Review of "The Affirmation" by Christopher Priest

I’ve heard Christopher Priest’s 1981 novel The Affirmation described as regressive, an ouroboros eating its own tail, a Moeibus strip.  While there is undoubtedly an M.C. Escher quality to the book—a blurring of reality—the beginning and end are simply too different to form a contiguous whole reverting back on itself.  Opposite ends of a spectrum in fact, the appeal of the novel is immersing one’s self in the subjective reality Priest slowly unwraps and getting lost in the world of memories as a result.  

The true nature of The Affirmation requiring thought, the easy part is relaxing throughout the journey.  Priest patiently and precisely lays down the text—words like railroad ties on a Sunday train to the country—the story moving effortlessly along.  Novel as art, the sublime prose lulls the reader into the deceivingly mundane story of Peter Sinclair.  Though seeming an ordinary man, a rash of bad luck forces him into a cottage in the country to rethink life.  His father’s death, a bad breakup, and being made redundant at his London job all combine to drive him into a retrospective of sorts, trying to discover what brought him to such an impasse.  The details of memory hazy, Sinclair decides to write his autobiography in the hope the words manifested on paper will clarify his problems.  Family, girlfriends, and lovers all converging as he writes, Sinclair’s real troubles only begin sitting down to the typewriter.

For those who enjoyed the Nolan brothers’ film Memento, The Affirmation will be a delight.  Limitations of the written word innately less imposing than film’s, Priest fully utilizes the novel form to examine the relationship between memory, the past, and reality.  One way in which he takes advantage is to use a plot device literati everywhere love: the text within a text.  Dangerously pretentious, Priest’s use of Sinclair’s autobiography as a tool to comment upon the human condition is brilliant and is every reason why the usage of the device is so highly rated.  In an intra-textual fashion not unlike Nabokov’s Pale Fire (though with less exotic language), Sinclair’s autobiography plays a key role in relating the theme of memory to the examination of character, proving Priest’s talents well founded.

That being said, the medium is the book’s only real fault.  Novels needing to be read in linear fashion, one sentence, one word, one letter at a time, that is, rather than viewed as a whole, the transition points of plot are raw and exposed, nothing any author can do to completely disguise them.  Priest doing the best with the tools at his disposal, there are nevertheless jumping off points in The Affirmation that a visual artist could easily blend into other parts of their image with few the wiser.  Without spoiling the major premise, suffice to say if the narrative had attempted to slip smoothly back and forth between the selected plot points—like merging red to purple to blue in a color wheel—the novel would have become abstract poetry.  Thankfully, Priest prioritized the transparency of his message and sided with clarity toward progressing the story.  The individual transition points may glare, but upon finishing the novel, the connect-the-dots form a meaningful picture.

In the end, The Affirmation is a cerebral read examining the subjectivity of existence in a manner defying categorization.  Despite being shelved alongside Priest’s other sci-fi work, genre presence is limited.  Existential in nature, the novel uses one or two tropes of Philip K. Dick, but thankfully none of his style; Priest’s prose is literary and a pleasure to relax into.  Like Robert Louis Stevenson, it is clean and smooth, the right word forever pulled out of the bag at the right time, the reader’s understanding both ex- and implicit as a result.  From the Yeat’s quote at the outset yearning for something more, to the Proust-like sobering conclusion, literary science fiction does not get much better than The Affirmation.

Review of "Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said" by Philip K. Dick

Adhering to the nature of its title, Philip K. Dick’s 1974 Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said is a cipher.  Events unfolding in typical Dick fashion, which is to say in a way that actively propels the plot into the unknown, one irreconcilable event after another, the resulting story creates suspense effectively but at the expense of inter-connectivity.  So many concepts come to underlie the dynamic paranoia that the novel ends up suffering an identity crisis of its own.  

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said begins with the story of variety show host Jason Taverner and his attempts to re-place himself within the context of a reality he was once positive of existing within.  Waking up from a most obtuse and bizarre murder attempt—death by cuddle sponge—Taverner quickly finds things are not as they were.  Colleagues, lovers, and business partners he once knew intimately do not recall his face or even his name.  The setting strongly Orwellian, pols and nats (police and nationalists) patrol the streets, controlling checkpoints, and taking those without proper ID away to work camps, causing Taverner to have trouble leaving even the run-down hotel he’s awoken in.  An underground of sorts exists, and it is with their help he sets out in search of his identity.

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said is not one of Dick’s focused efforts.  Taverner’s troubles related in acute and sympathetic detail, the story starts strong as readers quickly develop a relationship with the protagonist.  Slowly but surely, however, things unravel.  More and more characters are introduced, and a river delta of storylines forms.  Some occupy significant stage time only to be discarded abruptly.  Still others hold little of the spotlight, but later play an important role in the overall outcome.  By spreading events in such random fashion, the reader loses track of the story’s purpose and plot direction.  One character, police chief Buckman, is in particular poorly drawn but unfortunately a major player.  One moment kind and logical, the next a deranged lunatic, he closes out the novel as the main character, meek as a lamb, and in late night stranger-hugging mode.  From the attentive outset to the narrative delta of an ending, Dick’s inability to focus the narrative really hurts the novel, leaving readers to wonder: what’s the point?

But plot can be argued.  Dick’s writing style, however, cannot.  Famous for often producing bad prose, the novel is a prime example why.  Sentence structure abominable, at no time is a rhythm established to settle into.  Dick switches randomly between internal monologue, 3rd person narrative, and almost a fourth wall form of address.  As a result, the action scenes are blunted, and worse yet, the moments of emotion that are supposed to affect the reader lose impact in the jumbled mess of text spilled across the page.  The titular tears are the result of syntax rather than character empathy.

Unfortunately, there is a another major issue with the book that must be addressed: the reveal. Without spoiling things, suffice to say the manner in which Dick explains Taverner’s identity problems not only heavily contrasts the mood of the novel, but likewise does not fit the reality underpinning the setting as a whole.  The reader’s willingness to suspend their disbelief is really tested.  Ursula Le Guin in The Lathe of Heaven would later take Dick’s idea, modify it slightly, and apply it in a style allegorical rather than mimetic.  Throughout her story readers are fully aware that Le Guin’s book is a thought experiment and ignore the larger portent.  With his inclusion of so many “real” aspects of society, including celebrity-ism, 1984-ish government induced paranoia, and child molestation, things only become more confused when the source of Taverner’s troubles is revealed.  Satire, allegory, social commentary, personal musing—none know Dick’s intentions, probably not even the author himself, creating a confused narrative in the process.

That being said, the social ills Dick portrays are one of the few strong points of the novel.  There are strong indications that he was attempting to use the darker side of being a celebrity to elucidate his own ideas concerning multiple identities.  This, and a few moments when the narrative congeals into emotive locution are the only positives of the novel.

In the end, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said is not one of Dick’s stronger efforts.  From the alien murder “device” in the book’s opening pages to the conspiracy theory reveal, the inclusion of sex with 12 year olds to genetically modified humans, late-night stranger hugging to celebrity-ism, Orwellian tyranny to philosophizing on love, jumbled prose to character development, nothing about the book seems to fit within an identifiable umbrella concept.  Thus, the book is not a good starting place for a peek at Dick’s strengths as a writer and is in fact recommended only for fans forgiving of his faults.  How the book won an award is based on something I don't understand.

Review of "A Dream of Wessex" by Christopher Priest

Written in 1977, Christopher Priest’s A Dream of Wessex stands at the mid point of media questioning reality.  Falling on the tail end of Philip Dick and his oeuvre’s continual exploration of metaphysical meaning, the book is also an (unheralded) fore-runner to sci-fi featuring uncertain realities that followed in the 90s and after.  Many ideas that are exploited in films such as The Matrix or Inception can find a potential conception in Priest’s tale of a scientific experiment into alternate realities.  The dream-within-a-dream and mind-disconnected-from-body plot devices can in particular be seen as strong precursors to these modern examples. 

A Dream of Wessex also marks the mid point of another aspect of literature: style.  Lacking any embellishment or literary flourish – similes even, Priest tells the tale of Julia Stretton in very straight-forward, almost brooding fashion.  The direct prose neither lifting the spirit or dropping it, Julia’s life as a geologist inside a social experiment plods steadily along, the details of the setting and emotional output described in a minimum of words.  The premise of this social experiment is that a group willingly detaches themselves from physical reality to mentally live inside a projection of their collective psyches.  As the experiment moves on, some participants routinely remove themselves, returning for brief periods to their normal lives.  Others, however, have been inside the fictional Wessex for more than 2 years, their bodies atrophying slowly in a drawer in reality.

While the idea may be interesting and keep the reader guessing as to which reality is the real reality, where the plot finds truly finds its impetus is when Julia’s ex-lover announces his intentions of joining the experiment.  Threatening and violent in private, his effervescent public persona seems to have charmed the board of trustees governing the experiment into letting him join.  The psychological drama which unfolds for Julia is only heightened by the distance from reality the experiment seems to take her every time she links in.  The climax this situation builds to is one only Priest could pen. 

Thus, the third mid-point is my opinion of the novel: it is neither gosh-wow nor forgettable.  Its strong parts include competent plotting, excellent metaphysical questions, and an overall story structure which highlights theme.  Where the novel doesn’t meet expectations, however, is in the blasé nature of its prose, the occasional gaps in logic of the projection's premise, and the lack of a wholly motivated plot.  Questions like: “Is that the only reason compelling Julia at the moment?” or, “Shouldn’t there be a stronger justification for the experiment to exist?” occur occasionally.  That being said, the novel remains a well-told, brain-in-the-vat tale exploring the meaning and perception of reality.  Those who enjoy Philip K. Dick or the premise of any of the afore-mentioned movies wouldn’t be wasting their time reading A Dream of Wessex, and may have their eyes opened to the world of Christopher Priest in the process.

(This review has also been posted at www.fantasyliterature.com)