Annabel Lyon on writing about Alexander the Great

Finding the Words is a compelling new anthology in which 31 well-known writers contemplate their craft -- revealing surprising and often deeply personal insights into the writing process. Published by McClelland & Stewart, the anthology is a fundraiser for PEN Canada, an non-profit organization that works to defend freedom of expression and support those around the world who suffer persecution for what they have written.

Over the new two weeks, CBC Books is proud to present four excerpts from the anthology, taking you inside the minds of some of the literary voices you know and love. Here, Annabel Lyon reveals part of the process of writing her award-winning novel, The Golden Mean.
 


     ANNABEL LYON
     Alexander

I wanted to write a novel about Aristotle, not Alexander-- at first, the boy was just along for the ride. In early drafts he was a supporting actor, no more. My real passion, or so I thought, was the philosopher who was his tutor. Here was a subtle, adult mind; a once-in-a-thousand-years genius-- a character of Wagnerian scope. All I knew about the kid was that I wanted him to be annoying.

There's a reverent literary tradition around Alexander, beginning with his first biographers (Arrian, Plutarch), through the so-called "Alexander Romances" of medieval times (where he often had superpowers), right up to the present (most recently with Oliver Stone's 2004 biopic, Alexander, featuring Irish heartthrob Colin Farrell).

But years as a teacher have taught me that teenagers with brains and talent are often the most arrogant, insecure, and impossible students of all. I wanted to create a character who would both defy expectations and be immediately recognizable to anyone who's ever had to deal with an exceptionally bright, difficult teenager. I pictured the young Alexander as an annoying narcissist who needed to be taken down a few notches. Just the job for my fictional Aristotle, whose brilliance I much preferred (in the beginning, anyway) to Alexander's brawn.

But I struggled. Early readers told me they believed Alexander as an annoying teenager but couldn't see the seeds of the man who would conquer the world. The more I thought about him, the more he bothered me. I knew he needed to be more than just a smart aleck, but I still couldn't buy into the tradition of the sexy, hotheaded military genius.

The penny finally dropped when I read William Finnegan's "The Last Tour," about an Iraq war veteran suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder, in the September 29, 2008 issue of The New Yorker. I was struck by the symptoms Finnegan described: headaches, nightmares, alcoholism, loss of touch with reality, and, most of all, the paradoxical desire to be at home when you're at war and at war when you're home. These symptoms fit the later Alexander, an alcoholic given to fits of blinding violence immediately followed by crippling depressions, who left home at 19 and never returned.

The ancient biographer Plutarch writes that after a night of drinking with a long-time companion named Clitus, who had scolded the king for accepting obeisance from his soldiers in the Eastern manner, "Alexander, snatching a spear from one of the soldiers, met Clitus as he was coming forward and was putting by the curtain that hung before the door, and ran him through the body. He fell at once with a cry and a groan. Upon which the king's anger immediately vanishing, he came perfectly to himself, and when he saw his friends about him all in a profound silence, he pulled the spear out of the dead body, and would have thrust it into his own throat, if the guards had not held his hands, and by main force carried him away into his chamber, where all that night and the next day he wept bitterly, till being quite spent with lamenting and exclaiming, he lay as it were speechless, only fetching deep sighs."

Now here's Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire, describing his reaction to the Rwandan genocide in Shake Hands with the Devil: "I wanted to scream, to vomit, to hit something, to break free of my body, to end this terrible scene." And: "I see-sawed from rage to tears and back again, with brief interregnums of numbed-out staring." And: "The news sent me spinning into a tirade against every nation and body who could have assisted us in preventing this....My ranting was beyond the bounds of decorum, and rendered my own staff and the French liaison officers noticeably ill at ease. When I stopped, the orders group headed quietly off to their duties....I remained alone for a time, staring at the big map of Rwanda tacked to the wall. I had to recognize that I was exhibiting the signs and symptoms that caused me to send others to Nairobi for a rest. I could rarely sleep, and could not bear to eat anything other than peanut butter from [my wife's] last care package. I was moody and overtaken at the most inopportune times by spontaneous daydreaming."

The king in his chamber; the general in his headquarters. Insomnia, nightmares, violence, depression, shame, silence. I had found the language I needed to capture the weight and the horror of military leadership in a time of war.

One could argue that Alexander's and Dallaire's contrasting levels of moral responsibility should preclude any such comparison. Dallaire didn't set out to conquer the world, and Alexander didn't set out to keep its peace. But the more I thought about the boyhood that must have preceded Alexander's tormented life, the more I wondered if the trauma might have begun very early indeed. His parents, by all accounts, hated each other. His father took numerous wives and produced half-siblings often enough to keep the young prince's expectations about his future off-balance. His mother was suspected of witchcraft. Alexander was trained as a child soldier, leading troops into battle when he was only 16.

Child soldiers exist today, and we know what damage and trauma they suffer (when we allow ourselves to think about them at all). An ancient child would have suffered no less. Once I understood that, I understood how to proceed with the character I now cared and feared for as much as anyone in the novel.

Read more excerpts from Finding the Words:

Lisa Moore: "My Character"

Heather O'Neill: "A Story Without Words"

Michael Winter: "Thinly Veiled"

Excerpt from "Alexander" by Annabel Lyon, from Finding the Words: Writers on Inspiration, Desire, War, Celebrity, Exile, and Breaking the Rules edited by Jared Bland, published by McClelland & Stewart/Emblem Editions. Excerpt copyright © Annabel Lyon. Used with permission of the author and the publisher.