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The sleep of reason
Perspectives
Book The sleep of reason
Umbrella Will Self. Bloomsbury, 2012. Pp 416. £18·99. ISBN 9781408832097 http://will-self.com
1220
Few books are capable of inducing tenderness for the messy whorlings of wretched flesh—the flaccid muscles, sour sweat, and “shitpacked crannies” of desperately sick patients. Will Self’s new novel—on the shortlist for the 2012 Man Booker Prize—is one such book. In Umbrella, Self catapults readers into a psychiatric hospital where Audrey Death has languished since 1918 after succumbing to the “sleeping sickness”, encephalitis lethargica. Like a broken umbrella, Audrey’s body and mind are “kyphotic”. In 1971, a psychiatrist, Zack Busner, administered L-dopa to Audrey and other patients, violently hurling them back to life— only to witness them rapidly pitched back to their former hells. Later, in 2010, Zack attempts to make sense of his chaotic life. Self’s prose flows between these storylines in a tsunami of consciousness, jettisoning conventions of punctuation, syntax, and spacing. This novel jumps around like a staccato dance, played against a disorientating cacophony of voices. Clearly, Self owes a literary debt to James Joyce, but the novel is also a tribute to such contrasting writers as Virginia Woolf and Henry Miller, while occasionally careering into the fantastical worlds of Lewis Carroll. Readers who throw themselves into the glossolalia of Self’s world will emerge exhilarated. Self is a physician’s novelist. This is not his first book to embrace a medical theme—in 2008, for instance, his book Liver portrayed a “liverish” London, with its alcohol-engorged organs and viral corruptions. Umbrella is also set in London, but its primary setting is the Friern Barnet Hospital (formerly known as the Middlesex County Pauper Lunatic Asylum at Colney Hatch), which is notorious for its “endless bloody corridors, a gas bracket only every thirty yards or so”, as one of Self’s characters
remarks. The Lancet even makes an appearance, as the medical journal that was making “terrific strides…with chemical therapies…How very quaint!” Self exudes a healthy respect for science. In 1956, C P Snow infamously complained that science and literature had split into two cultures, divided by a “gulf of mutual incomprehension”. Self somersaults across such chasms. He does his psychiatric homework, then imaginatively embodies parkinsonism.
“Readers who throw themselves into the glossolalia of Self’s world will emerge exhilarated.” The central happening in the novel is the epidemic of encephalitis lethargica that afflicted war-weary societies from 1915. The disease killed tens of thousands of people worldwide. Victims initially experienced symptoms of influenza, which could develop into hypersomnolence lasting decades. As one psychiatrist reported in 1926, “the severest cases lie in bed like a log or resemble a waxen image”. They could be “aroused to answer questions or to partake of food”, but quickly slipped back into a “profound sleep”. In the late 20th century there were still postencephalitic patients at Highlands Hospital in London’s Winchmore Hill. In 1969, however, it was discovered that a hypodermic kiss of L-dopa could awaken these Sleeping Beauties. In 1973, Oliver Sacks eloquently described his experiences of bringing patients with intractable, postencephalitic parkinsonism back to consciousness. There were downsides to the drug, though: while L-dopa dramatically “unfroze” patients, the results were unpredictable and patients often relapsed in even more terrifying ways. This is the key dilemma of Umbrella: what is to be done with rambling minds and bodies? Audrey’s hands twist into
“claws that scrabble on the mounds of her thighs, back and forth, over and over, in a pattern that cannot really be a pattern—since it is never repeated”. Other patients twitch, grimace, snort, and “pant like worn out dogs”. They repeatedly sputter out the same words or phrases: “I can’t help it, Doctor… I can’t help it, I can’t help it, Doctor, I can’t… Doctor, I can’t, I-I-I-I-“. Their anguish is palatable, as they are “forced inwards by the raw mechanics of their loss of control”. Worlds collide in Self’s novel: the cloying mud of Flanders, the thumpthumping of Woolwich Arsenal, the procession of umbrellas pacing through London’s streets, and Friern Barnet Hospital where bodies seem weighed down by the air, but can suddenly be propelled into the future or sucked back into the past. Conscious and unconscious worlds mingle seamlessly. Even physical environments cohere with emotional ones. The steam from a kettle, for instance, condenses on the ceiling before falling: “It’s raining inside”. The room weeps. A decade ago, Self could be heard disparaging the Man Booker Prize: “what could you possibly win, apart from cash and the kind of frankly transitory and ephemeral applause of certain kinds”, he said in a 2002 interview. Perhaps he still agrees with that sentiment, but Umbrella is a novel that fulfils his ambition to write literature that makes readers “exponentially increase their involvement with the world or with literature”. Martin Amis once praised Self for being “a very cruel writer— thrillingly heartless, terrifyingly brainy”. Self’s braininess still incites heady admiration, but the cruelty is gone. An unsentimental fellowship of vulnerability pervades this novel.
Joanna Bourke [email protected]
www.thelancet.com Vol 380 October 6, 2012
Book The sleep of reason
Umbrella Will Self. Bloomsbury, 2012. Pp 416. £18·99. ISBN 9781408832097 http://will-self.com
1220
Few books are capable of inducing tenderness for the messy whorlings of wretched flesh—the flaccid muscles, sour sweat, and “shitpacked crannies” of desperately sick patients. Will Self’s new novel—on the shortlist for the 2012 Man Booker Prize—is one such book. In Umbrella, Self catapults readers into a psychiatric hospital where Audrey Death has languished since 1918 after succumbing to the “sleeping sickness”, encephalitis lethargica. Like a broken umbrella, Audrey’s body and mind are “kyphotic”. In 1971, a psychiatrist, Zack Busner, administered L-dopa to Audrey and other patients, violently hurling them back to life— only to witness them rapidly pitched back to their former hells. Later, in 2010, Zack attempts to make sense of his chaotic life. Self’s prose flows between these storylines in a tsunami of consciousness, jettisoning conventions of punctuation, syntax, and spacing. This novel jumps around like a staccato dance, played against a disorientating cacophony of voices. Clearly, Self owes a literary debt to James Joyce, but the novel is also a tribute to such contrasting writers as Virginia Woolf and Henry Miller, while occasionally careering into the fantastical worlds of Lewis Carroll. Readers who throw themselves into the glossolalia of Self’s world will emerge exhilarated. Self is a physician’s novelist. This is not his first book to embrace a medical theme—in 2008, for instance, his book Liver portrayed a “liverish” London, with its alcohol-engorged organs and viral corruptions. Umbrella is also set in London, but its primary setting is the Friern Barnet Hospital (formerly known as the Middlesex County Pauper Lunatic Asylum at Colney Hatch), which is notorious for its “endless bloody corridors, a gas bracket only every thirty yards or so”, as one of Self’s characters
remarks. The Lancet even makes an appearance, as the medical journal that was making “terrific strides…with chemical therapies…How very quaint!” Self exudes a healthy respect for science. In 1956, C P Snow infamously complained that science and literature had split into two cultures, divided by a “gulf of mutual incomprehension”. Self somersaults across such chasms. He does his psychiatric homework, then imaginatively embodies parkinsonism.
“Readers who throw themselves into the glossolalia of Self’s world will emerge exhilarated.” The central happening in the novel is the epidemic of encephalitis lethargica that afflicted war-weary societies from 1915. The disease killed tens of thousands of people worldwide. Victims initially experienced symptoms of influenza, which could develop into hypersomnolence lasting decades. As one psychiatrist reported in 1926, “the severest cases lie in bed like a log or resemble a waxen image”. They could be “aroused to answer questions or to partake of food”, but quickly slipped back into a “profound sleep”. In the late 20th century there were still postencephalitic patients at Highlands Hospital in London’s Winchmore Hill. In 1969, however, it was discovered that a hypodermic kiss of L-dopa could awaken these Sleeping Beauties. In 1973, Oliver Sacks eloquently described his experiences of bringing patients with intractable, postencephalitic parkinsonism back to consciousness. There were downsides to the drug, though: while L-dopa dramatically “unfroze” patients, the results were unpredictable and patients often relapsed in even more terrifying ways. This is the key dilemma of Umbrella: what is to be done with rambling minds and bodies? Audrey’s hands twist into
“claws that scrabble on the mounds of her thighs, back and forth, over and over, in a pattern that cannot really be a pattern—since it is never repeated”. Other patients twitch, grimace, snort, and “pant like worn out dogs”. They repeatedly sputter out the same words or phrases: “I can’t help it, Doctor… I can’t help it, I can’t help it, Doctor, I can’t… Doctor, I can’t, I-I-I-I-“. Their anguish is palatable, as they are “forced inwards by the raw mechanics of their loss of control”. Worlds collide in Self’s novel: the cloying mud of Flanders, the thumpthumping of Woolwich Arsenal, the procession of umbrellas pacing through London’s streets, and Friern Barnet Hospital where bodies seem weighed down by the air, but can suddenly be propelled into the future or sucked back into the past. Conscious and unconscious worlds mingle seamlessly. Even physical environments cohere with emotional ones. The steam from a kettle, for instance, condenses on the ceiling before falling: “It’s raining inside”. The room weeps. A decade ago, Self could be heard disparaging the Man Booker Prize: “what could you possibly win, apart from cash and the kind of frankly transitory and ephemeral applause of certain kinds”, he said in a 2002 interview. Perhaps he still agrees with that sentiment, but Umbrella is a novel that fulfils his ambition to write literature that makes readers “exponentially increase their involvement with the world or with literature”. Martin Amis once praised Self for being “a very cruel writer— thrillingly heartless, terrifyingly brainy”. Self’s braininess still incites heady admiration, but the cruelty is gone. An unsentimental fellowship of vulnerability pervades this novel.
Joanna Bourke [email protected]
www.thelancet.com Vol 380 October 6, 2012