Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Review of Authority by Jeff VanderMeer



One of the strongest impressions left by Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation, first in the Area X: Southern Reach trilogy, is the numerous avenues possible to understanding the text.  A psychological journey, treatise on subjectivity, metaphor for existence, or just plain Weird fiction—these are just a few of the major possibilities.  (Minds more critical than mine will find other significant paths winding through the novel.)  Continuing with the existential outlay, the second novel of the trilogy, Authority (2014), introduces the reader to an entirely new perspective on Area X, even as the subjectivity of perception digs its hooks deeper into the psyche of its characters.

In Authority, we get the main character’s name: John Rodriguez.  But for the majority of novel he is called Control—ironic given he is not a dominating personality.  Control begins the story taking over the recently vacated role of director at the Southern Reach.  While getting to know his new work environment and colleagues, he is tasked with interviewing a recent returnee from Area X, a biologist.  Her responses to his questions anything but coherent, Control’s understanding of Area X only becomes further clouded learning that the previous director disappeared under mysterious circumstances, possibly an illicit excursion into Area X.  But capping off the growing paranoia at the new job is the fact Control is required to give a daily report through a special mobile phone to something he dubs the Voice.  Seemingly on the edge of madness, the Voice makes odd demands, its emotional highs and lows erratic.  The mundanity of his life outside work clashing ever harder with the strain and oddness brought of Area X at work eventually take their toll on Control.  Something has to give.

If the psychological environment of Annihilation was closed and tight, then Authority’s is claustrophobic.  Control, for as quotidian as he is initially portrayed, is slowly peeled away, revealing the thoughts and reasoning lurking, sometimes darting, behind his placid eyes.  And so too are his colleagues’.  Their roles in a top secret organization, in combination with the inexplicable phenomena of Area X, are the perfect petri dish for distrust and paranoia to grow.  Suspicion a main character motivator, discovering a plant in his desk drawer is enough to set Control’s mind wandering potential corridors of explication.  Control and his colleagues’ anxieties eventually coming to a head, there is a trigger moment (an extremely creepy moment without one hint of a monster) that forces the façade of control to come crumbling down.  Paralleling the meltdowns in Annihilation, Control’s ultimate fate is one begging for the final volume in the Area X trilogy, Acceptance, to fully contextualize.

Authority, with its psychological exploration of the people employed at the Southern Reach, will probably not meet with the same response from genre fans who appreciated the exploration of Area X in Annihilation.  Less exotic yet more refined in terms of the characters motivating the conception, VanderMeer sharpens his focus on the outlay of the trilogy, even as more mainstream readers will likely balk at the denser, more sophisticated character renderings.  Regardless, the Area X depicted in Authority remains a mysterious region, and continues to play games with the characters, as much as readers’, minds...

9 comments:

  1. I enjoyed Annihilation but couldn't bring myself to finish this one. I slogged through up to page 120, then put it away. None of the "characters" meant anything to me, they remained absolutely empty to me, their background stories riddled with insufferable clichés.
    Then I read VanderMeer's journal on writing this part of his trilogy, posted on his website, and it intrigued me. It was thoroughly entertaining and rekindled my interest in the book (after about a year, I think). So I picked it up once again but once more ran straight into a wall. It absolutely failed to capture me, not even skimming the text led anywhere.
    I decided to skip it and go straight to the third and final part of the trilogy. But it was no use. Except for Annihilation, these books will remain unfinished on my shelves. This is not meant as an evaluation, however, merely a reading experience. I couldn't see what others saw in it.

    Regards,
    Klaas

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    1. Strange, very strange. I say so because, in the context of literature at large, the two books, Annihilation and Authority, are far more similar than different. But for sure VanderMeer challenges himself more in Authority. He takes the most stolid, mundane character possible, and slowly chips away until he shatters. To get this shatter-point, indeed the narrative lacks the exotic flavor of Annihilation. The biologist had her issues before the novel begins and spends the majority of her time in a mysterious reality , whereas the character Control in Authority is "normal" at the outset and found in our world. Ostensibly, this is more "boring", but I found the resulting deconstruction of Control's character to have all the more impact as a result. There is a scene late in Authority, a scene that takes Control's reality and explodes it, that will stick in my brain forever.

      But different strokes for different folks... :)

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  2. I've read all three. The first is the superior effort, though I liked AUTHORITY well enough and even ACCEPTANCE was okay, given that I didn't expect VanderMeer to deliver much in the way of an intellectual explanation for Area X at the end of it all.

    As Klaas, above me, mentions, VanderMeer wrote an interesting account of writing these books, which makes clear he was given to understood that, based on his publishers' extremely favorable response to ANNIHILATION, he had a shot at the Big Break. But only if he could deliver this trilogy in something like eighteen months (IIRC).

    So VanderMeer did that intensive marathon of work and good for him -- it's paid off by putting him over the top. But the writing is less polished in the second book, and flags a little more in the third. And unfortunately, given that VanderMeer wasn't the type of writer to deliver any intellectual superstructure to Area X beyond the atmospherics, the last one really needed to be at least as strongly written as the first book.

    All the same, such strong writing and atmospherics in the first book -- and to a lesser extent in the second and third -- makes me hesitant to dismiss the trilogy as a failure.


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    1. To some point, I agree. I found the Area X novels to parallel the trilogy model that William Gibson uses, which is: write one novel to establish setting and character, follow up with another novel in the same setting while creating different characters and expanding thematic interests, and lastly, finish the trilogy with a novel that brings in all the characters and interests in one convergence, adding bits and pieces as needed to round out the whole. As such, the third and final book can seem to lack the focus of the first two, even as it digs deeper into the setting and backstory - which is true of Mona Lisa Overdrive as much as it is Acceptance. That being said, I agree Acceptance feels the most tired, most perfunctory of the three, almost as if VanderMeer was running out of gas...

      Do you have a link to the interview you mention? Would love to read it. I am curious what you mean by "Big Break". I say that because, I get the impression VanderMeer is more interested in the art of literature than commercial success - not to say he doesn't want to earn a living, only that artistic integrity is important to him. But maybe I'm wrong?

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  3. Here you go ....

    http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/01/from-annihilation-to-acceptance-a-writers-surreal-journey/384884/

    You wrote: 'I get the impression VanderMeer is more interested in the art of literature than commercial success - not to say he doesn't want to earn a living, only that artistic integrity is important to him. But maybe I'm wrong?'

    I don't think you're wrong. But when one's ship comes in, one better get on board before it leaves port; VanderMeer clearly had to be conscious of that.

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    1. Thanks for the link - indeed a very informative overview of the writing process for the novels. Yeah, it looks like he was running on fumes toward the end, and also yes, it looks like dreams of being published by a publisher he'd always wanted are what pushed him to extreme effort. Looking at the years it took material from the Ambergris setting to appear makes Area X look like a blink of an eye.

      Are you at all interested in seeing the film version of Annihilation? Based on the stills I've seen , it's nothing like my imagination based on the novel (not to mention the over-emotive Natalie Portman is starring). That being said, I really enjoyed Garland's Ex Machina, so who knows, maybe he'll take the material in a new yet intelligent direction - perhaps like Ari Folman did with Stanilaw Lem's Futurological Congress?

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  4. I liked Ex Machina too. But I'm always wary of movie adaptations of books I liked (or even loved). They completely botched Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale, one of my favorite books, one of the latest examples coming to mind. I probably will watch it -- it might work. Unlike The Dark Tower, which I am probably going to see as well, but which likely will not succeed in translating King's work to the screen. At least not for me.
    Klaas

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  5. I think Garland _has_ to take the material in a new direction for a film.

    ANNIHILATION, for instance, totally relies on the Biologist's interiority, and the books in general would be nothing without the prose. There's nothing 'plotty' about them. Done weakly, then, a film of ANNIHILATION could look like a cross between -- I dunno, the BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and Tarkovski's SOLARIS?

    I have some faith in Garland as a storyteller (he was a successful novelist first, remember) and a director. EX MACHINA was more ambitious thematically (I liked it, though it has some intellectual problems) but Garland's first directorial effort, DREDD, is perfectly successful at what it sets out to do (portray a day in the life of one tower block in Megacity One). I strongly recommend it if you haven't seen it. Seriously: it was a pity that Garland didn't get to make any more Judge Dredd films, as he originally hoped to do.

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    1. Yeah, now that I think about it for a moment, you're 100% right. Interiority is something possible to pull off in film, but not without oodles of symbolism - something that would certainly distract from the setting, aka second key ingredient of Annihilation.

      I know nothing about Garland, save Ex Machina. I will have to check out Dredd. I assume it's better than the Sly Stallone version, no? :)

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