The Maze Maker: A Novel

New
Illustrated
2015
$20.11

I address you across more than three thousand years, you who live at the conjunction of the Fish and the Water-carrier, speaks Daedalus, an artisan, inventor, and designer born into an utterly alien family of heroes who value acts of war above all else, a world where his fellow Greeks seem driven only to destroy-an existence he feels compelled to escape. In this fictional autobiography of the father of Icarus, Apollo's creature, a brilliant but flawed man, writer and sculptor Michael Ayrton harnesses the tales of the past to mold a myth for our times. We learn of Daedalus's increasingly ambitious artifacts and inventions; his fascination with Minoan culture, commerce, and religion, and his efforts to adapt to them; how he comes to design the maze of the horned Minotaur; and how, when he decides that he must flee yet again, he builds two sets of wax wings-wings that will be instruments of his descent into the underworld, a place of both purgatory and rebirth. A compelling mix of history, fable, lore, and meditations on the enigma of art, The Maze Maker will ensnare classicists, artists, and all lovers of story in its convolutions of life and legend. I never understood the pattern of my life, writes Daedalus, so that I have blundered through it in a maze.

Synopsis

I address you across more than three thousand years, you who live at the conjunction of the Fish and the Water-carrier, speaks Daedalus, an artisan, inventor, and designer born into an utterly alien family of heroes who value acts of war above all else, a world where his fellow Greeks seem driven only to destroy-an existence he feels compelled to escape. In this fictional autobiography of the father of Icarus, Apollo's creature, a brilliant but flawed man, writer and sculptor Michael Ayrton harnesses the tales of the past to mold a myth for our times. We learn of Daedalus's increasingly ambitious artifacts and inventions; his fascination with Minoan culture, commerce, and religion, and his efforts to adapt to them; how he comes to design the maze of the horned Minotaur; and how, when he decides that he must flee yet again, he builds two sets of wax wings-wings that will be instruments of his descent into the underworld, a place of both purgatory and rebirth. A compelling mix of history, fable, lore, and meditations on the enigma of art, The Maze Maker will ensnare classicists, artists, and all lovers of story in its convolutions of life and legend. I never understood the pattern of my life, writes Daedalus, so that I have blundered through it in a maze.

$20.11

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Illustrated
Pages: 322
Edition: Illustrated
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 04 Nov 2015
ISBN 10: 022604243X
ISBN 13: 9780226042435

Media Reviews

One of my guilty pleasures is wandering through the 'literature' section of bookstores, opening and closing books, in search of fantasy and science fiction. There s more of it to be found than you d expect. . . . The Maze Maker sets out to be one of those novels where a mythic figure here, Daedalus, creator of both the labyrinth and the wings that doomed his son Icarus is rationalized as a historic figure, and it does include a great deal of fascinating Bronze Age smithery. But while the plot satisfies our expectations, its inherent weirdness keeps bursting out. . . . Ayrton was a sculptor who once created a golden honeycomb for the estate of Sir Edmund Hillary, the first to reach the summit of Everest. Bees filled the sculpture with honey and larvae. The Maze Maker is the novel such a man would write. --Michael Swanwick Tor.com
In the primitive classification system through which children are introduced to libraries, Ayrton s The Maze Maker has to be catalogued under Fiction. It tells a story, rich with incident and description and dialogue; it portrays characters who can be described and judged; it is poetic and exciting, imaginative and sometimes didactic. English critics have already praised it highly as a novel, rightly so. A historical novel. Yet it is patently not a historical novel like those, say, of Mary Renault, with which one might be tempted to draw comparisons. It is even less the work of a fabulist. In a strict sense The Maze Maker is a long myth, the original creation of a myth-maker who employs the raw material of old myths to fashion a new one, as Daedalus fashioned his great works out of already available raw materials. . . . The Maze Maker can . . . be read straight, as a beautifully evocative, much extended, re-telling of some of the finest of the old Greek myths. But what a pity that would be. The mythical past still has an important role, and this new myth is as true in our time as the old versions were in theirs. --M. I. Finley New York Review of Books
One of my guilty pleasures is wandering through the 'literature' section of bookstores, opening and closing books, in search of fantasy and science fiction. There's more of it to be found than you'd expect. . . . The Maze Maker sets out to be one of those novels where a mythic figure--here, Daedalus, creator of both the labyrinth and the wings that doomed his son Icarus--is rationalized as a historic figure, and it does include a great deal of fascinating Bronze Age smithery. But while the plot satisfies our expectations, its inherent weirdness keeps bursting out. . . . Ayrton was a sculptor who once created a golden honeycomb for the estate of Sir Edmund Hillary, the first to reach the summit of Everest. Bees filled the sculpture with honey and larvae. The Maze Maker is the novel such a man would write. --Michael Swanwick Tor.com
In the primitive classification system through which children are introduced to libraries, Ayrton's The Maze Maker has to be catalogued under Fiction. It tells a story, rich with incident and description and dialogue; it portrays characters who can be described and judged; it is poetic and exciting, imaginative and sometimes didactic. English critics have already praised it highly as a novel, rightly so. A historical novel. Yet it is patently not a historical novel like those, say, of Mary Renault, with which one might be tempted to draw comparisons. It is even less the work of a fabulist. In a strict sense The Maze Maker is a long myth, the original creation of a myth-maker who employs the raw material of old myths to fashion a new one, as Daedalus fashioned his great works out of already available raw materials. . . . The Maze Maker can . . . be read straight, as a beautifully evocative, much extended, re-telling of some of the finest of the old Greek myths. But what a pity that would be. The mythical past still has an important role, and this new myth is as 'true' in our time as the old versions were in theirs. --M. I. Finley New York Review of Books

Author Bio

Michael Ayrton (1921-1975) was an English artist and writer. His bronze sculptures of Icarus stand outside the Smithsonian Institution Space Museum in Washington, DC, and St Paul's Cathedral in London. He is the author of The Testament of Daedalus, Fabrications, and The Midas Consequence, among other books.