on a quay down which a black ship might come sailing if the wind held, and down beneath the mists coming off the dead steeple cocks the boy with the poor dog in his arms and loving his close scrutiny of the nicks in its ears, tiny channels over the dog's brain, pictures he could find on its purple tongue, pearls he could discover between the claws. Love is a long close scrutiny like that. I loved Mother in the same way." Through such imagery and poetic finesse, Hawkes achieves a distancing effect that melds the strange with the familiar, crafting an experience that is uniquely his own.

Critics have navigated through the labyrinth of Hawkes’s novels, placing them in a multitude of categories, each with their own intriguing merit. The essence of terror and surrealism undeniably courses through his fiction, positioning Hawkes within the storied tradition of American literature as embodied by forebears like Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry James. His work echoes into the realm of twentieth-century scribes, who delve into the grotesque dimensions of reality—think Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner, Djuna Barnes, and Nathanael West. However, shift the lens to spotlight the humor rather than the haunting shadows, and you might align Hawkes with the league of "black humor" artisans such as Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut.

Breaking Conventional Boundaries

Yet, Hawkes is not merely confined to these classifications; his lyrical prose strives to transcend the boundaries of traditional popular novels. In this ambitious pursuit, he follows the venerable paths carved by literary giants like Herman Melville, alongside Poe and James, who shared a fascination with varied narrative viewpoints, especially the nuanced, unreliable first-person narrator. More contemporary trailblazers in the realm of limited point of view—such as Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, Vladimir Nabokov, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Ken Kesey, and William Golding—also share the stage with Hawkes in this innovative exploration.

Second Skin (1964) remains one of Hawkes's most celebrated works, drawing readers with its intricate and suggestive narrative fabric that invites endless exploration. In a manner akin to The Lime Twig, it abounds with morbid and dream-like occurrences; yet, this fourth novel diverges by weaving in elements that Hawkes highlights as "affirmative," crafting a tale of "the life-force versus death."

At its core, the novel explores the eternal battle between life and mortality, a theme that intricately weaves through the plot, the backdrop, the characterization, and the novel's very architecture. Indeed, so deeply entrenched is this motif that Second Skin stands as a paragon of artistic cohesion and dynamic tension. The inevitable draw towards death is matched by the Skipper's desperate attempts to prevent his daughter Cassandra from taking her own life—an endeavor in which he fails—and to rekindle his own flawed existence—a quest in which he succeeds. These endeavors form the heart of the novel's conflict.

Skipper, a seasoned ex-naval officer at fifty-nine, guides us through this saga, while most of the other pivotal characters align themselves with the forces of either life or death. On the shadowy, ominous island shrouded in the icy Atlantic mist—echoing Hawkes's journeys to Vinalhaven off the Maine coast—dwell figures like "black widow" Miranda, the Captain, and his son Jomo, who operate under the grim banner of death, pursuing Cassandra, a paragon of innocence, to her demise. In stark contrast, life flourishes on the sun-drenched, gentle shores of an island Hawkes likens to Grenada, the "paradise island" where he penned the novel. Here, Catalina Kate, Skipper's doting lover, heralds the triumph of life with the birth of a child (likely the Skipper's) at the novel's conclusion. Supporting this narrative are Sonny, the devoted naval cook, and Sister Josie, a nun who resides on the island, both of whom offer the Skipper acceptance, warmth, and joy—a stark departure from the scorn he endures on the dark island.

Much like The Lime Twig, Second Skin employs a meticulously crafted structure along with a poetic distancing technique. The architecture of this novel, however, is liberated from conventional chronology, shaped instead by the persistent theme of life versus death. Thus, the Skipper's memories emerge as a dichotomy—recollections of his tormented past marked by the suicides of his father, wife, and daughter, juxtaposed with reflections on his present, affirming the imaginative transformation of life's ordeals. In doing so, the novel morphs into a testament to the imagination's power as a transformative force, a theme growing ever more dominant in Hawkes's subsequent fiction.

Moreover, Hawkes's increasing intrigue with first-person narrators (mirroring his admiration for Melville) is unmistakable, as seen in Hencher's opening soliloquy in The Lime Twig, now taking center stage: all his succeeding novels are narrated exclusively from a first-person perspective. In Second Skin, the Skipper's voice has, indeed, sparked the most fervent debates about its interpretation—some see him as a figure of empathy, while others view him as an unreliable narrator, oblivious and thus complicit in the surrounding tragedies. The truth, it appears, resides not in either perspective but in the ambiguous territory where "truth" itself becomes a fluid and ever-evolving viewpoint, emerging uniquely from the eye of each individual reader.