Honor & Entropy
Arthur Spevak
With a Special Introduction by J. E. Rainey
Lost Lobo Books, 2011
ebook
754 pages
Adventure

Somewhere between honor and entropy, all men must sooner or later strike sail and drop anchor, or lose the right too say, “This is who I was, and this is why I lived.

Honor & Entropy is an epic adventure about the intertwining lives of two men: one, Telly Brensen, a larger-than-life hero, the other, Arthur Spevak, an antihero who is dragged into a quest so tragic it changes his life forever. Spevak is, in fact, so affected by his experiences that he decides to chronicle his and Telly’s adventures: how they came to where they did, what happened at that last stop before the end of the world and, surprisingly, what came after.

Here’s one of those surprises… J. E. Rainey recently found Arthur Spevak’s story in a junk trunk in the middle of a blackberry patch behind his home and was so affected when he read it, he published the apparently unpublishable book himself. You can read about this in Rainey’s introduction–a powerful beginning, by the way, that should be revisited after reading Spevak’s story. Perhaps then, you will be touched the way I was touched and the way J. E. Rainey was touched: both of us exhausted and shaken by the story, but also filled with sadness that the work of twenty years had been set aside with a few final words: “know that I am hard at the business of enjoying what remains of my time. Heroes cannot do this until wrongs are righted, but for the rest of us, it is all we should ever do.”

Now, what’s a “real life story” doing on one of The Deepening’s fiction blogs? Honor & Entropy is, of course, fictional, as are J. E. Rainey and Arthur Spevak. Psuedonyms, both. They are the brainchildren of an author whom I shall not name. A way for him to present a story of great breadth and depth, with a theme that studies Honor (A good name or reputation; one whose worth brings the respect of his peers and/or the public) and Entropy (Orderly systems that tend to degrade back or run down to their original state of disorder.)

I’m quite serious about this: Honor & Entropy is an epic as unusual as it is engrossing; as detailed as real life, yet as archetypical as Homer’s Odyssey or Iliad or any of the Norse or Greek tragedies; in places as thrilling as a Desmond Bagley adventure novel and as “people detailed” as W.E.B Griffin’s brilliant series, Brotherhood of War; full of corruption, bravery, humor and cleverness; larger than life, yet packed with every kind of death. In other words, Honor & Entropy is everything one might expect from a mystery that begins in WWII, carries forward to the Vietnam War and always comes back to the last stop before the end of the world.

This novel, Honor and Entropy, entwines the stories of the heroic Telly Brensen and his antihero acquaintance, Arthur Spevak. I say acquaintance rather than friend, because Arthur wishes he had never gotten involved with Telly. And he claims that writing the man’s story cost him everything. In 1970, Telly is a 24 year-old, hot tempered, blonde giant of Danish descent. When he brutalizes a pimp who is wearing a ring that was stolen from his mother, Telly considers his actions as honorable. The court accepts that Telly had the moral high ground, but at the same time, it cannot tolerate the extremity of his actions: specifically, there was no honor in his final act. Telly is given a choice: jail or enlist for a 2 year tour in Vietnam. Arthur Spevak, who lives across the street, enlists voluntarily because he can’t think of anything else to do with his life. Both become marines: Telly goes to the front lines, Arthur works as an officer in the motor pool. Telly, following his nature, becomes a hero who is to be awarded the nation’s highest honor; but that same nature sees him wrongly stripped of that honor and dishonorably discharged from service. Unable to face a life where society will always consider him as a man without honor, Telly eventually decides to find his father, who mysteriously disappeared after a plane crash on the island of Borneo just after the war ended in 1945. Arthur–who spends/wastes his tour thumbing his nose at authority and setting the goal to get R&R in each of the 10 “approved” cities, when each soldier is allowed only 1 R&R per tour–serves without honor but receives an honorable discharge. Still trying to find some kind of meaning in his life, Aurthur finds himself agreeing to come after Telly if he doesn’t return from Borneo within a prescribed period. Honorable action is forced upon him.

There really is a terrific, well thought-out, and expertly told mystery here. And some of it runs through the many sub-plots and the characters who people them. It is during this period in the novel that the reader finally begins to understand the title of the book. For example: the Japanese characters traveling with Telly’s father struggle with the breakdown or degradation of their incredibly ordered society. The plunge into chaos (entropy) forces these men to redefine everything about themselves, especially their understanding of the concept of honor. Borneo, itself, is the perfect example of the principle of entropy. The world’s 3rd largest island (currently divided into 3 countries: Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei) turns into a nightmare, the end of the world for many, as the British and Japanese give up their control of the people, and the old tribes resurface and begin to fight over territories, while somewhat westernized towns along the seaward ends of the great rivers and on the seashores, strike up many kinds of commerce–most civilians pretending to be other than they are, rewriting their wartime personas. The corruption runs so deep that death may come at any moment and from any source. Both Arthur and Telly before him, find themselves in similar situations, where one moment they are in dugouts with smiling, friendly ex-headhunters and the next are running for their lives from the new lords for that portion of the river.

I could go on and on.

What comes across most in this novel is that the valiant struggle of so many different kinds of people to live an honorable life, whether they have defined it as such or not, is doomed by the very existence of entropy… Yet, they all manage to achieve their goal in certain instances. Some find honor in moments of heroism: in life-shattering or life-ending moments; in quiet, determined and often unseen moments; in unexpected moments, and even in unimaginable moments. Honor and Entropy is a metaphor for life. This metaphor is much like the statement that if you aren’t moving forward, but you are stagnating or moving backwards, then you’re dying. If you aren’t striving for honor (a good name) in your life, then you’re part of the ever-present degradation of society into chaos (Entropy).

Arthur Spevak’s Honor & Entropy, with the exception of some Ayn Rand moments where he uses his characters as little more than mouthpieces and the irritating habit of switching scenes and points of view like a short order cook flips burgers, has been the most enjoyable “difficult read” I’ve experienced in a very long time. Arthur Spevak claims he is not an author. This just isn’t so. I get the feeling his characters and settings are real to him. And so these things become real to me. That, dear reader, is the job description of an author.


Copyright, Clayton Clifford Bye 2011