THE LION OF BOAZ-JACHIN AND JACHIN-BOAZ

"A map is the dead body of where you've been. A map is the unborn baby of where you're going" — and a lion, well a map might lead to a lion in some distant, primal part of the world for even if lions are extinct they are very much alive in the imaginations of Boaz-Jachin and his father Jachin-Boaz, a mapmaker who has lost his bearings somewhere in the middle of middle age. Mr. Hoban who has been charming a younger audience for many years has now written a teasing, perhaps even disturbing, fantasia about father and son, any father and son, and maps and lions — particularly lions as emblematic of the chimera, the challenge, the absolute. One of those special, hopefully not too special, books which pads softly through the dark underbrush of much that we feel and hope and sense and magnifies experience on several levels, simultaneously.