The Folly of the World
by Jesse Bullington
First reviewed April 2013
I cannot divine how I used to choose novels. What I saw at the Barnes and Noble tables on Manhattan’s Upper East Side? Sitting on the library shelf? How in the world did The Folly of the World come into my life? Too bad I didn’t talk about the ephemera of choosing a book back in 2013. My writing a decade ago is a little too ornate for my tastes, now. And too many block quotes.
But the book seemed pretty good, to me, back then.
Less than a quarter of the way through The Folly of the World, the question of how the remaining three-hundred-odd pages would be filled was very real; though the setting was fifteenth-century Holland, it is character-based fiction, more at home in the fantasy genre than alternate history. The plot, up to that point, involved a quest to find a representative (née magical) MacGuffin that would change the lives of the three crusaders forever—the draw was that the characters themselves were callous, manipulative, cruel, and—in at least one instance—demented.
The choice of narrative lens boldly leans into the insanity, with a subjective third person that leaves distinguishing between reality and delirium up to the reader:
What if all the servants were in on it, Lansloet and even Lijsbet? She knew Lijsbet was at her aunt’s, again, and now Lansloet was supposedly out visiting an ill relation he had never mentioned, but what if all the servants were lying about their destinations?
It is difficult not to get swept up in the paranoia.
In keeping with genre fantasy are the requisite scenes of a sexual nature—The Folly of the World adroitly positions them as character development and applies their substance to reinforce the plot, rather than as the adolescent titillation of the prototypical hero’s journey where a heteronormative questing team's budding romance plays out with tepid ennui. The explicit detail is dialed up, but beyond the smut sits a standard plot of three adventures searching for a bauble; the rub is that all three are miscreants and the tale is told in increasingly unreliable voices. The plot is vehicle for character development—standard genre constructions apply.
Then, Folly shifts and the world changes completely. A particular scene—set from the view of a one-off character—was positioned as an obvious transition into the back half and functioned as an fantastic display of subtly in misdirection. Full advantage of the metes and bounds of the written word is applied to a scene that would not be nearly so effective in any other medium. Perhaps because it wasn’t overworked, perhaps because it wasn’t overlong, but it gulled me completely. It outlines how it’s going to be, from this point forward—no more restrictions, no tedium of predictability. The previous two-hundred pages can finally be seen for what they were: the setup, a long con to lull a reader into the gentle haze of bog-standard fiction before the floor falls away.
At this point the concern over the remaining pages flips completely, becoming curiosity over not how they might be filled but how the story, now laden with possibility, could be made to fit into the rapidly dwindling pagecount. It is impressive that so much plot and so much time were spent as juxtaposition to the story waiting to emerge—<u>The Folly of the World</u>allows itself room to ramp up, trusting the reader with a comparatively slow opening, denying the au courant constant drip of instant gratification. Without the relatively menial, paint-by-numbers opening, the twisting, writhing tangle of the back half wouldn’t command the kick nor allow for the unpredictability without seeming groundless or absurd.
Up until unexpected shift, the setting of fifteenth century Holland could well have been Middle Earth, Westeros, or the Four Lands for all the good it did the plot—graaf and Cod and Hook might have been archmage or Lannister or Belgarath, though perhaps that speaks more to my ignorance of Dutch history than anything else. Once the unpredictable became comprehensible and the insanity of the characters became tentatively plausible—or unquestionably undeniable, depending on the passage—having one foot set firmly in the real world, no matter how embellished, adds verisimilitude and grounds expectations in a way that a created world simply cannot:
Jo didn’t fire back a retort this time, though she looked upset—might’ve been an etiquette thing, her not being able to sass back a froggy knight without three maids to hold a pink veil between them, something like that. Sander was once lucky that nobody could really think less of him for the odd lapse in manners, and twice lucky for not giving a shit even if they did.
“It might have been an etiquette thing” but no one knows; the characters and the reader share in the ignorance, building their own reality and prodding it until it crumbles. The Folly of the World is bold fiction taken a step further, a paean to the bizarre, a pasquinade of social structure.
“So, anyway, we didn’t want to pay some cheat-price to get our sheep into the city. So what do you think we did? We dressed them sheep up like men, with my da’s coat and my drawers and this old straw hat we shared, and we’d lift ‘em up and walk on either side of ‘em, like this."
"So in we’d walk past the militia, the city watch, who back then didn’t charge just to come in for local folk but did for our sheep, right. We’d wait until dusk so the gate would still be open, but it’d be dark enough that the sheepy in his pants and coat and hat might look like an old man or drunk or such we was helping along, and in we’d walk right past the stupid fucking watchmen supposed to be eyeing old Himbrecht to make sure he and his son didn’t sneak no mutton in without paying the toll."
"Now, one of these militiamen was an old piss-catcher who—from Tilburg, I mean, a dirty sod from Tilburg, and every time we walked past them watchers with a sheep ‘tween us, he’d give us a hard eye from up in his tower, but he never come down. So we been doing this for years, walking the sheep inside, and finally I see him stand up and squint down at us, and I think for sure we’re nabbed this time, but then he sits back down and I hear him say to his partner up there, You Dordrecht...you Dordrecht...you—” Sander fell into a sniggering fit.
“What?” said Jolanda. “What did he say?”
“He said, You Dordrecht boys look just like sheep when you get old,” said Sander, and cackled. Jolanda blinked at him.
It is great fun to read, as well.