A Good British Comedy Goes Awry

Michael Frayn, Skios: A Novel

Michael Frayn is a writer who makes other writers jealous, because he can dip into new forms easily and often. Though he made his name as a playwright, and his Noises Off is standard repertory for regional and educational theatre, he has also written highly successful, award-winning novels and nonfiction. (As far as I know, he’s ducked poetry.) After ten years away from novels, he returns with a farce whose noble ambition perhaps exceeds its capacity.

London playboy Oliver Fox hates himself and his reputation, and already regrets the weekend rendezvous he’s arranged with a girl he hardly knows. At the baggage claim on the Greek resort island of Skios, he steals the luggage, and the life, of Dr. Norman Wilfred. It seems Dr. Wilfred is committed to speak at a prestigious but shady philanthropic foundation. Oliver’s natural charm wins over wealthy Americans, but he will soon have to deliver a lecture on a topic he knows nothing about.

Elsewhere on the island, Dr. Norman Wilfred can’t find his luggage, his connections, or anything that brought him to Greece. A strange, inarticulate cabbie has dropped him at a decaying holiday villa with an emotionally unstable co-ed, and calling the foundation’s desk just leaves him trapped among goats. As he grows increasingly desperate, he starts to question everything on which he’s built his life, and whether this strange, pretty woman might not be the salvation he needs.

This book starts as a traditional British comedy of manners. In one plotline, Oliver digs himself a hole he knows he can’t get out of, yet he enjoys the attention (and the pretty coordinator) so much that he can’t stop himself. In the other plot, Dr. Wilfred’s Oxbridge pretensions slowly unravel. A primal, lusty caveman lurks beneath his cultured restraints, but the woman he now loves doesn’t share his passions, much less understand. Jane Austen lovers would approve.

But this is Michael Frayn, and anyone familiar with his work knows he loves to watch lies unravel. Over the course of two hot Mediterranean nights, people pin their hopes on the air, then watch everything fall down around them again. Angry declamations lead to heady cross-island pursuits. Jilted lovers, thought long gone, suddenly reappear. Secrets prove impossible to conceal, and someone pushes Dr. Wilfred to reclaim his life, even though he no longer wants it back.

The giddy pace and emotionally intense storyline feel like they would work on stage or screen. The book is fast-paced, and you can read it in two evenings, but prose puts a limit on something like this. Specifically, where a movie or play drags audiences along and forces them to keep up, readers can put the book down and ask themselves questions. Farce doesn’t do well answering questions. It relies on an audience that remains, in some way, permanently confused.

In pursuit of that, as we approach the end, the dramatis personae takes a quantum leap. People briefly mentioned in early chapters suddenly become major players in the story. A gentle, intimate comedy suddenly has a cast of thousands, all of whom talk past each other. Roger Ebert would call this an Idiot Plot, a story of epic misunderstandings that could easily resolve if one person told the truth. That is, if anybody else were listening.

Which is a shame, because the early chapters are quite good. They contain deep psychological insights and complex cantilevered motivations, all for characters so complex that they can’t understand themselves. We laugh good-naturedly with these characters, at first, because we know them better than they know themselves. They remind us of people we all know, the kind of people who could benefit from a long, solemn conversation with their own bathroom mirror.

Perhaps Frayn is dissatisfied with subtle character humor. Perhaps a writer who made his name slipping philosophical insights into panicky farces thought he needed the big laughs to sell the conclusion. Even he knows how confused the product winds up looking, since he includes a chapter explaining how this story would end in an ordinary farce, right before he suddenly swerves, giving us a conclusion that has little to do with everything that came before.

This should be such a good book. It’s insightful, funny, and rueful, right up to the moment where it implodes. I enjoyed the early chapters, and thought perhaps Frayn was bringing back an older form of gentle but surgical comedy. Then, in the clinch, it turns into stampeding entropy. So close, and yet so far away.

Rebuilding Phil Dick Wholesale—a True Story

David F. Dufty, How to Build an Android: The True Story of Philip K. Dick's Robotic Resurrection

The Philip K. Dick Android—a collaboration between private roboticist David Hanson and a team of intelligence researchers at the University of Memphis—gained great notoriety when it debuted in 2003. People jockeyed for a chance to speak with it for just one or two minutes. Audiences cheered when it said something unpredictable, profound, or even hurtful. Though rudimentary, viewers glimpsed in “Phil” a possible shape of their future.

Then, in 2005, bound for its highest profile gig yet, the android vanished.

Author David F. Dufty, now an Australian government researcher, was present in Memphis for the android’s bizarre life, and even stranger disappearance. Though not a participant, Dufty knew the research team well enough to recount a thorough insider’s perspective. And though he swears he has inserted not one word of fiction, this heady blend of computer science, mechanical engineering, psychology, and art has more twists than PKD’s legendary novels.

Art Graesser, founder of Memphis’ Institute of Intelligence Studies, dedicated his life to understanding and recreating the rational mind. David Hanson, a Dallas graduate student and entrepreneur, felt it didn’t matter how intelligent Artificial Intelligence became if humans couldn’t feel comfortable interacting with it. The two found kindred spirits in each other, and together opened the door to one of modern technology’s strangest and most exciting enterprises.

The decision to build an android in PKD’s likeness was extremely meta. An android image of a writer who envisioned a world where people wondered if they were androids? Really? Then they displayed it in an illusion of the house in which PKD came to believe all reality was an illusion. Dick, a paranoid amphetamine addict with a gregarious temperament and a flair for the dramatic, could not have choreographed a better science fiction spectacle.

Perhaps he did choreograph it. Dufty does not assume readers recognize PKD’s strange, sometimes opaque writings, and walks us through many of Dick’s recurrent themes. Among the most important, PKD believed that intelligent machines were not only inevitable, but imminent. But intelligence was nothing, a parlor trick. We would only know an android by its failure of empathy, or what we could call “humanity.”

Immersed as he was in Cold War hysteria, amplified by his drug habit and countercultural ties, Dick believed he was subject to constant surveillance. This paranoia, with strong anti-state overtones, pervades his work, making him a perennial favorite of libertarian types. But as he came to believe in a machine intelligence dominating all apparent reality, his visions, and his fiction, progressively blurred the line between science and metaphysics.

So it makes sense that PKD could have planned his own resurrection as a remarkably lifelike machine. Even the fact that “Phil” regularly appeared with his scalp off, showing his complex inner workings, supports such a paradox. How better to soothe the masses, and prevent them fearing they would be exposed as androids, then to expose yourself first? See, people? I’m nothing like you. You’re safe. Stop asking questions and go about your day.

Popular science fiction has feared the collapsing gap between man and machine. Consider The Terminator or the revamped Battlestar Galactica. In mass media, when we can’t tell people from devices, we assume the devices will prove predatory. Dick dared suggest the issue wouldn’t be so cut and dried. Who’s to say the machines wouldn’t have more to fear from humanity? So, like one of his own replicants, the Philip K. Dick android escaped.

By no means was the android an unqualified success. Only the face and head were articulated; the body was basically a mannequin. Its speech recognition technology was vulnerable to even slight interference. Worse, because PKD left a massive corpus of publications and interview transcripts, the language generation software could hit a recursive loop, lapsing into a trance or spouting inane, interminable monologues. It required constant human supervision.

But it also came closer than any artificial device, before or since, to bridging the gap between humans and our creations. It substantially disproved two generations of technological philosophy, which thought humans would fear machines that proved too lifelike; indeed, people psychologically imbued it with human traits it didn’t yet have. People wanted to believe this was the reborn visage of a unique, cultic novelist.

Dufty seamlessly merges journalism, science, and literary criticism in a history of one of recent technology’s most remarkable events. He makes us dream of what seemed possible just a few years ago. And he makes us hope we might live to see those possibilities once again.

On a related topic:
Why Cleverbot Proves Computers Should Remain Stupid

Amazon.com, a Blues Mystery, and the Tiger That Whimpered

Eyre Price, Blues Highway Blues

Amazon.com sells more media than anyone, and has cornered the e-book market. But apparently that isn’t enough for the Bezos Bunch, who for the last two or three years have tried to make their mark in dead tree publishing, too. Their latest attempt is Thomas & Mercer, an imprint specializing in mysteries and thrillers. I’m sad to say they’re off to an inauspicious start.

Deep in hock to the mob, washed-up music mogul Daniel Erickson raids his safe in his Malibu home. Only, his safe is bare. Instead, he finds a one-track CD warning that, to reclaim his money and his soul, Daniel must begin his search at Robert Johnson’s famous crossroads. With two enforcers on his trail, Daniel begins an odyssey along Highway 61, the road at the nexus of America’s blues heritage.

Perhaps debut novelist Eyre Price feared he might never get to publish another book. That would explain why he overstuffs this volume with material that, separated out and treated with the care each part deserves, could have made three or four very fine novels. As it stands, Price has so many irons in the fire that none achieves maturity. Perhaps if he respected his material more, I might finish reading with something beyond a shrug.

Price starts well, with a darkly comic premise that combines his love of music with a noir thriller. His gallows humor and fine ear for dialogue make for interesting characters in absurd but plausible situations. And early on, when he swings from bleak comedy to shocking scenes of casual cruelty, Price seems almost Shakespearean. Price sets himself a high standard in the early pages.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t maintain that standard. Over a hundred pages in, our protagonist Daniel picks up a mysterious hitchhiker who does a terrible job concealing his secret identity. For a guy who claims to know his blues, Daniel really, really misses the obvious. Moreover, this stranger introduces an element of the supernatural—a quarter of the way through the book—that upsets the balance and changes the tone of the story.

Nor is this the only clue Daniel fails to notice. Daniel isn’t a dummy. More than once, he stops the narrative to lecture other characters, and by implication us, on why Howlin’ Wolf beats Elvis, how Stax Records had more integrity than Sun, and why Mardi Gras ain’t New Orleans’ beating heart. Yet repeatedly, strangers dump clues in his lap, and he sleeps through them. I wanted to grab Daniel’s lapels and shout at him to just pay attention already.

Price keeps introducing subplots, many of which I recognize from elsewhere. When a local homicide detective and an FBI agent clash over jurisdiction, for instance, and begin a dragnet for Daniel, I notice two problems. One, there’s no jurisdictional problem. Since Daniel is wanted for no crimes in the detective’s city, the detective has no claim. Also, the agent sounds just like Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive.

Price also shows no understanding of criminal business: loan sharks seldom kill defaulters. The dead don’t pay interest. No criminal enterprise would pursue a target from Vegas to Malibu to Memphis and beyond; it’s too expensive and risky. Any enforcers that left as many bodies, and thus as many liabilities, as these Moron Twins, would quickly find themselves wearing cement overshoes. Price creates a Mafia seemingly run by posing teenage shoplifters.

These increasingly complicated thriller boilerplates never quite coalesce into a narrative. I don’t see the story so much as the sources Price quarries. Is this a cops-and-robbers chase? A mob comedy? An introspective mystic musical? Yes, all this and more. Like a sleeper couch, these various components combine in absolute discomfort. And Price’s attempts to integrate everything leave visible authorial fingerprints all over the story.

Price simply tries to do too much, and in the process, does little justice to any of his story components. Every time I turn the page, I see the zygote of another good story. Yet none of Price’s many, many ideas comes into its own. I hope he gets the chance to publish another book, because he deserves the opportunity to achieve his potential.

And I hope Amazon, if it wants to play in the big publishers’ sandbox, gets a little more discerning in its selection process. Maxwell Perkins might have midwifed this book into a critical and commercial stunner. With its money and its market might, Amazon could fill that role for new writers. Here’s hoping they start doing so. Soon.

Church, State, and the Almghty Dollar—a Defense

My friend Duane, whom I trust and admire although we disagree on some topics, posted the picture on the right this week on his Facebook page. Duane, who calls himself “antireligion,” was unambiguous in his purpose: “If they can't afford the tax then they can cease to exist. That would be fine by me.” Because Facebook updates don’t permit complex multipart debate, indulge me as I lay out three reasons why I think non-religious people should disagree with this thesis.

1. The Giver of Values. In American tax policy, religious houses are equal to colleges, fine arts organizations, scientific research laboratories, and organizations for prevention of cruelty to children and animals. These contrast with businesses, like department stores and heavy industry, which exist to turn a profit and a dividend for investors. By contrast, the above charities exist to do not what is profitable, but what is right.

Real life tells us we often do the right thing only at cost to ourselves. Dan Ariely has scientifically demonstrated what most of us know instinctively, that when profit enters the picture, it creates (occasionally strong) disincentives to do what is right. Therefore, if religious houses have to pay the same taxes as commercial enterprises, it would change the system of values at their heart. I suggest Duane would have no problem with this.

But play this out fully. Religious houses exist because they believe God or the gods provide an objective system of right and wrong. God is the giver of values. The state, in forcing religious houses to change their business model, requires them to adopt a new set of values. The state, in essence, usurps the role of God. And if the state usurps that role for churches, what’s to stop it from usurping that role for everybody?

2. Shifting Ground. If America had always subjected religious houses to property and other taxes at the same rate as private enterprise, maintaining that position would be value neutral. But they haven’t, and it’s not. If a groundswell of opinion allowed American lawmakers to change the values behind our tax code, well, a secularist like Duane might not mind. But that would set a precedent he would not like.

History records that American values can shift very quickly. Consider the changes in racial politics two generations ago, or the changes in sexual politics right now. Statistics indicate that American religious feeling is at a low ebb now, but this has happened before. Maybe all we need is another Jonathan Edwards to whip up strong feelings, and Duane could find himself outnumbered by a new ascendant majority.

Our Founding Fathers placed limits on popular sovereignty because they feared that a “Tyrannical Majority” would use sheer numbers to silence opposition. (Then they passed the Three-Fifths Compromise. Don’t overthink things.) They feared a resurgence of Greek democracy, which was little better organized than a street gang. An idea’s popularity is not enough to change our political structure.

Even if my ideas reign right now, shifting ground could put me in the minority quickly. Thus, I must never use my ascendance to limit others’ freedoms. Indeed, in a free society, I have a personal imperative to defend the freedoms of those with whom I disagree. I think Duane’s opinion is flat damn wrong, but even if I didn’t enjoy spirited debate with a friend, I have personal stakes in ensuring nobody could stop him speaking his mind.

3. Don’t Feed the Bears. Right-wing Christian economist Larry Burkett warned in 1991 that secularists would suggest exactly the action Duane has suggested, for exactly the reason he suggests it. Other conspiracy theorists may have voiced the same paranoia earlier, I don’t know. From a simple strategic position, it makes little sense to play into the hands of those who want to become martyrs to the system.

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Let me say, though, what I don’t mean. I don’t consider all positions equal, or think freedom has no constraints. Any position that limits others’ freedom has overstepped its bounds, and we must make sure they are constrained. For instance, those who use faith in God to justify shooting abortionists or bombing mosques are not exercising religious freedom. They are criminals, who should be punished.

I only mean that personal, or even public, opinion, is no justification to change our policies or enforce value positions on any organization. There are many opinions out there that I find odious. And I intend to defend them to the utmost of my strength.

A Secular Gospel for the Sickened Soul

Phil Stutz & Barry Michels, The Tools: Transform Your Problems into Courage, Confidence, and Creativity

Hollywood head-shrink Barry Michels, with his mentor Phil Stutz, thinks we have made some very serious mistakes. Instead of addressing these mistakes in the present, psychiatry as an institution fixates on the past, keeping the wounds of yesteryear open long after they should have healed. But after nearly half a century of hard-fought practice, they believe they have fine-tuned the tools to move forward, and are ready to share them with you.

Using a blend of creative visualization, introspection, and muscular will, the authors lay out five simple steps ordinary people can use to overcome the limitations we set ourselves. Like Carl Jung or Joseph Campbell, Stutz & Michels believe we exist to do something specific, something we haven’t discovered yet. Until we surmount our own attempts to sabotage our purpose, we will live diminished lives. But we have the power to reverse our spiral and reclaim ourselves.

Some people spend their lives fretting; the authors want them to practice gratitude. Some live in fear of external judgment; the authors want them to find their own authority deep within. Some (like me) build walls to keep ourselves in our tiny Comfort Zones; the authors want us to embrace pain as a pathway to the rewards we fear. To do this, we rely not on our own limited strengths, but on the Higher Forces that color our universe.

The authors’ overtly spiritual approach seems counterintuitive in today’s medical settings. They admit it may require some struggle (Michels describes being raised atheist, and resisting belief in forces that cannot be quantified). But they bolster their techniques with case studies, philosophy, and wheels-on-the-ground evidence. They make a persuasive case that their techniques deserve at least a fair shake if we really want to move forward in life.

But pause briefly on the spiritual aspect. Stutz & Michels perform elaborate verbal gymnastics to avoid getting pinned to a single spiritual tradition. They insist that people of any spiritual heritage can use their techniques equally; even atheists can believe in their Higher Forces without attributing divine meaning to them. Yet the only spiritual heritage they directly cite is the Judeo-Christian one, quoting the Hebrew Tanakh and the philosopher Kierkegaard.

If you removed the New Age lingo from their techniques, and subbed in specifically Christian terminology, it wouldn’t leave a scar. Unfortunately for the “spiritual but not religious” set, the more we learn about the human psyche, the more our understanding accords with that of the Apostle Paul and St. Augustine. Despite lingering myths of post-Enlightenment rationalism, we now know humans are not beings of pure science; we cannot be quantified so easily.

Consider: if we walk this earth for a purpose, then this earth itself has a purpose. If we become whole when we surrender our own ego and live in the likeness of the Higher Forces, then we were perforce created in the image of the Higher Forces. Graphing the parallels between Stutz and Michels’ psychology and Western religious tradition would be long and tedious, yet observant readers will note that the correlations are most certainly present.

Therefore, let’s say it: psychotherapy is a religious pursuit. We humans are worth saving because we know we’re finite, and we know we’re redeemable because our infinite universe opens doors it could slam in our faces. Jesus and Jeremiah shared many of the authors’ beliefs, from a benevolent universe to disdain for the priesthood. Even without a specifically embodied Savior, Stutz and Michels pitch a path to salvation that any Christian pastor would recognize.

Stutz and Michels barely stop short of proclaiming that “we are justified by grace through faith.” I’m not adding to their message, only clarifying where they play coy.

The authors also show no false modesty about their technique’s larger potential. In the final chapter, they assert that the same problems which plague us as individuals characterize our society as well. Like a human spirit, our social spirit lives under a cloud, separated from the Higher Forces. And they dare us to imagine a society that, together, uses their Tools to recapture the spiritual footing that makes healthy life and forward motion possible.

I recommend reading this book alongside Clinton & Springle, Christian therapists with a similar emphasis on spiritual reconciliation. Though the two pairs of authors overlap somewhat, they differ enough that the two parallel books make intense learning. Perhaps if enough readers recover the spirituality to make themselves well, we can see the improvement Stutz and Michels promise, with such bold chutzpah and learned panache.