Great Pan is Dead

The early Greek god Pan held many distinctions, not least that the upper part of his body was human and the lower half a sharp-hoofed goat. He was worshipped throughout the realm of nature, expounded no theology, and in the nineteenth century was immortalized by the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Author Eric Lehman adds a new
dimension to the mythology, recording personal coincidences he links with the god vicariously. His claims wavers a little his as he travels from one experience to another, reminding readers of the most celebrated in American history: that both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln died on the same date, July 4th, a number of years apart.

His essay, a fragmentary memoir. reveals a glimpse of personal doubt, a reluctance to admit irrational fears, but an appeal for others to share their own uncertainties. He intersperses his own present-day coincidences with classical ones, self-deprecating, and wryly humorous. He admits the sight of two dead, bleeding sheep on a rural highway in England’s Lake District becomes for him ‘a symbol of all that was unknown in the world.

Lehman’s eloquence is deceptive. Despite the apparent simplicity, Great Pan is Dead is a mystifying, a book that begs to be re-read to grasp its intricacies.