The Physiognomy

Since this book won the World Fantasy Award, I'd wanted to read it for a while. Thanks to NetGalley and Open Road Media for giving me the opportunity.

I see why the book won the award - it gives us a strikingly original and interesting scenario: a fantasy world ruled by an oppressive dictator, who utilizes civil servants to maintain his cruel regime. One of the tools in his arsenal is the faux-'science' of physiognomy, where an 'expert' uses phrenology and other physical measurements to determine if one is (or will be) guilty of a crime.

Physiognomist Cley is one of these experts. He's also a thoroughly unsympathetic person - one of the most repulsive protagonists you're likely to encounter in fiction. He's willing to lie and be used, show more has no moral or ethical compass at all, and allows his drug addiction to take him to escalating acts of cruelty and depravity.

Some reviewers have described the story as a tale of Cley's redemption - but I don't see it that way at all. Yes, over the course of the story Clay's position changes - but only because his position literally changes in relation of the locus of power. He's motivated by resentment, not ethics.

Overall, I can't say the book was a 'pleasant' experience, although it was 'well-built.' In feel, it reminded me a bit of Mervyn Peake's 'Titus Groan.' It had that same sort of oppressive, hallucinatory atmosphere.

I'm glad I read the book, but can't say I'm eager to go and seek out the sequels. show less

This book is kind of trippy, which is of course the main reason I like it. In a place called the Well Built City, ruled over the the tyrannical scientist/sorcerer Drachton Below, people are judged and/or oppressed with the bogus (real world) science of physiognomy, which supposedly can determine a person's true nature and personality by careful examination of their appearance. Our protagonist, Cley, is an expert physiognomist, and also a cruel, heartless, arrogant, inconsiderate man. In the outlying mining town of Anamasobia, a mystical "fruit of paradise" has been discovered, clutched in the hands of a remarkably preserved corpse found peacefully reclining in the mine. The fruit is rumored to grant miracles, and Drachton Below, show more believing it will grant him immortality, wants it badly. Unfortunately, it has gone missing, and Below dispatches Cley with the mission to profile the entire town of Anamasobia and discover whose physiognomy makes them the most likely thief. The events that transpire in that town change Cley's life forever, and force him to re-examine everything he once knew about the physiognomy, about his master Below, and the very society he has served.

I loved this book for a variety of reasons, chief among them the originality of the setting. Granted, the setting isn't really that well developed, and it seems like we are only shown the parts of it that are most relevent to the story. What we do see is surreal and awe-inspiring. We have the Well Built City, a clockwork dystopia constructed of coral and glass, with every building a mnemonic device for Drachton Below's twisted genius. We have the mining town of Anamasobia, where mining the mineral fuel "blue spire" slowly transforms men into immobile blue statues. We have the endless Beyond, "the imagination of the world," a harsh wilderness teeming with strange wildlife and tantalizing visions of the future, the past, and the elusive land of Paradise.

Jeffrey Ford is ostesibly very fond of symbolism, and not only is the book crammed with meaningfull symbols and motifs, symbolism itself is a motif! Physiognomy is a pseudo-science that depends on symbolism, and Drachton Below's genius springs from his ability to hold absurdly complex symbols in his memory, which serve to fuel his imagination. The Beyond is a land where nature itself is a symbol. This is the kind of stuff that would make a literature professor salivate, and its creative fantasy and colorful imagery make it a trillion times more interesting than those musty old Steinbeck novels you were forced to read in high school. I, for one, am much too lazy to examine all of them, but I know a motif when I see one, and it grants a slendid air of hidden depth to whole affair.

Perhaps the biggest flaw of this book, I feel, is the voice in which it is written. It is told from the perspective of Cley, our callous physiognomist, and the prose is sort of clinical, detatched, and indifferent. It's like a Victorian gentlemen making small-talk about the weather, or something. It does add sort of an ethereal, dream-like feel to the prose, which I suppose fits the theme, but it's a bit cold, and prevents you from really getting emotionally invested in the story. show less

The Physiognomy is a book about terrible violence: physical, emotional, and social; and yet the whole mood is dreamy and vaporous, with many moments of real cheer. The protagonist Cley is a Physiognomist First Class -- a ranking agent of the totalitarian Well-Built City -- and the novel is the story of his gradual redemption from his own vicious participation in a society of exploitation and control.

The closest comparison I could make to characterize the setting of this book would be to the Terry Gilliam movie Brazil. It is a fantasy, in a world that differs from ours cosmetically, but includes 19th- and 20th-century levels of gadgetry as well as decidedly modern forms of social organization. Features include clockwork zombies, exotic show more drugs, and the oppressive canon of stigmatization that is the physiognomy itself. Cley serves as the narrator, and he is often uncertain about the boundaries between his dreams, his drug-addled hallucinations, and the possibly supernatural events that overtake him. And yet for all that, and the anguish involved in the story, the prose style is remarkably limpid.

The NYT review characterized this book as an allegory, and it could easily be read as one. The names are all numinous and provocative: Cley himself is mortal and malleable "clay," as well as the "key" (clef) to the story. Still, the story holds up as a fantasy adventure in its own right, and it doesn't stagger under any didactic burden. In this case (contrast Lewis' Narnia, for example) the allegorical dimension enriches the narrative rather than deflating it.

Although The Physiognomy is the first volume of a trilogy, it definitely stands as a complete work on its own. I would caution readers against the "Introduction to the New Edition" set at the beginning of the Golden Gryphon reissue: it is mostly the author's retrospective on his writing process, and would be better read after the novel, rather than before. show less

Sometimes a book will spoil you and sometimes a book will amaze you and sometimes it will blow your mind.

This one comes close to doing all three.

Think phrenology taken to a full sociological extreme, with abuses of power included, throw it into a land that could be hell, but all it’s inhabitants are so used to the strangeness that they take everything, including architectural explosions created by headaches, in stride.

And the follow a wildly abusive character filled with outright funny insults, watch him self-destruct, bring innocents along with him, and then have him go through a transformative arc.

A lot of these aspects may seem usual in the fantasy realm, but what I’m neglecting in my description is the sheer imaginative force show more of this world, the people within it, and the amazing richness of every line.

I can easily recommend this for anyone tired of the same old fantasy. This is really rich fare. show less

Comparisons to *1984* and Kafka are inevitable for this dystopian novel, and though they are warranted both for style and content there is an underlying hopefulness in *The Physiognomy* that those others lack. Ford's landscape is also less familiar, set somewhere that is neither a projected future nor a distorted past, but simply *other*. Bureaucratic claustrophobia is brilliantly evoked, but rebellion and redemption (both personal and civilization-wide) are seeded within.
There is something of the fable in Ford's style, yet there is also a feeling of immediacy and intimacy in his exploration of his character's psyches. Eventually false science and true fable press together too tightly and combust.

ETA: On second reading, I enjoyed this show more book even more. show less

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

Physiognomist Cley has been sent by Master Drachton Below, the evil genius who constructed the Well-Built City, to the faraway mining district of Anamasobia to investigate the theft of a fruit that’s rumored to have grown in the Earthly Paradise and to have supernatural powers. Upon arriving, the skeptical and arrogant physiognomist finds a whole town of morons whose physical features clearly indicate that they are all backward and generally pathetic. Except for Arla, whose beautiful features suggest that she is intelligent and competent, and who seems to understand the science of physiognomy (even though that’s impossible because she’s a woman). But Cley likes looking at Arla (women do have show more their place), so he invites her to be his assistant as each of the dimwits in the town comes one-by-one to disrobe, pose, and present their bodies for physiognomical inspection, measurement, and analysis.

But Cley’s investigation starts to go badly when he attempts to read the physiognomy of “The Traveler,” the dark man who was holding the supernatural fruit when it was originally found in the mines. Knowing that “dark pigmentation of the flesh is a sure sign of diminished intelligence and moral fiber,” Cley is surprised to find that his scientific measurements don’t add up. He’s also shocked to find other strange impossibilities happening in Anamasobia. Soon, his knowledge and skills begin to fail him and, eventually, things spiral out of his control after he performs an experimental surgery on Arla while under the influence of his favorite hallucinogenic drug. Master Drachton Below is not pleased with Cley’s work… and Master Below is not a man to disappoint.

The Physiognomy, with its original ideas, setting, characters, and symbolism, is sometimes brilliant, and always bizarre (which is probably why it won the 1998 World Fantasy Award). The focus on the debunked science of physiognomy is especially appealing and the characters, though they are not likable, are fascinating, too. Physiognomist Cley — who computes personalities with calipers, wears formaldehyde as cologne, is addicted to drugs, and is afraid of the dark — is one of the most narcissistic, sarcastic, and generally nasty characters you’ll ever meet. Master Drachton Below, who developed the Well-Built City as a perfect representation of his elaborate version of the mnemonic device called The Method of Loci, and who enjoys reviving dead human bodies by fitting them with mechanical devices and neural implants, makes a great villain. I listened to Audible Frontier’s version of The Physiognomy which was read by Christian Rummel. All of the characters were expertly and entertainingly rendered by Mr. Rummell, who perfectly captured the arrogance of Cley and the malevolence of The Master.

The plot of The Physiognomy starts confidently and with purpose, but when Cley’s troubles begin to accumulate, the story dissolves into a series of bizarre, vaguely-related occurrences which feel more like one of Cley’s time-distorted hallucinations than a plot. Like the hallucinations, the imagery is excellent (e.g., the hellish symbolism of the sulfur mine), and the prose never falters, but the things that happen to Cley, and his subsequent changes in personality, feel vague, arbitrary, and unbelievable.

It’s disappointing when a book which starts so well fails to completely satisfy, but I’m not giving up on Jeffrey Ford or his Well-Built City trilogy. I loved the idea of the city based on The Method of Loci and I am hoping to learn more about it in the next book which is propitiously titled Memoranda. show less

3.5 stars
ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

Physiognomist Cley has been sent by Master Drachton Below, the evil genius who constructed the Well-Built City, to the faraway mining district of Anamasobia to investigate the theft of a fruit that’s rumored to have grown in the Earthly Paradise and to have supernatural powers. Upon arriving, the skeptical and arrogant physiognomist finds a whole town of morons whose physical features clearly indicate that they are all backward and generally pathetic. Except for Arla, whose beautiful features suggest that she is intelligent and competent, and who seems to understand the science of physiognomy (even though that’s impossible because she’s a woman). But Cley likes looking at Arla show more (women do have their place), so he invites her to be his assistant as each of the dimwits in the town comes one-by-one to disrobe, pose, and present their bodies for physiognomical inspection, measurement, and analysis.

But Cley’s investigation starts to go badly when he attempts to read the physiognomy of “The Traveler,” the dark man who was holding the supernatural fruit when it was originally found in the mines. Knowing that “dark pigmentation of the flesh is a sure sign of diminished intelligence and moral fiber,” Cley is surprised to find that his scientific measurements don’t add up. He’s also shocked to find other strange impossibilities happening in Anamasobia. Soon, his knowledge and skills begin to fail him and, eventually, things spiral out of his control after he performs an experimental surgery on Arla while under the influence of his favorite hallucinogenic drug. Master Drachton Below is not pleased with Cley’s work… and Master Below is not a man to disappoint.

The Physiognomy, with its original ideas, setting, characters, and symbolism, is sometimes brilliant, and always bizarre (which is probably why it won the 1998 World Fantasy Award). The focus on the debunked science of physiognomy is especially appealing and the characters, though they are not likable, are fascinating, too. Physiognomist Cley — who computes personalities with calipers, wears formaldehyde as cologne, is addicted to drugs, and is afraid of the dark — is one of the most narcissistic, sarcastic, and generally nasty characters you’ll ever meet. Master Drachton Below, who developed the Well-Built City as a perfect representation of his elaborate version of the mnemonic device called The Method of Loci, and who enjoys reviving dead human bodies by fitting them with mechanical devices and neural implants, makes a great villain. I listened to Audible Frontier’s version of The Physiognomy which was read by Christian Rummel. All of the characters were expertly and entertainingly rendered by Mr. Rummell, who perfectly captured the arrogance of Cley and the malevolence of The Master.

The plot of The Physiognomy starts confidently and with purpose, but when Cley’s troubles begin to accumulate, the story dissolves into a series of bizarre, vaguely-related occurrences which feel more like one of Cley’s time-distorted hallucinations than a plot. Like the hallucinations, the imagery is excellent (e.g., the hellish symbolism of the sulfur mine), and the prose never falters, but the things that happen to Cley, and his subsequent changes in personality, feel vague, arbitrary, and unbelievable.

It’s disappointing when a book which starts so well fails to completely satisfy, but I’m not giving up on Jeffrey Ford or his Well-Built City trilogy. I loved the idea of the city based on The Method of Loci and I am hoping to learn more about it in the next book which is propitiously titled Memoranda. show less