First published 1972. Sidgwick and Jackson paperback, 1979, pp 188, c.77,000 words.
Imagine Woody Allen in his heyday, in Manhattan or Annie Hall say: New Yorker through and through, neurotic, Jewish, intellectual. This is pretty much David Selig, this book’s protagonist. Only he is a bit less successful than Wood Allen characters, in fact he is barely scraping a living. Oh yes, there is one other thing that is different, he is telepathic. Now in his forties, his gift, curse, or superpower is in decline. He isn’t able to tune into other’s thoughts in the way he used to. He is dying inside.
It’s a great premiss, and Silverberg handles it beautifully. What would you do if you could peer inside everyone’s heads and see what they are thinking? You might get some answers that you don’t want. Does that person really love you, like you or fancy you? Could be useful; it would save wasting time trying to develop a relationship that has no chance of success. Selig uses his talent this way. What you might also do is make yourself a fortune: hang around Wall Street and pick up some hot tips, or how about poker, or doing a mind reading stage show? Selig doesn’t seem terribly interested. He briefly tries the stock broking trade but is no good at it and finds it dull. He actually scrapes a very meagre living which is mostly to do with his intellectual interests, which are highbrow.
Silverberg has a lot of fun with name dropping dead-white-males. By the fourth page we’ve had Yeats, Mahler, Joyce and Beckett (‘Ah yes, the good Samuel, always ready with a word or two of bleak comfort.’ [p8].) Kafka, Huxley, Bosch, El Greco, Proust and Aeschylus have all been name-checked by page twenty-nine. He even gives us an undergraduate-style term paper on Kafka comparing The Castle with The Trial.
During the course of the book we get flashbacks of key moments from Selig’s past. All those little stories that make him what he has become. Sometimes he tries to hold back from reading someone’s mind, particularly with girlfriends. It distorts the relationship, he feels. He also tries to avoid anyone finding out about his gift, which has its complications too.
Mostly the book is written in the first person, entirely from Selig’s perspective. Just occasionally there is a disconcerting switch to the third person, e.g. in chapters sixteen and twenty. This was no doubt deliberate and seems to indicate some close examination of his gift by an outsider.
There are also undercurrents from the world at large. Political events can sometimes break through into everyday life. Most notably here is the assassination of President Kennedy. Perhaps Selig’s superpower is a metaphor for The United States’ reign as superpower and moral arbiter: America is dying inside.
This is a very clever and very well written book. It is both highly entertaining and thought provoking.
Wikipedia biography of Silverberg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Silverberg
Wikipedia summary of the book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_Inside
Others’ reviews of the book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/968902.Dying_Inside?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=mApxNA17G4&rank=1
© William John Graham, February 2024