Leonard Cline's first novel,
God Head, appeared on 10 October 1925, on the first list of books published by the newly founded Viking Press of New York.
God Head is not fantastical but it is
mythopoeic. It is set in northern Michigan on the shores of Lake Superior,
vaguely during the First World War. Cline’s narrator, Paulus Kempf, is a labor
agitator, and after the police break up a strike he was fomenting, Kempf flees
into the woods for his life. There, at length, he comes to a small settlement
of Finns, who take him in and help him regain his health. During his recovery,
Kempf is told tales from the
Kalevala,
of Kullervo, Lemminkainen, and Väinämöinen, and these stories shape the
narrative and influence Kempf’s developing ideas. Thereby he comes to think of
an immortality of the flesh through the masterdom of humanity, and Kempf tests
out his ideas on the Finns, lusting after the wife of his host, playing on the
superstitions of the old people, and creating of the frowning face on the cliff
a chanting god head to symbolize his dominance. This bald précis does not
convey the majesty of this work, nor the brilliance of its style. On original
publication Laurence W. Stallings wrote of it in
The New York World: “It would be eminently fair to believe that
Leonard Cline could write rings around half a dozen of our ten best novelists”
(21 October 1925); and Donald Douglas wrote in
The Nation: “More than anything else it is Mr. Cline’s prose
holding light like a steel net which transmutes a wild melodrama into an
ordered and thrilling rhythm of word and scene and folklore” (6 January 1926). An
English edition was published by Jarrolds in 1927, under the title
Ahead the Thunder.
God Head was translated into Finnish by Juri Nummelin as
Jumalan Pää (2020).
God Head is the single-best forgotten novel that I have ever
encountered.*
A special Centennial edition God Head, with extra content, is forthcoming.
*Most of this piece is adapted from my entry on the book in Late Reviews (2018).
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