The Assignment

Reading the foreword to The Assignment, I reached a passage that made me cringe:

The work is described as "a novella in twenty-four sentences." What accounts for this stylistic idiosyncrasy? In her autobiographical account Charlotte Kerr tells us that, while they were both still thinking about projects based on Bachmann's novel, the couple sat one evening over a bottle of wine, listening to Glenn Gould's performance of the first half of Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier I. When the last of the twenty-four movements had ended, Durrenmatt rose, turned off the record player, replaced the LP in its case, and said, "So, now I'm going to write the story in twenty-four sentences." (The German word for a musical movement is Satz, which also means "sentence".)

The writer of the foreword goes on to expand on the relation of Durrenmatt to Bach, on music to prose, et cetera. It's not that I object to drawing inspiration from other art forms, or  the relation of a style of writing to a style of music, it's that a self-imposed limitation such as the above would seem to lead to a rambling form of stream-of-consciousness that would be tedious to process and absorb. Fortunately, this is not the case; I found The Assignment to be easier reading that the works of Jose Saramago, who often employs a similar style of pages and pages of one sentence. So while each of the twenty-four chapters here is one sentence only, many are extremely short, (the first three are only two pages each), and even the longer ones remain digestible.

This is an odd novel -- the subtitle is "On the observing of the observer by the observed." This is perhaps best illustrated by the anecdote told by our protagonist's friend, the logician D.: that his house is on a mountain, and he often catches tourists observing it with binoculars, while he in turn watches through his telescope. When they seem him observing them, they become upset and withdraw. Some return later and throw rocks. Everyone in the novel is both observing and observed, and the way this is portrayed in the climax gives that moment a bit of a comic tone. It's an unsettling and easy read.

The Dream Master

This has sat on my shelf for awhile, because although I'm a huge Zelazny fan, I didn't much like the short story that this novel is based on ("He Who Shapes"). It's not that it isn't an interesting premise (it is), or that the prose is pedestrian (it isn't, although I wouldn't say that this is one of Zelazny's better written works), it's mostly that the characters are forceful people without being that interesting. Render, the protagonist, is a condescending asshole, and Eileen Shallot, the other major character, isn't all that sketched out; she's blind, she's strong-willed, she's a doctor.

The premise of the novel is at least interesting -- Render is a neuroparticipant therapist, one who can guide a patient's dreams using a specialized device (called the egg, and descriptions of it echo a return to the womb). Eileen Shallot is training as a psychiatrist, and would like to be a neuroparticipant as well, but due to her blindness, she'd need to become acclimated to sight. She seeks out Render, a leader in the field, in order to become acclimated. After some reluctance (and despite the warnings of his colleagues), he accepts. (It doesn't hurt that she's apparently quite attractive). Everything progresses apace, until we get a confrontation that forces the ending sequence -- which is the most interesting rendering in the novel, even if it feels forced and inconsistent.

Unfortunately, we don't get too many sessions where Render is shaping dreams -- there's a sequence in the beginning, to introduce the technique, and one where Render is recalling a past experience. The sessions with Eileen consist of him accustoming her to colors, landscapes, textures, their surroundings, et cetera. The ending sequence is certainly something, however, and arguably pays the whole technique off.

I suppose my biggest issue with The Dream Master is that Zelazny is trying to write something with echoes of the Greek -- here's a great man brought down by a tragic flaw. But Render doesn't approach greatness (brilliance, yes, but not greatness), and barely manages to rise to likeable. So while his tragic flaw may be arrogance, he's not lacking others, and that's just one reason this is unsatisfying.

Starlight

Alfred Bester's Starlight is a worthwhile science fiction short story collection. My only previous exposure to Bester's short fiction was the excellent "Fondly Fahrenheit", which is included here, and is a highlight. Like many retrospectives, there's extensive commentary by Bester, as he introduces each story. In the hands of other authors, this is occasionally tedious, but Bester sets the stage for each story well, and explains what he's doing.

As with many collections, Starlight is a bit uneven. There's gems like the aforementioned "Fondly Fahrenheit," and typical sci-fi fare like "Adam and No Eve" and "The Four Hour Fugue." "Of Time and Third Avenue" could very well be an Arthur C. Clarke story. Of course, there's clunkers as well, like "Hell is Forever", the longest story in the book, which inspires Bester to opine on himself at the time he wrote the story:

"I feel like a father to that kid, and I think he shows promise in 'Hell is Forever.' He makes mistakes, he's green and gauche, his knowledge and understanding of character is minimal, he has a lot to learn, but I think he ought to stay with it. He might become a pro some day."

Tough to argue with that, but "Hell is Forever" really drags. Luckily, most of the collection isn't Bester growing and developing, but is rather high caliber science fiction stories. I would recommend, but it's probably worth picking up The Demolished Man first. That said, it's easy to see how Bester became disillusioned with science fiction, and decided to move on during the 1960s. While the work here is something that any science fiction fan should be aware of, it's very much rooted in the 1940s and 1950s, and there's only so much that can be done there without tedious repetition. Bester had a hell of a career, and this is not a bad coda.