Too Many References, Not Enough Ideas
Nov. 16th, 2008 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvesselJuly 2008
Mobius Dick - Andrew Crumey - Picador, 2004
* * *
Well, here's an unusual thing - an author with a PhD in theoretical physics who is also literary editor of Scotland on Sunday. Which may explain how he has managed to sneak a many-worlds SF story past the draconian guardian critics of "mainstream" literature. Though it could also have something to do with all the knowing literary references that sadly drag this novel down.
Something of the feel of the book can be gleaned from its first few chapters. We start with Dr John Ringer, a theoretical physicist who receives a mysterious text on his Q-phone that may or may not be from his ex-lover Helen. Whilst attending a lunchtime lecture about vicious cycloids in Moby Dick, he reminisces about his first conversation with her which was a literary discussion concerning Thomas Mann, Edwin Schrödinger, E.T.A. Hoffmann and Robert Schumann. The second chapter is an excerpt from a book (published in the "British Democratic Republic", so clearly from an alternative world) describing a visit by Bettina von Arnem, Goethe's muse, to the dying Schumann in a sanatorium*. After another interlude in which Ringer and Helen philosophise, we are introduced to a man who wakes up in hospital to be told that he is suffering from Anomalous Memory Disorder (AMD), a collection of symptoms involving "altered states of consciousness characterised by hallucination or false memories", whose name is Harry Dick (geddit, SF fans?). As part of his therapy, he is told to write whatever comes into his head, which turns out to be...
Well, you can probably guess. After all, this is clearly a postmodern novel. I enjoyed the headspinning density of the literary and historical references and the resonances between the various levels of the story, but as usual with this sort of book, the characters were too obviously constructs of the author's ingenious mind for me to warm to them. And once you get past all the clever-clever stuff, there are actually few original or startling ideas in it. The mysterious connections between the characters are explained with an airy wave of the Many Worlds Hypothesis. Or possibly as a fiction created by someone suffering from AMD. Or maybe both. Who cares?
The hybrid nature of the tale also has the usual deleterious effects on its pacing. The main plot turns out to be a rather thin modern-day thriller involving a dodgy company which is building a machine to harness vacuum energy, but as it nears its climax any sense of narrative energy is fatally undercut by a 50-page long philosophical discussion involving Edwin Schrödinger, the director of the sanatorium where he is staying, and a provincial doctor and his wife, which adds nothing to the themes already established.
My impression is that Crumey was trying too hard. The parallel realities idea is not exactly new - Christopher Priest, for example, has explored it with icy elegance and without all the unnecessary literary froth. As a result he has been firmly ghettoised as SF and hasn't received plaudits from the literary critics of the Sunday Times, Observer or Literary Review. So full marks to Crumey for getting them to praise something at which they would normally have sneered, but for me the compromises involved were unsatisfying.
* Thomas Mann's most famous work, The Magic Mountain, is set in a sanatorium (I read it many years ago because I liked the title, but found it unutterably dull). Edwin Schrödinger wrote a paper that was to become the basis for his famous equation (and hence for the Many Worlds Hypothesis) while recuperating at one.
Mobius Dick - Andrew Crumey - Picador, 2004
* * *
Well, here's an unusual thing - an author with a PhD in theoretical physics who is also literary editor of Scotland on Sunday. Which may explain how he has managed to sneak a many-worlds SF story past the draconian guardian critics of "mainstream" literature. Though it could also have something to do with all the knowing literary references that sadly drag this novel down.
Something of the feel of the book can be gleaned from its first few chapters. We start with Dr John Ringer, a theoretical physicist who receives a mysterious text on his Q-phone that may or may not be from his ex-lover Helen. Whilst attending a lunchtime lecture about vicious cycloids in Moby Dick, he reminisces about his first conversation with her which was a literary discussion concerning Thomas Mann, Edwin Schrödinger, E.T.A. Hoffmann and Robert Schumann. The second chapter is an excerpt from a book (published in the "British Democratic Republic", so clearly from an alternative world) describing a visit by Bettina von Arnem, Goethe's muse, to the dying Schumann in a sanatorium*. After another interlude in which Ringer and Helen philosophise, we are introduced to a man who wakes up in hospital to be told that he is suffering from Anomalous Memory Disorder (AMD), a collection of symptoms involving "altered states of consciousness characterised by hallucination or false memories", whose name is Harry Dick (geddit, SF fans?). As part of his therapy, he is told to write whatever comes into his head, which turns out to be...
Well, you can probably guess. After all, this is clearly a postmodern novel. I enjoyed the headspinning density of the literary and historical references and the resonances between the various levels of the story, but as usual with this sort of book, the characters were too obviously constructs of the author's ingenious mind for me to warm to them. And once you get past all the clever-clever stuff, there are actually few original or startling ideas in it. The mysterious connections between the characters are explained with an airy wave of the Many Worlds Hypothesis. Or possibly as a fiction created by someone suffering from AMD. Or maybe both. Who cares?
The hybrid nature of the tale also has the usual deleterious effects on its pacing. The main plot turns out to be a rather thin modern-day thriller involving a dodgy company which is building a machine to harness vacuum energy, but as it nears its climax any sense of narrative energy is fatally undercut by a 50-page long philosophical discussion involving Edwin Schrödinger, the director of the sanatorium where he is staying, and a provincial doctor and his wife, which adds nothing to the themes already established.
My impression is that Crumey was trying too hard. The parallel realities idea is not exactly new - Christopher Priest, for example, has explored it with icy elegance and without all the unnecessary literary froth. As a result he has been firmly ghettoised as SF and hasn't received plaudits from the literary critics of the Sunday Times, Observer or Literary Review. So full marks to Crumey for getting them to praise something at which they would normally have sneered, but for me the compromises involved were unsatisfying.
* Thomas Mann's most famous work, The Magic Mountain, is set in a sanatorium (I read it many years ago because I liked the title, but found it unutterably dull). Edwin Schrödinger wrote a paper that was to become the basis for his famous equation (and hence for the Many Worlds Hypothesis) while recuperating at one.