Efram Nugent in Jonathan Lethem\'s

Efram Nugent

In Jonathan Lethem's science fiction novel Girl in Landscape, one of the more intriguing characters we meet throughout the course of the book is Efram Nugent. From his very first mention shortly after the Marsh family's arrival on the Planet of the Archbuilders, Efram assumes a mysterious though powerful role. In the following essay, I will argue that Efram Nugent occupies a God-like position in the order of things on the Planet of the Archbuilders. I will show how his telepathic abilities to see everything that goes on through the household deer effectively positions him in the classic theological role that is traditionally associated with a higher power.

Efram is introduced early in the Marshes' arrival on the Planet of the Archbuilders in the children's conversation. Almost immediately, it becomes clear that he is a figure who is both revered and feared. He is somehow never there, yet at the same time, omnipresent:

Morris went to the door. "I'm telling Efram."

Efram isn't even around," said Bruce. "You can go tell anybody you want. Tell some old Archbuilder. Get out of here" (Lethem 59).

With the reader's suspicions aroused, Efram's ultimate appearance is no less cryptic and mysterious in the course of the book. He is seen first by Pella, through whom the novel's narration is focused. When he finally does appear, on page 80, he is described as follows:

man in a hat stood on a ridge to her left, between her and the sun, so that he was a silhouette against the pink. Standing still, he was almost like another of the broken arches on the horizon, somehow drawn suddenly close (Lethem 80).

He smiled, and [Pella] permitted herself a look up at his face, but the hat cast a block of shadow across his brow and nose. His smile was bigger on one side than the other, and he held it so that it seemed carved in rock, the way he'd stood still when she first saw him (Lethem 81).

Efram is both man and mineral, "carved in rock" yet smiling, his face mysteriously blocked by his hat so that Pella is not able to fully gauge his expression - to see what he is thinking.

In another episode in the novel, Pella is startled when Efram opens the door of the house where Diane Eastling lives. She had persuaded her father to call on Diane in order to ask her questions regarding her research of the archbuilders' science. She is completely unaware that Efram will be there in Diane's absence, and begins to feel that Efram, whom, she feels, possesses supernal powers, has telepathically led her there:

And Efram moved through it as casually as if he owned it. They had entered his space. Possibly any space he inhabited was his, the way he moved his shoulders to carve the air (Lethem 112).

Pella is able to immediately pick up on Efram's God-like demeanor, which thus provides the backdrop to her strong emotional ambivalence towards him. She feels herself strangely attracted to him; at the same time, she is also very much afraid of him and wishes to steer clear of him. She is unable to do so, however, because he persistently pulls her towards him with a sort of gravitational force that is beyond her control - or perhaps even her comprehension. It is through Efram that Pella feels herself becoming something truly other - transcending her human features and becoming one of Efram/God's vehicles of perception.

Pella comes to discover that Efram, whom she is clearly falling in love with is "the one who [knows] everyone else's secrets" (Lethem 206). If Efram is a God, however, then he is a wrathful, angry, avenging God - one that truly values his own species above that of the native Archbuilders, to the extent that he wishes to have the latter destroyed. In this sense, Efram in many ways emulates the white European settlers in the United States who took it upon themselves to "play God" and effectively take land away by force from the Native American Indian population, who they regarded as savages unworthy of human life.