My title is worseÑpunnierÑthan you
might think.[1] The wombs with views in Gladiator-at-Law
are houses (Latin, domus, whence, ulti-mately, ÒdomesticateÓ) and, still
worse, dome houses. These G.M.L.
homes are a major plot element and a minor symbol in Gladiator, and I
shall deal with them briefly below.
First, though, I want to summa-rize Gladiator for you (ItÕs often
hard to get hold of) and demon-strate in more general ways how Gladiator
uses elements of what we usually think of as the fantastic.[2]
I think, somewhat paradoxically,
that this would be a useful exer-cise because Gladiator is not the sort
of work one would teach in a course in fantasy. If itÕs in print, you might teach it as Ònear-in,Ó
extrapolative SF. More likely,
youÕd teach it in a course in rela-tively recent dystopian fiction. Because thatÕs what Gladiator
is, mostly: a short novel from
1955 that shows human characters in action in a rotten world. Gladiator, however, uses
fantasy in interesting and interrelated ways. I shall discuss three of these ways.
*First, the world of this novel is
extrapolated from our own, but extrapolated in such a way as to reduce several
aspects of our culture to the grotesque.
*Second, this extrapolation moves Gladiator
out of the low mimetic mode into satire, which Northrop Frye correctly labels,
as an atti-tude, as Òa combination of fantasy and morality.Ó Moreover, satire, as a literary mode,
has the surprising habit of moving up FryeÕs hier-archy of modes toward the
heights of myth.
*Third, the plot of Gladiator
is verisimilar not at all because it is likely but because it displaces into
its satiric world what Joseph Campbell has called Òthe monomyth of the
Hero.Ó I.e., we believe the story,
while reading it, not because it shows a realistic triumph of realistic good
guys in a realistically rendered world but because the good guys have the good
sense to follow the ancient script for the regeneration of the wasteland, the
salvation of a rotten world.
The rotten world of this novel is
the USA, ca. 2060, mostly the area around New York City, some time after the
world has recovered from some sort of disaster.[3] The social structure of this future USA
consists of the fantastically rich investment house of Green, Charles-worth,
the secret de facto rulers of the world of the novel; very rich Titans
of Industry, maneuvering in corporate battles; rich professionals lucky enough
to be important physicians or born into law firms doing corporation law; poorer
professionals, such as police, politicians, engineers, and Charles Mundin,
LL.B., the main protag-onist; a small merchant class; a large class of contract
workers, who live in G.M.L. houses as part of their contracts; and a large
under-class of dispossessed and despised Ònon-peopleÓ who live in the slums
surrounding the G.M.L. bubble-cities.
The people from the slums see
themselves as slaves and live in a kind of hell. The contract workers are also slaves: any complaints or rocking the boat, and
they find themselves out of their houses and in a slum. Even one of the very rich, the Titan
Bliss Hubble, asserts that his life is also hellish: corruption and social sickness and misery permeate the
society.
There is no threat of rebellion
from the slum-dwellers. The younger
ones work out their aggressions in gang warfare, and the rest are kept going by
allotments and Field DaysÑbread and circusesÑand, usually, by finding projects
in art or petty commerce to keep them busy and let them think, possibly
correctly (on occasion) with the artists, that they are leading meaningful
lives. For most of the rest of the
common folk, thereÕs their contract labor, magnificent G.M.L. houses, and the
delights of the weekly shows and special Field Days: the spectacular gladiatorial contests that help keep the
underclass in line.
All the major elements of this
world are similar to our world or carefully extrapolated from our world. Indeed, we get to overhear one of the
characters speculate on the origins of Field Days, and we even get a little
essay in which the Narrator explains the rise of the sub-urban slums,
particularly Belly Rave, the slum dealt with directly in Gladiator. Ursula K. Le Guin, in the introduction
to the 1976 Ace edition of The Left Hand of Darkness, has some instructive
comments on extrapolation. In an
ÒextrapolativeÓ work, she says, the
. . . writer is supposed to take a
trend or phenomena of the here-and-now, purify and intensify it for dramatic
effect, and extend it into the future. . . . A predic-tion is made.
Method and results much resemble those of a scientist who feeds large
doses of a purified and con-centrated food additive to mice, in order to
predict what may happen to people who eat it in small quantities for a long
time. The outcome seems almost
inevitably to be cancer. So does
the outcome of extrapolation.
Strictly extrapolative works of science fiction generally arrive about
where the Club of Rome arrives:
somewhere between the gradual extinction of human liberty and the total
extinction of terrestrial life. * * *
Almost anything
carried to its logical extreme becomes depressing, if not carcinogenic. (p. i, unnum-bered)
Students of dystopias and
satire will recognize the idea of
carrying a premise to its logical extreme: itÕs what Yevgeny Zamyatin called reductio ad finem.[4] ItÕs also the method of the logical
tech-nique of reduction to the absurd often combined with the satiric
techniques of reduction to the animal and reduction to the grotesqueÑ often
achieved by literalizing clichŽs, slogans, or metaphors. Fairly pure examples of these
techniques can be seen in the blinding of Gloucester in ShakespeareÕs King
Lear, in SwiftÕs ÒA Modest ProposalÓ and other writings. In any event, these techniques were
well estab-lished when Pohl and Kornbluth pushed to their logical and extreme
(hence, grotesque) ends such ideas, trends, and phenomena as the mechanism of
the law, Social Darwinism and the ÒbattleÓ of big business, ÒgamblingÓ on the
stock market, and the violence of many sports, and sports fans. And so we accept, a bit too readily
perhaps, GladiatorÕs reductions to the grotesque that yield the trial of
the ÒtwerpÓ before the automated Òjury boxÓ (ch. 1), the stratifications of
society in America in 2060, the ÒField DayÓ metaphors for big busi-ness, the
pari-mutuel operation of the Stock Market (complete with slot machines and
touts), and the gladiatorial contests of literal Field Days. The exaggerated extrapo-lations of Gladiator
are exactly the sort of things weÕre used to in reading dystopian satires; more
important, they are sufficiently appropriate and instructive a commen-tary on
our own world that we forget that in themselves they are highly unlikely. They are rational (even moderate)
comments on the evils of our world, but in themselves a bitter fantasy about an
improbably corrupt future world.
The action of Gladiator is
the comic one of the bringing down of this rotten world by a group of young or
at least youngish people. At the
end of the novel, the protagonists are in charge of the world and are going to
make some changes. One couple
among the good characters, Charles Mundin and Norma Lavin, are on their way to
be married; and the other couple, Norvell and Virginia Bligh, are going to have
a son.
The plot of Gladiator has,
as part of the catastrophe, an exciting scene of physical action in which Don
Lavin, NormaÕs younger brother, is rescued from death during the Field Day at
Monmouth Stadium. And there are
some other bits of violence in the three-month course of the story.[5] Still, most of the plot involves not
physical battles but business battles, and the final blows against the
antagonists are struck at the betting machines of the New York Stock Exchange.
Much of Gladiator, then,
has to do with money, and this fact places Gladiator in the tradition of
what Northrop Frye calls the Òlow mimeticÓ;[6]
more specifically, itÕs in the tradition of realistic, middleclass fiction
going back to Defoe.[7] Obviously. The gods donÕt deal with economics, as Brecht asserts in The
Good Woman of Setzuan, and no Knights-Errant Òever paid in any inn
whatsoeverÓÑas Don Quixote informs the inn-keeper just before his hasty exit.[8] Myths and Romances usually donÕt deal
with money, nor do tragedies and epics in any serious way. Dragon hoards, assorted treasures,
virtuous poverty, rewards, feudal titles and rentsÑthese are acceptable in our
loftier literatures; but larger-than-life heroes just donÕt ever have to worry
about keeping up payments on office equipment or getting arrested for using a
cancelled credit card. Nor do our
loftier literatures usually deal with the political and personal implications
of economic systems.
So Gladiator is in the
tradition of the low mimetic novel, in the lower ranges of that tradition, the
part that slips imperceptibly into satire.
ItÕs something of a shock, then,
when we finally get to meet Green, Charlesworth, the antagonists. Charles Mundin and Norma Lavin are
invited (summoned, actually) to the Green, Charlesworth office, in the Empire
State Building, amidst the rotting wreckage of Old New York. They ascend high into the building, are
kept waiting for hours in an anteroom, and then enter a room, empty except for
two large cabinets and a ÒmanÓ sitting at a desk. The ÒmanÓ tells them, ÒWe despise you, Mr. Mundin. We are going to destroy you. . . . You are Rocking the Boat, Mundin . . .
. You are Our Enemy, Mundin.Ó Mundin soon dis-covers that the ÒmanÓ
is a Western Electric Sleepless Receptionist (115 Volt A.C. Only). Then the two cabinets light up. ÒThe contents of the cabinets
were: Green and Charlesworth. Green, an incredibly, impossibly
ancient dumpy-looking, hairless female.
Charlesworth, an incredibly, impossibly ancient string-bean-looking,
hairless male.Ó Green and
Charlesworth, who have bugged MundinÕs new offices, inform them that they do
not approve of Norma LavinÕs plan to retake G.M.L. Homes and release people
from contract slavery:
ÒPainted courtesan,Ó
observed the male voice. ÒShe
wants to free the slaves, she says.
Talks about Mr. Lincoln!Ó
ÒWe Fixed Mr.
LincolnÕs Wagon, Mr. Charlesworth,Ó chortled the female voice.
ÒWe did, Mrs.
Green. And we will Fix Her Wagon
too.Ó
* * * * * *
[A bit later, Green
and Charlesworth order Mundin and Lavin to leave. Mundin stops for a moment,] staring at the milky glass. Glass, he thought. Glass, and quivering, moving corpses
inside, that a breath of air might----
ÒTry it, Mundin,Ó
challenged the voice. ÒWe wanted
to see if you would try it.Ó
Mundin thought, and
decided against it.
ÒToo bad,Ó said the
voice of Charlesworth. ÒWe hate
you, Mundin. You said we were not
God Almighty.Ó
ÒAtheist!Ó hissed the
voice of Mrs. Green. (ch. 21, pp.
142-45)
This line by Mrs. Green ends their
little colloquy and the chapter.
Immediately following this, Mundin and Lavin are back at their offices,
and we get a speech by Harry Ryan.
Ryan is an old lawyer who is advising the Lavins; he is also a Òyen poxÓ
addict and is now Òcoked to the eyebrows.Ó In his opium-inspire monolog, Ryan quotes H. G. WellsÕ ca.
1940 comment, ÒA frightful queerness is coming into lifeÓ and notes that
ÒGreen, Charlesworth must have been hitting their stride about then.Ó He goes on to identify Green,
Charlesworth with the Struldbruggs of GulliverÕs Travels (Book 3,
ch. 10; G-a-L, ch. 22, p. 145).
Norma Lavin goes on to give a
fairly realistic explanation of Green, Charlesworth: ÒI suppose thereÕs no reason a man canÕt live a long time,
if heÕs got plenty of money to spend on medicine; and I suppose that a man who
pays the doctors to keep him going, no matter what, has plenty of chance to
line up moneyÓÑbut the Struldbrugg identification and its implications
remain (p. 146). Green,
Charles-worth are over 200 years old, and they have fulfilled the fears that
prompted the Luggnuggians of Gulliver to pass laws stripping the Struldbruggs
of their wealth when they passed eighty years old.[9] This ancient couple has engrossed the
wealth of the world.
All right, then, Struldbruggs. But what are Struldbruggs doing
in a relatively realistic novel that seems to be in the low mimetic mode?
My question is rhetorical. Frye notes, as I said earlier, that low
mimetic can slip easily into the satiric, and thatÕs what has happened
here. And I shall note, even more
strongly than Frye does, that satires are never, ever really realistic.
I speak as one who has written
satire, on occasion, and I will now digress briefly into a confession. We Satirists are wont to point out that
other modes of literature arenÕt realistic. A satirical rogue, dealing with epics, will point out that
one doesnÕt run into HomerÕs Hector as the leader of a real army; ShakespeareÕs
Hector, yesÑbut not HomerÕs. A
satirical rogue, dealing with tragedy, will point out that in the entire
history of the theater no tragic hero has ever gone to the bathroom. A tragic heroine may murder her
children or frame guards for a regicide, but no tragic heroine in the history
of litera-ture has ever plopped herself down, put her feet up, and scratched. And comedyÑwell, anyone who thinks that
all those joyous brides and grooms lived happily ever after must have
spent his life watching Doris Day movies.
Myths and Romances, satirical rogues continue, are simply beneath
contemptÑtheyÕve received exactly what they deserve at the hands of Euripides,
Cervantes, Mel Brooks, Monty Python, and MAD. No, no, we say, real reality is to be found in satire. In satire we peel off the veneer and
show you the sewer just beneath the surface, the corruption within the
whitewashed sepulchre. The world
is 99.44% drek, and only We Satirists have the courage to face
facts. There may be a good man or
honest women or two in the world, but mostly itÕs just you and me, dear
audience, and, frankly, IÕm not too sure about you.
ItÕs all flim-flam and hoax,
satire; thereÕs nothing realistic about it, and only convention, and some
cynicism, allows readers to perceive, while experiencing the works, most
satires as anything except fantastic.
Frye puts it nicely: ÒAs the name of an attitude, satire is
. . . a combination of fantasy and moralityÓÑand Frye can note that the
ÒmoralityÓ of satire isnÕt always fastidious (Anatomy, p. 310; see also
pp. 224-25 and 235).
So Gladiator slips into
satire, and satire is the part fantasy; more, satire has the interesting habit
of moving toward the mythic.
The Struldbrug episode, then, is
quite decorous in Gladiator.[10] We have learned earlier that Green,
Charlesworth are Òessentially moneyÓ (ch. 19, p. 130), and in the moral
universe of Gladiator the love and power of money combine to be
the root of all evils. Morality
plus fantasy here yields the monstrous Struldbrugs, Green, Charlesworth: a symbol for the tyranny of wealth
engrossed by the old. They are the
ever-so-slightly displaced monster familiar to us from myths and legends and
tales: Òthe tyrant-monster . . . .
the hoarder of the general benefit.
He is the monster avid for the greedy rights of Ômy and mineÕÓ; he is
Òprecisely the monster of the status quo:
Holdfast, the keeper of the past. . . . great and conspicuous in the seat of power . . . .Ó[11]
Or, as in this case, hidden behind
his agents, holed up in his lair.
Now the Empire State Building may
seem an odd sort of lair: dragons
and ogres and such usually prefer to be underground. But we must recall that Green and Charlesworth see
themselves as God Almighty, and, as money, are the false god of Gladiator.[12] It is appropriate, then, in mythic
terms, that the hero (and heroine) ascend to them, in their Cosmic Mountain, so
to speak, at the Navel of the World of Gladiator.
ItÕs a parody, the Struldbrug
episode, a parody of the HeroÕs Ascent and Atonement with the Father/God.[13] The meeting with Green, Charlesworth is
also our clue to decipher the complex modality games that Pohl and Kornbluth
play in Gladiator.
We have in Gladiator what
looks like low low mimetic comedy:
what looks like an essentially realistic story that gets in a little
sub-versive satire. ItÕs
subversive and a satire and comic to be sure, but Gladiator also
contains significant portions of the great monomyth of the Hero. Of course, all stories do that, if Frye
and Joseph Campbell et al. are rightÑbut in Gladiator there really isnÕt
much displacement of the traditional patterns.[14] We can see this if we work backward and
forward from the meeting with Green, Charlesworth.
Looking backward, we can see in Gladiator
some familiar motifs from heroic fantasy, from the quest-romance. The world of the story is the
Wasteland, and Mundin and Norvell Bligh, the two point of view charac-ters,
divide between them the role of the Hero in attempting to redeem it.[15]
Mundin gets his Call to Adventure
when he meets Norma and Don Lavin.
His motivations for answering the Call arenÕt totally heroic (he wants a
big case, one that might get him out of criminal law into the immensely
profitable corporate law); still, he is decent enough to answer what he
perceives as Òa cry for helpÓ (ch. 3, p. 20). Bligh doesnÕt get called, exactly; he gets
pushed: heÕs exiled from the
G.M.L. City of Monmouth to the horrors of Belly Rave, exiled to where he is
considered by his society less than human. A bit later in the novel, a cop puts the matter
bluntly: ÒPeople are one
thing. Belly Ravers are something
else. Are these people on the tax
rolls? Do they have punch-card
codes? Do they have employment-contract
identi-fication tattoos? NoÓ (ch.
12, p. 65). As Campbell points
out, how-ever, there are two ways to view exile: ÒFrom the standpoint of the way of duty, anyone in exile
from the community is a nothing.
From the other point of view, however [from that of the individual],
this exile is the first step of the questÓ (Campbell, Epilogue, section 2, p.
385).
With BlighÕs going to Belly Rave,
we have the Descent of the Hero, his descent to an Underworld in which he can
learn. So this exile is necessary;
it is also good in itself, in allowing him greater freedom.
The G.M.L. cities look like good
things; they were designed by NormaÕs and DonÕs father and his co-inventer to
be good things. And, when our
heroes have conquered, they will probably become good again. For now, though, at this stage of Gladiator,
they are not good things; they are traps.
As we find with much SF and dystopian literature, what first appears to
be protective and nurturing containment turns out to be imprisonment. A womb with a view may be pleasant, but
one must leave the womb if one is to go from fetus to infant and on into
adulthood. In terms of archetypes,
the Great Mother is always dual in her nature: she is both the Nurturing Mother and the Terrible Mother,
the protecting womb and the bowels of Leviathan. Possibly her most dangerous role is the Terrible Mother in
disguise as the Nurturing Mother:
the prison tricked out as a sanctuary.
Monmouth City looks like a
secularized City of God, with its plea-sure domes and comfortsÑa Xanadu surrounded
by hellish slums. But ÒThe worldÕs
in jail,Ó as Norma Lavin says, and Monmouth City is a secularized City of Dis
(see G-a-L, ch. 22, pp. 147-48).
ItÕs a place where one is held in bondage by contracts enforced by a
perverse capi-talist law. The
bubble-city is the womb-as-labyrinth; Belly Rave, at first, is hellish, but it
is also the desert in which one may find the Straight Way, the Way the Hero
must go.[16]
So Mundin answers his Call
voluntarily; Bligh, because he has no choice. Bligh gets the HeroÕs Descent into the Underworld; Mundin
goes on to find the woman. In
Jungian terms, MundinÕs next task is the Rescue of the Anima. Not from Belly Rave, however; Norma is
soon kidnapped and held by the ÒTitanÓ who runs G.M.L. Mundin cunningly blackmails the Titan
and rescues Norma Lavin, with the help of Bligh and Lana, the leader of a kidsÕ
gang.
Before this, however, Bligh needs
help himself. He gets it from his
wife and from Shep, a friendly giant of a man who performs the functions of
friendly giants (ch. 11, pp. 60 f.).
Shep aids Bligh and also helps initiate him into the mysteries of life
in Belly Rave. ItÕs Shep who
introduces Bligh to Lana and her gang of Wabbits and who explains to Bligh the
nature of the hell of Belly Rave:
no work, and in that senseÑand that sense onlyÑa Òperpetual holidayÓ
(ch. 13, p. 73).
Shep, then, is a Master of
Initiation as well as a friendly giant, and Lana and her gang are, well,
friendly animals. ThatÕs their
func-tion, anyway, and the cute little tykes, with their busted bottles,
fulfill it nicely.
After the heroes have answered
their Calls and have crossed the Threshold into Belly Rave and Adventure, after
Mundin has rescued his future bride and Bligh has established Belly Rave as
homeÑand after the good characters have teamed up; after all this, the novel
proceeds rather realistically until Mundin and Norma Lavin receive their
summons from Green, Charlesworth.[17]
And this returns us, in good quest
fashion, to what IÕve called the Struldbrug episode.
We donÕt have to go very far if we
work forward from this scene, since Gladiator moves rapidly from the
confrontation with Green, Charlesworth to its catastrophe and resolution. When Mundin and Norma Lavin return with
the news that Green, Charlesworth oppose them, the two older silent partners
desert the project, leaving only Bliss Hubble with them, the youngest of the
Titans helping them bankrupt and seize control of G.M.L. Homes. That leaves only Harry Ryan as an older
person among the good characters.
Then Green, Charlesworth ÒtriggerÓ a deeply implanted order in Don
Lavin, and Don goes off to the High Wire event in Field Day. The rest of the good characters go to
rescue him, requiring that most of them enter the High Wire event as
ÒHecklersÓ: surrogates for the
audience, throwing gravel, and rocks, at him as he crosses a wire above a tank
of piranha.
Our co-hero, Norvell Bligh,
decides to sacrifice himself in place of Don: if Don falls, he will throw himself into the tank, drawing
off the fish and giving the others time to save Don. With this deci-sion, Bligh regains his hearing and becomes
fully conscious of the horrors around himÑthe standard anagnorisis by
the Hero: full recog-nition,
usually followed by his sacrifice.
Bligh doesnÕt get a chance to sacrifice himself, though. Shep, who had tried to seduce Mrs.
Bligh, atones for thatÑcancels his Òinpounding [sic] debt worryÓÑand jumps in
himself, taking the obnoxious Field Day M.C. with him (ch. 24, pp. 160-62; see
also ch. 23, p. 154).
Bligh had decided to become a
sacrificial substitute for Don Lavin; Shep substitutes himself for Bligh. This is the theme of the scape-goat,
the pharmakos, and in Gladiator it is very literally rendered
with a sparagmos: the
tearing apart (and devouring) of the victim.[18]
Harry Ryan also dies in the
attempt to rescue Don (from an injury in another event). This death has no big mythic
reverberations, but it allows Mundin to meditate on the costs of their war
against evil (ch. 25, p. 163), and it allows the new world at the end of the
novel to be controlled totally by young people (see Frye, p. 164).
The final battle of the novel,
again, takes place at the Stock Exchange and has only a little blood to
it. It is a battle, howeverÑ or a
hunt, to use another image in the novel (ch. 17, p. 111). It is also a gamble: the satiric presentation of the Stock
Exchange as a pari-mutuel operation fits in with the motif of Heroic
Òhazarding.Ó Mundin and his allies
break G.M.L., and the rest of the market goes with that huge firm; then, quietly,
Mundin et al. proceed to buy up most of their world. This is not a very impressive form for a Ragnarok, but Green
and Charlesworth are pretty sleazy gods.
Those who live by the dollar die by the dollar, though, and the struggle
here is appropriately both petty (a matter of mere money) and titanic (over
fourteen billion dollars of mere money).
In the resolution of the plot, we
see that the scene at the Stock Exchange was, indeed, a Twilight of the
Gods. Back at BlighÕs house in
Belly RaveÑthe Return home in the questÑthe good characters count their
hard-gotten gains and conclude that they Òown a bit of every-thingÓ in their
world.
ÒWeÕll need it,Ó said
Norma, nestled against MundinÕs arm.
Those old monsters in their glass bottlesÉ.Ó[19]
Mundin patted her
hand. ÒI donÕt know,Ó he said,
after a moment. ÒTheyÕre as good
as dead, you know. They didnÕt
have anything to live for but power, and when we broke the market we took that
away from them. We----Ò
He stopped. The house shivered and sang. A white flash of light sprang up
outside, turned orange and faded away.
ÒWhatÕs that?Ó
demanded Norvie Bligh, a protective arm around his wife.
No one knew; and they
all ran up to the battered second floor, where there was a window with
glassÑwhere there used to be a window with glass, they found. The glass was in shards across the
floor.
Across the slaggy bay,
luminous even in the evening light, where Old New York had stood and rottedÑa
mushroom-shaped cloud.
ÒGreen, Charlesworth,Ó
mused Norvell. ÒI guess you werenÕt
the only one who realized they were as good as dead, Charles.Ó
They stood there for a
long moment, watching the cloud drift out to sea, an insubstantial monument to
the suicide of the Struldbrugs, but the only monument they would ever haveÉ.
ÒWeÕd better get
below,Ó said Mundin. ÒWeÕve got
cleaning up to do.Ó (ch 26, pp.
170-71Ñend of the novel)
The old sterile couple, Green,
Charlesworth, is dead. The
tyrant-monster Holdfast is dead.
The world is till capitalistic, and we get a hint earlier in the story
that just a change in rulers might not make much differenceÑthat his yearÕs
savior may be next yearÕs tyrant.[20] Still, the young couples and their
friends can at least clean up, and possibly rejuvenate, the wasteland.
Miami University
Oxford, Ohio
[1] This essay is an extension of my brief comments on
Gladiator-at-Law in ÒOdysseys in Grey Flannel: The Heroic Journey in Two Dystopies by Pohl and Kornbluth,Ó Par
Rapport, 1 (Summer 1978), 126-31.
(The other dystopia was The Space Merchants.)
[2]
Frederick Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth, Gladiator-at-Law (New York:
Ballantine, 1955). In this paper
all brief citations will be found in my text (esp., most citations after the
first). In my citations I
abbreviate Gladiator-at-Law as G-a-L.
[3] Old New York has been bombed: G-a-L, ch. 19, p. 130. Note, though, that this post-apocalypse
business is not mentioned elsewhere.
[4] Mirra
Ginsburg, trans., We (1920-21), intro. to Viking edn. (1972; rpt. NY:
Bantam, 1972), p. xiii.
[5] Pohl
and Kornbluth may have originally intended their fictive time to cover one
week: see ch.4, p. 23. There are several minor inconsistencies
in G-a-L, however (e.g., see n. 3, above), so it seems safest to just
accept the time-scheme that is made fairly explicit later in the novel. The Narrator tells us that Mundin notes
the change in Bligh in the Òfew weeksÓ between the start of the novel and the
spraying of Coshocton (ch. 19, p. 128); Harry Coett gives the three month
figure as the time between the G.M.L. stockholdersÕ meet-ing we see and the
next one (ch. 17, p. 111). We
never see the second stockholdersÕ meetingÑanother change in plan by Pohl and
Kornbluth, I suspectÑbut the three-month figure feels about right for the
action of the story.
[6] Anatomy
of Criticism: Four Essays
(1957; rpt. New York: Atheneum, 1966), ÒHistorical Criticism: Theory of Modes,Ó esp. pp. 33-34,
44-45; see also p. 49 for an excellent comment on science fiction as (usually)
Òa mode of romance with a strong inherent tendency to myth.Ó
[7] The
tradition goes back earlier than Defoe in the drama: e.g., Thomas Dekker, The ShoemakerÕs Holiday (1600)
and Thomas Heywood, A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603).
[8] Don
Quixote, Part I, Book III, ch. 3; alluded to in Frye, Anatomy, p.
223.
[9] Ryan
errs when he puts the age at 100:
ÒAs soon as they have compleated the Term of Eighty Years, they are
looked on as dead in Law . . .Ó (ÒA Voyage to Laputa, Etc.Ó).
[10] I
shall use henceforth PohlÕs and KornbluthÕsÑand FryeÕsÑ spelling of Struldbrugg.
[11] Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces,
2nd edn. (1968Ñ no essential changes from the first edn. of 1949;
Princeton/Bollingen paperback, 1972), Prologue, ch. 1, p. 15 and Part II, ch.
iii, section 3, p. 337.
[12] See
in G-a-L ch. 22, p. 147; compare the god of Sales in PohlÕs and
KornbluthÕs The Space Merchants (1952).
[13] Pohl
and Kornbluth parody this and other aspects of the Heroic Journey in Space
Merchants; see my ÒOdysseus in Grey Flannel,Ó esp. pp. 128-29.
[14] For
CampbellÕs summary of the monomyth, see Hero, I. 4, pp. 245-46; for
FryeÕs similar version, see Anatomy, p. 192.
[15] See
ÒOdysseus in Grey FlannelÓ for a brief discussion of point of view in G-a-L,
esp. n.7, p. 131.
[16] See
Frye, Anatomy, pp. 141-50, 166-70. 187-92, and 198-201.
[17] One
point is touched on too lightly for me to handle in my text, but IÕll note here
one interesting little mythic element in BlighÕs entry into Belly Rave. At what Campbell calls Òthe entrance to
the zone of magnified powerÓÑBelly Rave for BlighÑ there is a Òthreshold
guardianÓ (Hero, I.i.4, p. 77).
I think this is the func-tion of the Resident Commissioner, the Òdreary
old hackÓ who handles the paper work for the BlighsÕ moving into Belly Rave (G-A-L,
ch. 11, p. 64).
[18] See
Frye, Anatomy, p. 148. The only
work of literature (as conscious creation by a single author) that I can think
of with as literal a sparagmos as that in G-a-L is the death of Pentheus in
EuripidesÕ The Bacchae. For
devouring the victim of a sparagmos, see Edith Hamilton, Mythology
(1940, 1942; rpt. New York: New American Library, 1953), pp. 56-57. Note also the Fraction of the Communion
wafer: ÒAccording to the mystical
interpretation devised in the Middle Ages, this represents the Body of Christ
being broken during his Passion . . .ÓÑHenri Daniel-Rops, This is the Mass,
trans. Alastair Guinan (1958; rpt. Garden City: Doubleday, 1959), p. 143.
[19]
Unspaced periods represents an ÒellipsisÓ mark in original.
[20] See G-a-L,
ch. 15, p. 90. See also Campbell, Hero,
II.iii.5-6, esp., p. 353.
I have some suggestions for
further studies of G-a-L, and an appeal for contributions to an
anthology.
a.
More
work remains to be done relating the containment motif with the theme of
mechanization in Pohl and/or Kornbluth and with SF and dystopian literature in
general. If you would be
interested in writing an essay on this topic for possible inclusion in The
Mechan-ical God, a collection of essays on the machine in SF, please
contact immediately Richard D. Erlich and Thomas P. Dunn, eds. (English / Miami
University / Oxford, OH 45056).
b.
There
are allusions in G-a-L to ÒKubla Khan,Ó A Streetcar Named Desire
(Belly Rave started out as Belle Reve EstatesÑwhich I didnÕt find listed as a
suburb of NYC), The Hairy Ape (maybeÑfor Shep), and possibly other
works; these allusions may be significant.
c.
By
1980 standards, G-a-L seems pretty sexist. Still, the treatment of women in this work seems too complex
to merely dismiss with an epithet; a study of the female characters in G-a-L
might prove useful.
d.
The
idea of Òdouble visionÓ in G-a-L needs more study. Harry RyanÕs opium-inspired view of
Green, Charlesworth as Struldbrugs deserves to be taken seriously, as do other
occasions when an illusion turns out to be an insight into what may be a ÒdeeperÓ
reality: as when a room in the
LavinsÕ house in Belly Rave appears to be Òa corner of a surrealist hellÓ (ch.
6, p. 33) or when Mundin thinks of G.A.L. as Òsome huge and helpless vegetarian
beast, harried by sharp-toothed little carnivoresÓÑMundin and his allies,
including the Òthree titans of financeÓ that he sees momentarily as Òpredacious
jungle animalsÓ (ch. 17, p. 111).