Wednesday, 1 July 2020 09:25 pm
Book Review: Woman on the Edge of Time
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deckardcanineI had enjoyed Marge Piercy's He, She and It as a college assignment, yet it took me a long time to think to try more of her writing. When I picked up this 1976 novel, the jacket description and especially the 2016 introduction scared me a little. Still, a work of fiction on almost any subject can appeal to me as long as it's written well enough.
I won't go into all the ways the life of New Yorker Connie Ramos has sucked. Suffice it to say that early in the book, she gets involuntarily committed to a violent ward based on a lie. Offhand, I'd sooner opt to go to the asylum from the previous year's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. Piercy thanked some anonymous helpers for sneaking her a firsthand peek, so I guess the depiction is all too accurate. I'm sure the situation has improved in reality; at the very least, they don't order shock therapy for gays anymore.
Connie isn't entirely certain of her own sanity, because she's been seeing a mysterious figure appear and disappear a lot. The figure finally introduces herself as Luciente...from 2137. Her version of time travel requires rare psionic powers for both the visitor and at least one sort of host, which is likely the only reason she came to Connie in particular. Luciente may seem physically present, but any food she'd eat would not nourish her in the slightest; when she returns to her own time, it's as if she'd dreamed. (The closest equivalent I can think of is in Somewhere in Time.) In turn, she teaches Connie to visit 2137, particularly Luciente's hometown of Mattapoisett.
So what's it like? John Lennon's "Imagine" would not be far off. With no more large cities, towns feel rather like large families, to the point that no one has a last name beyond identifying the town. Nobody marries. Birth requires engineering rather than sex or pregnancy, but unlike in Brave New World, there's no stratification. Despite some technological advances, you could almost mistake Mattapoisett for an Amish community, because they're big on environmentalism. People understand animals better than ever before and, perhaps not coincidentally, eat less meat. They have very little private property (or desire for privacy, for that matter), so theft isn't a real problem. Rape, at least in the brute force sense, is a thing of the past, if only because everyone trains hard in self-defense. The sexes are as equal as humanly possible. Diversity is still a big thing, but religion isn't. Children are treated much like adults. The community is extremely democratic, partly because everyone is expected to do some of everything. Their lives are highly fulfilled.
As utopias go, it's pretty credible. The citizens take death as seriously as we do (unlike the Hrossa in Out of the Silent Planet), tho they don't give priority to living far into old age. They don't act nearly identical like in Stranger in a Strange Land; they still have interpersonal conflicts and sometimes even give the death penalty for second murders, tho Luciente, for one, deems it more a matter of efficacy than moral rectitude. Some go insane. Alternating duties means that people are bound to suck at some jobs. They've grown overly attached to portable devices (probably the most prophetic aspect of the story) called kenners; Luciente knows someone who committed suicide in response to losing one. If there's one thing they envy about the past, it's the lack of rationing of resource-hungry luxuries such as coffee. Also, there's a war going on, albeit a ways from the town.
For her part, Connie is frequently appalled at the way things are in Mattapoisett. Fortunately, they're patient with "the person from the past." She finds herself much preferring it to the mental hospital (low bar, I know). Sure, she has tentative friendships among fellow patients, but the future folk are more loving than her own family ever was. Naturally, Connie visits 2137 a lot, leaving the doctors to see her as prone to sudden blackouts. Luciente, meanwhile, is fairly scared of 1976, even outside the hospital.
A couple features make the book a little hard to read. First, Connie's temporal transitions are so abrupt that you'd think she did it by blinking. One moment, she's talking to a Mattapoisett resident; the next (new paragraph), a nurse is calling her back to awareness. Or vice versa. Second, the language has changed a bit, and some turns of phrase are not immediately plain; I found Connie's occasional gratuitous Spanish easier. (I wonder if anyone decries Piercy trying to write from the perspective of an oppressed Hispanic.) The biggest change is the abandonment of gendered pronouns for "person" or "per." It's not that people have gone the way of Uberwald dwarfs; they can easily tell male from female but don't bother when it's irrelevant to the context. I respect their reasons, but "person" is relatively long for a pronoun, and using it without an article feels kinda Tarzan-esque. I'm not sure what I'd use instead.
Anyway, Luciente didn't reach into the past just for companionship. Her people hope that Connie will have a notable effect on the timeline, even if they can't tell her many details. Yeah, Connie initially scoffs at the idea that someone so thoroughly imprisoned could have any chance of that, but, well, they work with what they have. Most past people who can receive future visitors shy away, and they tend to be about as powerless as she is. To make matters worse, the hospital is experimenting with a new procedure that could greatly curtail Connie's free will if she doesn't find a way out fast.
And what exactly do they want Connie to bring about? Why, the very future that she experiences! Oddly enough, they are not secure in their existence, and they fear that a much worse future will happen without her intervention. That's like one of us going to the Cold War to talk someone out of activating a doomsday device. At least Mr. Peabody never doubted his imminent successes.
When things go badly enough in her own time, Connie has difficulty returning to Mattapoisett -- and at one point goes to the bad future instead. Our look at the dystopia is mercifully brief. Just know that it's evidently pleasant only to the upper class while the rest are dehumanized. It's not clear to me whether this is an alternate fate or the simultaneous culture against which the utopia is fighting a defensive war.
One thing had always been at the back of my mind while observing Mattapoisett: Such dramatic changes could not come about without a great disaster. The residents vaguely confirm this by indicating a not-so-bloodless revolution. Is that what they expect of Connie? She comes to believe so, and by making a mantra out of "This is war," she impels herself to regard well-meaning medical staff as mortal enemies, and not just to her. I find this extra disturbing in the modern era of class-conscious unrest. It doesn't help that Piercy's stated politics hadn't changed in 40 years.
In the end, we don't know how much Connie accomplishes. I'm not entirely convinced she wasn't hallucinating all along. Sure, she doesn't seem brainy enough to dream up such a vivid world, but consider all the peculiarities in play here. What are the odds that the future is bound to be either one set of extremes or the opposite set -- hinging on one small force, no less? Isn't it suspicious that reported psionics are disproportionately in mental hospitals? And why are some Mattapoisett residents the spitting images of people she knows, a la The Wizard of Oz?
For all these questionable qualities, I do think Piercy pulled through in terms of captivation. Obviously, I took enough interest to type a blue streak. I enjoyed vicariously touring Mattapoisett, tho I wouldn't care to live there unless I wound up in a similar nightmare scenario to Connie's. Maybe I'll read more from Piercy, preferably from a less political activist period.
My next read is Silverlock by John Myers Myers. Ah, the smell of paper from 1949.
I won't go into all the ways the life of New Yorker Connie Ramos has sucked. Suffice it to say that early in the book, she gets involuntarily committed to a violent ward based on a lie. Offhand, I'd sooner opt to go to the asylum from the previous year's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. Piercy thanked some anonymous helpers for sneaking her a firsthand peek, so I guess the depiction is all too accurate. I'm sure the situation has improved in reality; at the very least, they don't order shock therapy for gays anymore.
Connie isn't entirely certain of her own sanity, because she's been seeing a mysterious figure appear and disappear a lot. The figure finally introduces herself as Luciente...from 2137. Her version of time travel requires rare psionic powers for both the visitor and at least one sort of host, which is likely the only reason she came to Connie in particular. Luciente may seem physically present, but any food she'd eat would not nourish her in the slightest; when she returns to her own time, it's as if she'd dreamed. (The closest equivalent I can think of is in Somewhere in Time.) In turn, she teaches Connie to visit 2137, particularly Luciente's hometown of Mattapoisett.
So what's it like? John Lennon's "Imagine" would not be far off. With no more large cities, towns feel rather like large families, to the point that no one has a last name beyond identifying the town. Nobody marries. Birth requires engineering rather than sex or pregnancy, but unlike in Brave New World, there's no stratification. Despite some technological advances, you could almost mistake Mattapoisett for an Amish community, because they're big on environmentalism. People understand animals better than ever before and, perhaps not coincidentally, eat less meat. They have very little private property (or desire for privacy, for that matter), so theft isn't a real problem. Rape, at least in the brute force sense, is a thing of the past, if only because everyone trains hard in self-defense. The sexes are as equal as humanly possible. Diversity is still a big thing, but religion isn't. Children are treated much like adults. The community is extremely democratic, partly because everyone is expected to do some of everything. Their lives are highly fulfilled.
As utopias go, it's pretty credible. The citizens take death as seriously as we do (unlike the Hrossa in Out of the Silent Planet), tho they don't give priority to living far into old age. They don't act nearly identical like in Stranger in a Strange Land; they still have interpersonal conflicts and sometimes even give the death penalty for second murders, tho Luciente, for one, deems it more a matter of efficacy than moral rectitude. Some go insane. Alternating duties means that people are bound to suck at some jobs. They've grown overly attached to portable devices (probably the most prophetic aspect of the story) called kenners; Luciente knows someone who committed suicide in response to losing one. If there's one thing they envy about the past, it's the lack of rationing of resource-hungry luxuries such as coffee. Also, there's a war going on, albeit a ways from the town.
For her part, Connie is frequently appalled at the way things are in Mattapoisett. Fortunately, they're patient with "the person from the past." She finds herself much preferring it to the mental hospital (low bar, I know). Sure, she has tentative friendships among fellow patients, but the future folk are more loving than her own family ever was. Naturally, Connie visits 2137 a lot, leaving the doctors to see her as prone to sudden blackouts. Luciente, meanwhile, is fairly scared of 1976, even outside the hospital.
A couple features make the book a little hard to read. First, Connie's temporal transitions are so abrupt that you'd think she did it by blinking. One moment, she's talking to a Mattapoisett resident; the next (new paragraph), a nurse is calling her back to awareness. Or vice versa. Second, the language has changed a bit, and some turns of phrase are not immediately plain; I found Connie's occasional gratuitous Spanish easier. (I wonder if anyone decries Piercy trying to write from the perspective of an oppressed Hispanic.) The biggest change is the abandonment of gendered pronouns for "person" or "per." It's not that people have gone the way of Uberwald dwarfs; they can easily tell male from female but don't bother when it's irrelevant to the context. I respect their reasons, but "person" is relatively long for a pronoun, and using it without an article feels kinda Tarzan-esque. I'm not sure what I'd use instead.
Anyway, Luciente didn't reach into the past just for companionship. Her people hope that Connie will have a notable effect on the timeline, even if they can't tell her many details. Yeah, Connie initially scoffs at the idea that someone so thoroughly imprisoned could have any chance of that, but, well, they work with what they have. Most past people who can receive future visitors shy away, and they tend to be about as powerless as she is. To make matters worse, the hospital is experimenting with a new procedure that could greatly curtail Connie's free will if she doesn't find a way out fast.
And what exactly do they want Connie to bring about? Why, the very future that she experiences! Oddly enough, they are not secure in their existence, and they fear that a much worse future will happen without her intervention. That's like one of us going to the Cold War to talk someone out of activating a doomsday device. At least Mr. Peabody never doubted his imminent successes.
When things go badly enough in her own time, Connie has difficulty returning to Mattapoisett -- and at one point goes to the bad future instead. Our look at the dystopia is mercifully brief. Just know that it's evidently pleasant only to the upper class while the rest are dehumanized. It's not clear to me whether this is an alternate fate or the simultaneous culture against which the utopia is fighting a defensive war.
One thing had always been at the back of my mind while observing Mattapoisett: Such dramatic changes could not come about without a great disaster. The residents vaguely confirm this by indicating a not-so-bloodless revolution. Is that what they expect of Connie? She comes to believe so, and by making a mantra out of "This is war," she impels herself to regard well-meaning medical staff as mortal enemies, and not just to her. I find this extra disturbing in the modern era of class-conscious unrest. It doesn't help that Piercy's stated politics hadn't changed in 40 years.
In the end, we don't know how much Connie accomplishes. I'm not entirely convinced she wasn't hallucinating all along. Sure, she doesn't seem brainy enough to dream up such a vivid world, but consider all the peculiarities in play here. What are the odds that the future is bound to be either one set of extremes or the opposite set -- hinging on one small force, no less? Isn't it suspicious that reported psionics are disproportionately in mental hospitals? And why are some Mattapoisett residents the spitting images of people she knows, a la The Wizard of Oz?
For all these questionable qualities, I do think Piercy pulled through in terms of captivation. Obviously, I took enough interest to type a blue streak. I enjoyed vicariously touring Mattapoisett, tho I wouldn't care to live there unless I wound up in a similar nightmare scenario to Connie's. Maybe I'll read more from Piercy, preferably from a less political activist period.
My next read is Silverlock by John Myers Myers. Ah, the smell of paper from 1949.