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Aloha,
The
Beamers, never ones to fall for a pretty face or a prominent tagline
like "SF Classic!", at least not without some hard roadtesting first,
put Robert Silverberg to the test this month, with his tale of David
Selig, telepath whose gift is failing him. Did Mr. Silverberg's novel
fail him? Well, the debate was quite lively about it.
There
was a general recognition that "Dying Inside" was unusual both for
Silverberg and for the sf genre. Written in a more mundane style
approximating the gritty realism of a Saul Bellow, it reflected some of
the experiments in style that marked '60s and '70s sf, a movement
called the New Wave. Many of our current sf and fantasy choices show
family resemblances to New Wave works, as readers have come to expect
some increased depth of characterization and interior monologue, even
stream of consciousness, to add "inner space" to outer space stories.
That familiarity may not bode well for the originals, though, as they
lose some of the shock of the new and are left with only their
intrinsic literary values.. We could agree that Silverberg was able to
achieve a successful portrait of an emotionally stunted, middle-aged
man, preoccupied with both his mortality and his past. However, most
of us felt that, as such, it was not enough. "Dying Inside" stays
strictly real, confined to Manhattan, and then even just small slices
of the island. It imitates mainstream fiction of the '70s,
particularly bringing a superior "Portnoy's Complaint" to mind for Liz.
But is there enough to compensate for the rather bleak landscapes
through which David travels, in person and in memory? We split over
the question. Fran and Donna both gave the novel good marks for
showing David's vulnerability. Donna enjoyed the paradox of how
telepathy actually made David more knowing of others and less able to
relate to them. Fran found the question of just what David was
"seeing" in other people's minds to bring up starkly the issue of his
own veracity. Can a mind reader read himself? Even when he is reading
(or thinks he is reading) someone else? Rick, absent but e-mailing in
his opinion, liked the examination of David's personality and life
under the blessing/curse of telepathy, but seemed to see him more as a
case study and less as a character.
The
rest of us were less sympathetic (which, as Rick points out, may likely
have been Silverberg's aim). Robin found David a tired repeat of the
whiny, over-educated Jewish man, a figure best described as "Woody
Allen without the humor". (Althought we did debate and find humor in
the book, especially in the early memory of the visit to the
psychiatrist, whom David "pleases" by suddenly finding pensies in
inkblots or adding them to his "stories".) Linda VH was unengaged by
David's loss, since he himself seemed uncaring. I thought the
portrayal of telepathy was a fatal weakness, at least in regards the
book being sf, since it seems that David's saga could be told without
mention of telepathy and nothing about the book would change. David
himself can only compare losing his telepathy to losing his hair. Male
pattern baldness is not much of a tragic condition.
And
David carries the weight of the book, for even though he is surrounded
by others and their thoughts, we really don't seem much of them, at
all. David's parents were characters on whom we could not agree - Were
they emotionally dead, as David claimed? Were they neglectful and
distant, favoring his "normal" sister, Judith? Juliet questioned how
they could be so unobservant as to miss David's mind-reading ability,
likely to be demonstrated unselfconsciously during his early childhood,
before he would learn to self-censor. David is something of an
unreliable narrator (which, again, is an advance for '60s sf but not
something special these days), and it makes it difficult for us to test
his beliefs. We compared him to Tom Nyquist, the other telepath, but
we came to no agreement. Some thought Nyquist's more balanced, less
angst-ridden temperament a sign that telepathy was not the cause of
David's problems. However, others countered that Nyquist's lack of
empathy was especially damning for someone who can see into other
people, making his indifference to their feelings a worse sin.
Ultimately,
though, we did agree that the (in)famous blurb, from the original NY
Times book review, "the perfect sf novel for people who don't like
science fiction", was wrong. This book needs sf fans to recognize its
author in order to recognize it as an sf novel, for non-sf readers will
likely miss his and its connections to the genre and certainly not
think better of sf for producing it.
For
June, we join an author who wears his genre connections on his sleeve
and on his mouth - Harlan Ellison, whose story collection "Shatterday"
is the book of the month. In July, we move into Diana Wynne Jones's
"Charmed Life", the first of her Chrestomanci books. For August, we
will fight the "Old Man's War" with John Scalzi.
NOTE:
Due to July 4 falling on a Saturday, Watchung Booksellers will be
closed on Friday, July 3. We have been asked to move our meeting back
to Friday, July 17. Please let me know if you can or cannot
accommodate the request to change the date from 2nd Friday to 3rd
Friday.
- Eugene, not worried about losing anything that would make him special ...
 Dying Inside (Paperback)$14.36 ISBN-13: 9780765322302Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days Published: Orb Books, 03/01/2009 Bookmark/Search this post with: |
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