Galilee

'Luman?' I murmured, and opened my eyes. It wasn't Luman; it wasn't even a human touch, or anything resembling a human touch. It was some presence in the shadows; or the shadows themselves. They had swarmed upon me while my eyes were closed, and were now pressing close, their intimacy in no way threatening, but curiously tender. It was as if these roiling, senseless forms were concerned for my well-being, the way they brushed my nape, my brow, my lips. I stayed absolutely still, holding my breath, half expecting their mood to change and their consolations to turn into something crueller. But no; they simply waited, close upon me. Relieved, I drew breath. And in the instant of drawing, knew I had again unwittingly done something of consequence. On the intake I felt the marked air about my head rush toward my open lips and down my throat. I had no choice but to let it in. By the time I knew what was happening it was too late to resist. I was a vessel being filled. I could feel the marks on my tongue, against my tonsils, in my windpipe - Nor did I want to choke them off, once I felt them inside me. At their entrance the pain in my side seemed instantly to recede, as did the throbbing in my head and eyes. The fear of a lonely demise here went out of my head and I was removed - in one breath - from despair to pleasurable ease. What a maze of manipulations this chamber contained! First banality, then a blow, then this opiated bliss. On Galilee... "It's a big novel...Sacrament sized novel...with the same kind of marriage of reality hinged with the supernatural that marks Sacrament, and it's set in America...and that's about all I can say about that right now. I will also say though that I'm doing a lot of research on the Civil War. Now whether or not that's connected to this novel or not...who knows...(said with a snicker). I'm actually quite excited about that. That's the book I'm doing right now." Confessions By [ ], Lost Souls, Issue 5, October 1996 "Well, I wrote this entire book – what I do for drafts is I write a book and don’t look at it; I mean, I handwrite everything, so I’ll write, in this case maybe a first draft is 3,000 pages and I get to the end of it and I haven’t looked at it at all, because if I look at it, I despair! So, I write the whole thing once, and then only when I’ve literally put the end on, do I go back and look at it again. Everybody has their different methods; that’s the one that works for me because it protects me from my self-doubt. What happened here was I wrote the book, and realised that there was so much in the book; so many elements, so many characters, so many – it’s set in Samarkand, which is way to the East, it’s set in Hawaii, it’ set in New York it’s set in North Carolina, it’s set in South Carolina, it’s set in all kinds of places. There was just so much going on in the book that what I felt I needed to do was stick it together. And the way I decided to stick it together was to do something I’d never done before which was to write in the first-person; the first person not being Clive Barker in this case, the first person being on of the Barbarossa children – Maddox Barbarossa his name is. He’s a cripple, he’s a drunkard, he’s a cocaine user, he’s not a very nice man and he’s wonderful to write – for all those reasons! I’d never done this before; taken on the persona of somebody else and said well, I’m going to live with this person for – I guess the last draft took me eight months or nine months – and allowed his personal doubts, his personal convictions and his personal anger to appear on the page. And one of the things it allowed me to do (and if you guys get to read the book, you might find this interesting) there are times in the book when Maddox says, ‘I’m lost. I don’t know where I am, I have so many characters here and I don’t know where I am and I don’t think any of this is ever going to stick together and I wish I’d never started.’ That’s exactly how I felt that day. And so, what I really tried to do is make Maddox’s voice my voice, so the book is probably more of a confessional, if you will, than a first glance would show. It’s a book which talks a lot about writing. But it’s also a book, filled, I hope, with magic and family stuff – a lot of genealogy and a lot of the Civil War stuff which I found fascinating. I’m very proud of the book." LA Times Festival of Books Transcript of an interview by Martin Smith at the LA Times Festival of Books, 25 April 1998 "They're a pair of books called, The Galilee Novels. They are kind of a nineteenth-century romantic saga. Ironically, they came out of a desire for a family saga. I wanted to do an intergenerational book. The books focus on two families. One is human, the other, more than human, or "semidivine." The lead character, or the "anti-hero," is Galilee. Galilee is a child of the latter family. The books follow Galilee's travels through generations as an immortal navigating the seas, approaching land only to meet and make love to a number of women. As he moves from generation to generation, the women he encounters all have life-changing relationships with him. "The human family's story is revealed in pieces through Amy, the heroin and most recent of Galilee's conquests. She tracks the two families' stories, putting the pieces together. The fun part for me was tracking Galilee's family back to it's semidivine origins, dating back to before the birth of Christ, then following it through significant times, such as the Civil War, to more modern times. It's an elaborate narrative. I think it's a very sexy book." Pinhead and the Human Condition By Dan Clarke, Inklings, December 1998 (online at www.( ).com - see links) "I smoothed out the supernatural elements, mellowed out the horrors. In 'Galilee', I emphasised the humanity and reality. Interestingly in this book the strange elements, the fantastical elements, which are much subdued from earlier books, are more powerful because the context is more real." Who Needs a Niche? By Laura Dempsey, Dayton Daily News, [July] 1998 "Sacrament, by contrast [with Moby Dick], is a much more economical piece of writing - it's character-driven, it's very strongly character-driven, and so is Galilee, actually. I mean Galilee is about character and story and the idea of story itself. Packed with digressions of course - the Zelim section fom that book is, arguably - could be - lifted in its entirety...And that's what I did, that's how I put it into The Essential and I loved it like that. I agonised quite a bit about whether to keep that in the novel. I realised my form's my inspiration, my aesthetic. My inspirations are always non-classical, in the sense of if we're defining classical story structure as being something which is economical and rigorous" Leitmotifs And Dark Beliefs By Phil & Sarah Stokes, London, 24 September 1999 (note: full text here) "First, the classical definition of romance is a passionate, loving relationship, which is at the heart of the book. Secondly, the 18th and 19th century definition of romance refers to a sweeping, fantastical adventure. And thirdly, there is the romance between the author and his subject. [Why would a prolific, successful writer, playwright and painter like Barker publicly disclose any vulnerability?] "Isn't that what artists are supposed to do? The point is to express what's going through your head. [The use of the 1st person] allows you to express feelings deep in your mind and heart. "Rachel is a small-town girl whose life, almost by accident, becomes transformed. I understand where she's coming from - I'm a Liverpool lad who was extremely lucky in that my material found favour with readers. My life doesn't resemble anything I expected it to be." Labor of Love By Julia Kamysz, Gambit, New Orleans, [July] 1998 "[To call 'Galilee' a romance] That was my choice. I wanted to say upfront - don't expect a tale of Gothic horror. It's not what we have here. - And I thought the best way to do that was just to put that on the title page and say: 'Hey, look, throw away all your expectations and start all over again.' [When HarperCollins balked] "If a publisher resists it, then it probably means I should be doing it. I don't think I would have written 'Galilee' if I didn't have a lover who is black. And I don't think I would have dared to write about that interaction, that public interaction, with David not in my life." Love, Barker Style By Randy Myers, (New York)? Times, 30 July 1998 "I needed an anchor to which all the many stories in 'Galilee' could be connected, Maddox provided the single voice that allowed me to journey from Samarkand to a high-society gala in New York and from Sandusky, Ohio, to Hawaii or Paris." Throwing a Curve By J.C.Patterson, Clarion Ledger, [July] 1998 "The 'fantastical' part: well, one of the families - the Barbarossas; Galilee's family - are vaguely, subtly supernatural. Nothing elaborate here, nothing baroque, just a little taste of the magical round the edges. And for me, part of the point about writing fantastical fiction, is being able to set up a reality that the audience observes and understands and senses is real - and the research in this book is this is the most heavily researched book I've done; the Jeffersonian stuff particularly, but also the Civil War stuff. "It's a two-family saga set over many generations of American life, going back to the Civil War. And, actually, preceding the Civil War as it turns out. But it seems to go back as far as the Civil War. And the great house of the Barbarossas which is built in North Carolina was built by Jefferson - at least, that's the way the book pretends it. Galilee is the brooding, Byronic son...prince, perhaps we would say, of one of the families. And he sort of falls in love with the daughter of the other family; who are based, quite loosely, on the Kennedys. And so what we have is this sort of Romeo and Juliet story set against this battle between these two huge families. So that's the 'epic' part of it is simply the sheer scale of the narrative." Transcript of interview on BBC Radio 5 Live, 9 November 1988 By Brian Hayes Click here for Barker's further comments on Galilee Galilee bibliography | Books Index | Home page This page has been created for information and entertainment purposes only. All quotes remain the copyright of the original owners.