Kalki

Gore Vidal – 1978
 

Kalki is part of Gore Vidal’s cycle of novels focusing on religion that also included Messiah (1952), Julian (1964) and Creation (1981) and ran concurrently with his more well-known and cohesive series that chronicled U.S. history.  Messiah has the closest connection to Kalki, with its premise of a death cult developing into a dominant world religion.  Kalki is told from the point-of-view of a celebrated bisexual aviatrix and feminist author, Teddy Ottinger, who recounts the last days of humanity and the early days of a post-human earth.  Out of nowhere, it seems, a handsome young man with flowing blond locks and a beatific gaze appears on the scene and announces that the world will come to an end on a specific date.  He claims to be ‘Kalki,’ the final reincarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu, who will inaugurate the apocalypse, but makes no effort to hide the fact that he was lately James J. Kelly, an American soldier in Vietnam specializing in chemical warfare research.  Convinced that the United States and the Soviets are on a collision course to destroy the planet, Kalki begins his cult as more of a hoax intended to distract the superpowers and save humanity, but Teddy slowly discovers a much darker and horrifying truth.  Like several of Vidal’s novels, such as Myra Breckinridge (1968), cultural satire, sexual politics, and debates about population control are prominent.  As a man of letters and ideas, Vidal is hardly equaled, in my opinion, but as a novelist, there is always a disconnect between either himself and his characters or the reader and his characters.  He was so prolific that it was perhaps inevitable that there would be too many stories and characters for him to be truly invested in emotionally.  Nevertheless, his clever prose carries us a long way and Kalki belongs among the small group of Vidal’s best novels as an accessible presentation of some challenging concepts.