Dying Inside

I sometimes read like a starving man. I don't always notice the details, but I know when I'm satiated, if I'm satiated. The voracious style, as I like to call it, can be problematic at times. For example, I am rereading The Road by Cormac McCarthy. The book is dark. Really dark. I remembered the cannibalism, just not the quantity and the ubiquitousness. I remembered the theistic ruminations, just not their intensity. I am reading slower this time, being more methodical. I'm writing down the lines that jump out at me. (For example: "Where you've nothing else construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them." Crazy beautiful.) This particular rereading has the feel of the first time through. Perhaps its McCarthy. Perhaps its me.

I recently finished Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg. I took it down quickly, perhaps too quickly. It was given to me by a close friend. I am hesitant to read books recommended by close friends. What if I don't like it? Worse, what if I think it's rubbish? How do I tell this to someone who treasures the book so much? Yes, book recommendations can be a tricky thing. Dying Inside has that tricky feel to it.

The protagonist is David Selig. He can read minds. And he is slowly losing that power. I found the premise both rich and personal. Who hasn't dreamed of the possibilities of mindreading at one time or another? Who hasn't thought, perhaps a little guiltily, that maybe someone is reading their mind? I have done both, mostly as a child, but there are paranoid times when still I wonder. Silverberg does a tremendous job of writing an interior monologue for a character who has/had the ability to pick up on the interior monologues of others. Selig basically invites the reader to do what he does all the time, namely to tease out the innermost details of what makes us who we are. And his inner self, like yours, mine, is convoluted, insecure, and just trying to make it from day to day.

The book is full of allusions to "literature," by which I mean the type of stuff that Harold Bloom would canonize if society just let him categorize to his elitist little heart's delight. I caught a lot of the allusions, though I couldn't tell if they were mentioned to move the narrative along or to name drop. Selig too is a voracious reader, and he peppers his interior monologues with the aforementioned connections. But the character, with his vast repository of classical knowledge, does little more than mope. He is an older, more bitter Holden Caulfield who has the ability to read minds but does little with the ability other than spy, gripe, and lament his own insecurity. I couldn't stand The Catcher in the Rye, and I had that same terrible feeling for a good portion of Dying Inside. Fortunately it was short, and the author concludes with a slightly more redeeming feeling about mankind.

The human condition is ultimately what all narratives are about. Some lament, some celebrate, some ruminate, some plain and simply are there for laughs. The redeeming feature of Dying Inside is that while it spends an inordinate amount of time lamenting the human condition, it is ultimately a celebration of those very characteristics that make us human, that make us beautiful, and that make us fragile. The name-dropping, which I feared at the outset as a sort of intellectual masturbation, may in fact be a celebration of intellectual and cultural pleasure. The rampant insecurities explored ad nauseum by Selig take on a slightly more salvific connotation when he makes it clear to the reader that his insecurities are the very things that unite, not separate, him from the society in which he struggles to live.

This book is surely not for everyone. Those with an interest in deeply existential narratives will enjoy it immensely. Those who may want a glimpse into the psyche of Holden Caulfield at a later age may find it helpful. It is not, however, a quick summer read, and for the most part it is not a "feel good story." But it is the human condition at its most redeeming.