I am almost done reading Christopher Priest's novel, "The Affirmation," and I have a dilemma: as soon as I finish a book, my brain immediately moves on to whatever is next, allowing myself only an hour or two to properly process what came before. In this case, I'm writing forty pages from the end, before I lose track of what happened and start staring at my "To-Read" pile. So:
"The Affirmation" is about a young British guy named Peter Sinclair whose life has gone to shit. He's lost his girlfriend, his job, so on and so forth, and so he moves to the country and tries to a write an autobiography so that he can gain some understanding of where his life went wrong. The problem is, because everything that he's trying to write about has so much baggage, he can only touch on the truth by camouflaging everything. He gives his parents, his girlfriend, new names; London becomes Jethra. A few chapters later, we're reading Peter Sinclair's memories of growing up in Jethra, where he has recently won a lottery allowing him to undergo a procedure that would allow him a kind of immortality: really, just an extensively increased lifespan. The trouble is that the procedure induces amnesia, and so before the operation, Peter Sinclair has to write an autobiography so that he can revisit the details of his life. However, Jethra's Peter Sinclair has already written an autobiography, except that to get at his own deeper truth, he had to change the names: his family's, his girlfriend's. Jethra becomes London.
It's a fantastic read, in a sort of style that's very pleasant and yet with a slightly mournful, sad undertone, a melancholy that doesn't so much depress as it does engage the reader's emotional faculties for, you might say, empathic resonance. What I'm saying is: it's readable. You can relate to it. And despite the convolutions suggested earlier, it's not that hard to follow. The confusion is less a burden on the reader than it is on the narrator.
So: while I can definitely say, this is a fantastic book, well worth reading, the text itself is ultimately about a seemingly very specific theme that I've seen several times, almost always done well: the need to sacrifice the self for immortality.
There are three or four comparisons I've got in mind. Serious spoilers, etc.
1.) "The Prestige," a film by Christopher Nolan, based off of Christopher Priest's novel, about two rival magicians in turn of the century London. One of the magicians, at the end, sacrifices his twin brother; the other has managed to clone himself over and over again, again and again killing the original. This is a convoluted example, but it has the most direct relation on the book at hand, given that they both come from Christopher Priest.
2.) "Software," by Rudy Rucker, in which a rather old scientist is offered the possibility of eternal life--except that the robots offering this to him eventually make it quite clear they're just going to kill him, encode his brain as software and put him in an extremely life-like robot.
3.) "The Transmigration of Timothy Archer" by Philip K. Dick. About life after death...and lots of other stuff.
And finally, 4.) The best example and one of the best short novels I've ever read. However, you should read it, and since knowing what book I'm talking about could potentially ruin the ending in the context of this discussion, I'm whiting out the title. "The Invention of Morel" by Adolpho Bioy Casares. It's a really great book, one I would hate to ruin for anyone, but as with "Software," ultimately it comes down to sacrificing the physical self for a kind of legacy in eternity.
What binds all of these disparate threads together is the question of identity. It sounds abstract, and to some extent it is, but it also pertains to a rather fundamental question: what is left behind when an individual dies, when consciousness is lost? If a robot with your brain is going to live for all eternity, with all of your feelings, is that a kind of immortality? What about reincarnation? What about Peter Sinclair from "The Affirmation"--when his mind is totally wiped, is he still Peter Sinclair, or is he merely a reproduction, a high-quality facsimile of Peter Sinclair?
The short, paradoxical answer is that, in the worlds of these stories, anyone can live forever, and you can be anyone, but you can't live forever.
This is the sort of question that can only be answered by stoned college students, the dogmatically religious, and philosophers. Neither Priest nor Nolan nor Dick nor Casares offers a straight answer: the best fiction never has a moral or a message, it is just a story--descriptive of a dilemma, but never offering a solution. Ideally it provokes interest in the reader, who can--if the author is especially sneaky--draw the correct conclusions.
Perhaps I should just be explicit: this is a rather excellent read, reminding me most, I suppose, of Haruki Murakami and Jorge Luis Borges but more restrained than Murakami, more purposeful; and less complex, less daunting than Borges.
The real question is: this is a sort of old book. I had to get it online from an Amazon.com retailer overseas. This sucker needs to be read.
"The Affirmation" is about a young British guy named Peter Sinclair whose life has gone to shit. He's lost his girlfriend, his job, so on and so forth, and so he moves to the country and tries to a write an autobiography so that he can gain some understanding of where his life went wrong. The problem is, because everything that he's trying to write about has so much baggage, he can only touch on the truth by camouflaging everything. He gives his parents, his girlfriend, new names; London becomes Jethra. A few chapters later, we're reading Peter Sinclair's memories of growing up in Jethra, where he has recently won a lottery allowing him to undergo a procedure that would allow him a kind of immortality: really, just an extensively increased lifespan. The trouble is that the procedure induces amnesia, and so before the operation, Peter Sinclair has to write an autobiography so that he can revisit the details of his life. However, Jethra's Peter Sinclair has already written an autobiography, except that to get at his own deeper truth, he had to change the names: his family's, his girlfriend's. Jethra becomes London.
It's a fantastic read, in a sort of style that's very pleasant and yet with a slightly mournful, sad undertone, a melancholy that doesn't so much depress as it does engage the reader's emotional faculties for, you might say, empathic resonance. What I'm saying is: it's readable. You can relate to it. And despite the convolutions suggested earlier, it's not that hard to follow. The confusion is less a burden on the reader than it is on the narrator.
So: while I can definitely say, this is a fantastic book, well worth reading, the text itself is ultimately about a seemingly very specific theme that I've seen several times, almost always done well: the need to sacrifice the self for immortality.
There are three or four comparisons I've got in mind. Serious spoilers, etc.
1.) "The Prestige," a film by Christopher Nolan, based off of Christopher Priest's novel, about two rival magicians in turn of the century London. One of the magicians, at the end, sacrifices his twin brother; the other has managed to clone himself over and over again, again and again killing the original. This is a convoluted example, but it has the most direct relation on the book at hand, given that they both come from Christopher Priest.
David Bowie is in it.
2.) "Software," by Rudy Rucker, in which a rather old scientist is offered the possibility of eternal life--except that the robots offering this to him eventually make it quite clear they're just going to kill him, encode his brain as software and put him in an extremely life-like robot.
3.) "The Transmigration of Timothy Archer" by Philip K. Dick. About life after death...and lots of other stuff.
And finally, 4.) The best example and one of the best short novels I've ever read. However, you should read it, and since knowing what book I'm talking about could potentially ruin the ending in the context of this discussion, I'm whiting out the title. "The Invention of Morel" by Adolpho Bioy Casares. It's a really great book, one I would hate to ruin for anyone, but as with "Software," ultimately it comes down to sacrificing the physical self for a kind of legacy in eternity.
Surely it doesn't count as a spoiler if the title's in Spanish.
What binds all of these disparate threads together is the question of identity. It sounds abstract, and to some extent it is, but it also pertains to a rather fundamental question: what is left behind when an individual dies, when consciousness is lost? If a robot with your brain is going to live for all eternity, with all of your feelings, is that a kind of immortality? What about reincarnation? What about Peter Sinclair from "The Affirmation"--when his mind is totally wiped, is he still Peter Sinclair, or is he merely a reproduction, a high-quality facsimile of Peter Sinclair?
The short, paradoxical answer is that, in the worlds of these stories, anyone can live forever, and you can be anyone, but you can't live forever.
This is the sort of question that can only be answered by stoned college students, the dogmatically religious, and philosophers. Neither Priest nor Nolan nor Dick nor Casares offers a straight answer: the best fiction never has a moral or a message, it is just a story--descriptive of a dilemma, but never offering a solution. Ideally it provokes interest in the reader, who can--if the author is especially sneaky--draw the correct conclusions.
Perhaps I should just be explicit: this is a rather excellent read, reminding me most, I suppose, of Haruki Murakami and Jorge Luis Borges but more restrained than Murakami, more purposeful; and less complex, less daunting than Borges.
The real question is: this is a sort of old book. I had to get it online from an Amazon.com retailer overseas. This sucker needs to be read.
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