A Quest Novel for the Aimless Generation

A small but powerful literary sub-genre is the novel of pagan intoxication breaking forth in a modern, secular milieu. Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and John Fowles’s The Magus are two such books, both featuring young men in academic settings who are swept away from reason and the values of the Enlightenment by a charismatic leader channeling dangerous Dionysian forces. Both books are reader favorites with high literary merit, but also stand slightly outside the mainstream—as pagan-influenced works that didn’t quite fit with the triumphant secularism of their day. Thus it’s thrilling to see the theme re-appear—dirtied, bruised, and adapted for today’s cultural disintegration—in Pan, a debut novel by Michael Clune.