summary

The story begins as a historical novel, telling the story of the relationship between

Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 18 ...

and his

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...

mistress Sally Hemings, a young woman with a "skin that was too white to be quite black and too black to be quite white." Erickson focuses on the period Jefferson spent in France at the beginning of the

French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considere ...

(in one of the climactic scenes of the first part there is a nightmarish description of the storming of the Bastille). After "Thomas" and Sally become lovers the couple return to the United States, with Hemings remaining a slave even as her children are set free; this agreement between the lovers seems to have a powerful symbolic value for the rest of the novel, as "it was the nature of American freedom that he was only free to take pleasure in something he possessed." An abrupt change in the narrative finds Hemings leaving Jefferson after he is elected President of the United States. In a departure from factual history Hemings travels West, reaching a territory where Native Americans have never seen black or white people. There, in a room where a murder has taken place, Sally wakes in an alternate present when the United States have disappeared; the action is set in Aeonopolis, a strange city under harsh theocratic rule and built near a volcano on the

West Coast West Coast or west coast may refer to: Geography Australia * Western Australia *Regions of South Australia#Weather forecasting, West Coast of South Australia * West Coast, Tasmania **West Coast Range, mountain range in the region Canada * Britis ...

North-America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

(though there is no overt indication about the exact position of the city). Sally meets an Afro-American police detective named Wade who sets her free because he doesn't believe she is guilty of the murder, though the priests want her prosecuted. After a dramatic confrontation Wade deserts the police force and hides in the Arboretum, a vast subterranean construct beyond the jurisdiction of the Church and police where the illegal activity centers on a nightclub called Fleurs d'X and Wade becomes fascinated by a dancer named Mona. The novel recounts Mona's relation with Wade, and Sally's relation with one of the archivists of Church Central, Etcher. The atmosphere is dream-like, both in the part of the novel focusing on Wade and in the longer part where the protagonist is Etcher. Etcher's tormented love story with Sally ends with her death, which takes place in an Icy region north of Aeonopolis where she and Etcher have escaped the police and church. After Sally's death the narration abruptly moves back to Paris and the present, where a French mathematician named Seuroq is stricken by unbearable grief for the death of his wife Helen; Seuroq begins to research a different concept of time, perhaps hoping to invert its flux. What he discovers instead is the existence of an extra day, called Jour d'X or X-Day, between December 31, 1999, and January 1, 2000. Following this short episode the narrative focuses on a character named "Erickson" travelling towards Berlin in 1998. The city he reaches is not the real Berlin of the 1990s but an alternate version of the city which has been abandoned by many of its inhabitants notwithstanding the

fall of the Wall The fall of the Berlin Wall (german: Mauerfall) on November 9 in German history, 9 November 1989, during the Peaceful Revolution, was a pivotal event in world history which marked the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the figurative Iron Curtai ...

, and which barely survives an unspecified disaster (while Erickson's home city,

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

, has been obliterated by an unspecified Cataclysm, possibly an earthquake). Erickson is killed by a young nazi skinhead, Georgie Valis, the son of an East German professor who has attempted to escape to West Berlin; Georgie uses Erickson's passport to reach the United States and hitchhikes toward its ravaged West Coast. There he will meet in the ruins of Los Angeles Thomas and Sally, and this meeting will move him to the alternate universe of Aeonopolis, where he will reach the Fleurs d'X night club.

External links

An online review of the novel
*Fleurs d'X is a collection of short musical pieces for solo classical guitar inspired by the novel and written by the Italian composer Fabio Selvafiorita https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BlmiY-E6G8&list=UUpkxdnKGNP7SH-RyICsSLRg

Secondary Bibliography

*Murphy, Jim. "Pursuits and Revolutions: History's Figures in Steve Erickson's ''Arc d'X''", ''MFS Modern Fiction Studies'' - Volume 46, Number 2, Summer 2000, pp. 451–479 {{DEFAULTSORT:Arc D'x Novels by Steve Erickson 1993 American novels Poseidon Press books Sally Hemings