Dying Inside
Ratings21
Average rating3.5
I didn't like this as much as I did when I read it 30+ years ago. There are elements of misogyny and racism in the story and the main character is selfish and emotionally closed off in a way that makes his telepathy seem hard to credit. It's a great idea, but in practice, the character generates no sympathy and it's hard to care a great deal about his loss of a capability he never had the grace to use for anything but selfish objectives.
Very dated 1970s sci fi, written well, kinda fascinating, kinda tediously offensive. Overall, I did enjoy it, (oddly?!), though this basically failed ALL social justice tests of the modern era. David Selig, the protagonist, is a sexist, racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic loser and caricature of the neurotic 1970s New Yorker. He's a lonely misanthrope. Oh yeah, and he can read minds. Which lets him mostly confirm his misanthropy: everyone around him is ALSO mostly a hideous, anti-human caricature of whatever group he associates them with.
The threadbare plot is that Selig is slowly and mysteriously losing his telepathic abilities. There are long, loong meditations on mortality and Fine Literature. There is an acid trip. There are loooots of voyeur-type sex scenes. There is some Freud. It's 1970s New York!
Anyway, despite all of the above, I won't lie: I kinda dug this, man. I was hip to it. Is that what they say? I dunno. It was so richly atmospheric about a specific time and place; I could practically SMELL the pot, I could SEE Columbia's campus and the gritty height-of-crime streets. I also spent most of the book kinda thinking I was in cahoots with Silverberg: yeah, this Selig guy is a real asshole, eh? I also kinda like reading very dated sci fi; it makes me wonder about how dated OUR books (and tweets and social media fads) will be in 30-40 years time. Ursula LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven was also super fun in its super datedness.
Also, Peter Sarsgaard in his late 70s Milgram beard should definitely play Selig. Though, oh God, never make this into a movie.
Possibly 3.5. I'm not sure why it has taken me so long to get round to reading this. I feel it is the sort of book I should have read when, in the early 80's, I was catching up on early/mid Roth and Heller, + Heinlein's “Stranger in a Strange Land” and Dick's “A Scanner Darkly”. It is not really science fiction. I found it a “bum trip” but a good read.
Story: 3 / 10
Characters: 6
Setting: 6
Prose: 5
Another directionless piece. Dying Inside isn't simply about a telepath: It is about a telepath that is losing its powers. Some books go too far into an idea. Basically, Dying Inside is the opposite of an origin story. There is very little forward action in the book: Most of it is a retrospective and a lot of irrelevant, contextual information as well. For example, there is one chapter entirely composed of an essay the main character ghostwrites. Certainly, it shows how he makes a living. However, those 10 pages (5% of the book) could have been better spent (or simply removed).
Not recommended (for anybody: Well, telepaths only).