1. Brunner writes this novel in an unusual way. Since I’ve finished reading it, I’ve seen it called a non-novel. I have also seen that this method is similar to what John Dos Passos employs in his USA Trilogy. I haven’t read the USA Trilogy, so this was my first experience with this method.
—First, the narrative aspects of this novel rely upon an ensemble cast, often widely dispersed around the globe. Casts’ stories relate directly in the cases of Norman, Donald, and Chad, but mostly tangentially for the rest. These characters are widely different as well: Donald the bottled up, Norman the sauve but unsatisfied, Chad the skilled but unemployable. The supporting cast represents the major forces in the background of this world: anarchists cooking up bombs, soldiers training for war, a famous beautician style guru, Mr & Mrs Everywhere, addicts in their homes, lawbreaking mating couples, ex-colonial “advisers”, etc. It’s a snapshot of how Brunner believed the late 20th century would look. It’s remarkably accurate, sure, but the strength of it doesn’t rely upon its accuracy. Rather, his wide net of secondary characters informs the breadth of the novel’s reach: though some of these characters appear for only a few pages, and are strawmen as a result of the briefness of their roles, the sheer number and variety allows the novel a satisfying scope of societal criticism.
“You’ve consulted the Book of Changes before, haven’t you?” he added to Gerry.—The chapters themselves are short: a few paragraphs or pages. These draw narrative arcs forwards, largely sticking to the characters being discussed and progressing their parts of this story. But the focus of the novel jumps back and forth between characters because of the shortness of the chapters.
“Yes. You showed it to me when I first met you.” Gerry drained his glass and set it aside. “I told you I thought it was a load of dreck.”
“And I told you it works for the same reason there’s no such thing as art. I quoted the Balinese who don’t have a word for it, but merely try to do everything as well as possible. Life’s a continuum. I must have said that to you because I say it to everyone.
—In between these narrative chapters are snapshots of the wider world. Newspaper headlines, vignettes of stories unrelated to the main characters, snippets of dialogue, paragraphs of opinion pieces, microfictional narrative sections that bridge chapters. This technique puts flesh on the world without relying on traditional expositional tactics. But it runs the risk of jarring the reader out of the narrative arc: these snapshots could easily distract from the whole. It took me about a third of this book to fall in love with it, as a result of feeling untethered while reading. Yet by the end I didn’t see any other way this story could have been told better, and I enjoyed the snapshot sections as much as the story sections.
Pierre Clodard has mentioned the idea of divorcing his wife Rosalie, but so far only to his sister Jeannine.—Like some experimental writing—and some ensemble cast books—it took me a bit to get used to Brunner’s techniques, but once I did, the whole was worth every second. Unlike Lincoln in the Bardo, these snapshots all occur in the same world as the rest of the book, providing more context for the characters, and building the world out with more detail. It’s a technique that fits this story perfectly, yet I don’t think it’s for every story. Many of the snapshots are quotes from books written by Chad Mulligan, and he ends up becoming one of the main characters in the book—if it can be said to have main characters—at least the most common secondary character. But it’s a real treat when the story and storytelling mesh so well.
Jeff Young sold that batch of GT aluminophage, and it did very satisfactory damage.
Henry Butcher is in jail.
There’s a new Begi story. Nobody knows where it got started. It’s called “Begi and the American”.
Mr. & Mrs. Everywhere have not yet been to Yatakang. If they go, all hell will break loose.
Occasionally Bennie Noakes says, “Christ! What an imagination I’ve got!”
Meanwhile, back at the planet Earth, it would no longer be possible to stand everyone on the island of Zanzibar without some of them being over ankles in the sea.
(POPULATION EXPLOSION Unique in human experience, an event which happened yesterday but which everyone swears won’t happen until tomorrow.
—The Hipcrime Vocab by Chad C. Mulligan)
“Ready now, ma’am,” a soft voice advised her, and she stared at the enigmatic shape of Shalmaneser, which she had made possible and did not understand.2. The tale told centers around societal criticism, and Brunner’s dissatisfaction with the culture at large. The main thrusts of his narrative attack are consumerism and government interference; but he also touches on his anti-war beliefs, ideologies, the sexual revolution’s likely results, the state of family in America, and opinions about religion. It’s a wide-ranging book and I could be here listing things he doesn’t like for days. But I’d rather discuss his conclusion: all you need is peace, love, and understanding, and these are based on effective communication. Things like supercomputers and war will not solve the problems inherent in a society: the former can only solve some of any one problem, the latter can only solve external problems which may relieve some internal tension, but not all. The premise is that our society is filled with contradictions—he spends a particularly good section discussing smells and our innate reactions to them, as well as our bipolar methods of dealing with them—and Brunner pushes forward these contradictions that he believes are tearing our society apart, fifty years into his future—coincidentally, about where we are today. His future vision of society is actually fairly accurate, which makes the book a mind-trip to read today: unpopular wars, domestic and foreign terrorist attacks, consumerism run rampant, nationalism transferred to diplomacy-ism, reliance on computers, propaganda overload, racism, etc. Brunner created a convincing future that has somewhat come true, and that does help the book be a fascinating read today. But it doesn’t matter: again, the book still would’ve been good if he had flubbed the future-vision. On one hand, it indicts the 1960s culture it was initially aimed at. So, if we had listened to him and spun away from his future vision, or done a worse job of changing our culture, and his future vision hadn’t largely come true, it still would’ve been a poignant cultural artifact and entertaining read.
I wonder if God sometimes feels that way about His creatures.
She liked speech-making and show because she fed on tributes to herself, but the mood of the times was against it. She rationed it, warily, to people who might appreciate it: meetings of stockholders who liked to sense the majesty and solemnity of a multi-billion dollar enterprise. This was only a gathering of staffers, most of whom were scientists not connected to the big scene of real life.
And to plot Yatakang’s next revolution on the threshold of a volcano seemed perfectly, inexpressibly apposite.3. Brunner’s writing is solid. He keeps a satirical, blackly humorous tone that made me laugh many times, and cringe just as many. Yes, there is rape and incest in this book, but he uses them to drive home his societal critiques. Yes, there is a lot of violence and racism, but all in ways that echo newspaper reports today. Brunner’s writing is one of his strong suits, and it kept me enthralled. I kept reading it thinking that the quality would dip, but I don’t think it ever did. He may not be the best story teller, but the sentences and short narrative bursts of his tale are told in such an interesting way that I don’t care that his story is a little shallow. (Emphasis on “a little”.)
“This very distinguished philosophy professor came out on the platform in front of this gang of students and took a bit of chalk and scrawled up a proposition in symbolic logic on the board. He turned to the audience and said, ‘Well now, ladies and gentlemen, I think you’ll agree that that’s obvious?’4. The characters are not the most memorable. The synthesist, the CEO, and the sarcastic, ivory tower, pop societal critic. Chad, the latter of the three, is the most memorable. I think this is because of three reasons: first, by the time of his introduction on-scene, the reader knows him through the quotes from his books. He says interesting things, his introduction is memorable, and the reader already has enough information to care about him by the time he arrives. Second, he’s perhaps the most iconoclastic personality. He gets in people’s faces and says unthinkable things consistently. He also does things outside the social normal that Brunner has set up. Third, his change from start to finish is the most true-to-life. Where Donald is brainwashed, and Norman goes native, Chad finds the answer to his lifelong quest, and it consumes him—for better and for worse.
“Then he looked at it a bit more and started to scratch his head and after a while he said, ‘Excuse me!’ And he disappeared.
“About half an hour later he came back beaming all over his face and said triumphantly, ‘Yes, I was right—it is obvious!’”
—Norman’s character relies on his race and religion to make him unique, but it relies on those things too much, and Norman isn’t developed well enough to be a great character. He is serviceable, and interesting, but he’s there to show the things around him, rather than to interest the reader in himself.
—Donald starts out as a sort of everyman, experiencing some nihilistic ennui. But his brainwashing comes out of left field and he’s a shattered man afterwards. He’s the government’s big mistake, and his arc is more metaphorically important than narratively essential.
—In short, Brunner can write great characters, but they all serve the pace and technique of the story instead of their own ends. Sure, I prefer characters, but this minor quibble doesn’t detract from the book at all, and I still love this book.
The world was a place of echoing colours, mostly drab—the colour-range of shit. The world was a place of tingling smells, making her nose run and her eyes water. The world was a place of indefinable menace, that clad her skin in the crawling caress of invisible cold snails. They figured out afterwards she must have been trying to hide, but what she opened wasn’t a closet-door. It was a window.5. So, my notes can be summed up by: great book, a couple of quibbles, but nothing that detracts from the greatness of the novel. Some people call it a non-novel, but I think that’s splitting hairs too much. Or maybe that’s just me, in the post-structuralist era, being all post-structuralist about what a novel is. This book has characters and tells a story about their fictional lives. It’s told in a prose that touches on beauty and profound insight. And to me, that’s a novel, so I’m happy with calling it a novel. Further, this is a great novel. If you like Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, or Joe Haldeman, this novel is definitely for you. At the same time, the narrative techniques will put some casual readers off, and that’s fine too.
And to plot Yatakang’s next revolution on the threshold of a volcano seemed perfectly, inexpressibly apposite.
