Interior Mystery & Meditation in The Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing

What might be the most striking introspection in any book I've recently read is the way Doris Lessing in The Memoirs of a Survivor makes her character withdraw so far inward that a rich, mysterious, and meditative space opens up and becomes as much a reality for the reader and the protagonist as the dystopic reality on the streets.

In Memoirs, society has completely broken down, the few with money have left, and the rest of the population lives like squirrels in what's left of a big city, holed away in empty rooms and fearful of marauders and gangs looking for loot or to create clans to survive.

What is so striking is that Lessing never blows this up into melodramatic proportions--no zombies or futuristic, crazy technological controls or controllers--but rather she shows people trying to live as normally as possible, adapting, taking heart in the tiny securities and privacy left to them, while brooding insanity creeps just beyond the conscious borders of prolonged fear.

Because of her subtle craft, we can already imagine how easily our delicate society could unwind.

I sat waiting quietly in my living-room, knowing that she was asleep, exactly as one does with a small child. I did a little mending for her, washed and ironed her clothes. But mostly I sat and looked at that wall and waited. I could not help thinking that to have a child with me, just as the wall was beginning to open itself up, would be a nuisance , and in fact she and her animal were very much in the way (23-4).

Meditation and turning inward is not always easy, especially when forced to do it within the worsening climate on the physical plane. Lessing plumbs the psyche of her protagonist and dredges up the violence, the trauma that tucks itself away in the darkened crannies of our consciousness that most of us leave unexplored from birth to death.

It was about then I understood that the events on the pavements and what went on between me and Emily might have a connection with what I saw on my visits behind the wall.

Moving through the tall quiet white walls, as impermanent as theatre sets, knowing that the real inhabitant was there, always there just behind the next wall, to be glimpsed on the opening of the next door or the one beyond that, I came on a room--long, deep-ceilinged, once a beautiful room--which I recognised, which I knew (from where, though?), and it was in such disorder. I felt sick and was afraid. The place looked as if savages had been in it; as if soldiers had bivouacked there. The chairs and sofas had been deliberately slashed and jabbed with bayonets or knives, stuffing was spewing out everywhere, brocade curtains had been ripped off the brass rods and left in heaps. The room might have been used as a butcher's shop: there were feathers, blood, bits of offal. I began cleaning it. I laboured, used many buckets of hot water, scrubbed, mended. I opened tall windows to an eighteenth-century garden where plants grew in patters of squares among low hedges (40).

Behind the wall the other world calls our protagonist, and she explores the rooms, tidies them, and searches for the owner of the place. This is the one area she can control as the outside, real world spirals into further chaos and danger.

Lessing seems to be asking us, Is this the kind of catastrophe it takes to seek answers and inward 

credit: Elke Wetzig (elya)

healing? In a way, James Gould Cozzens shows us another side of this equation with his flabby protagonist securing as much material wealth as possible in the peculiar, apocalyptic novel, Castaway.

But Lessing's is much more ambitious in terms of dystopian novels because it seriously examines the deteriorating relationships and imagines society in a way we normally don't. Memoirs has been called "A visionary's extraordinary history of the future." Cozzens, equally entertaining and through-provoking, strikes a simpler chord by enclosing his character in the sprawling, empty shopping complex, leaving untouched the trickier aspects of maintaining an apocalyptic narrative.

The rapidly deteriorating situation seen out of our character's ground floor apartment window becomes even more frightening. Gangs of children camp on the street, light fires, and males stare down each other to gain prominence over the pack of stick-wielding kids. We worry for the child, Emily, and her pet beast, Hugo, as Emily wishes to join the kids.

Gerald, the leader of a large pack of wild kids, sets up an amazing system of collecting discarded goods from the old world, when society had order and structure, and to reassemble, or disassemble for their parts all the material goods that are no longer useful without electricity. What was for vanity, for desire, for want, becomes only important if it's needed to survive.

We sat on through the night quietly by our fire, waiting, listening. 

There was nothing to prevent one or all of us becoming victims at any moment. 

Nothing. Not the fact that Gerald, by himself or with a selection of the children, or even some of the children by themselves, might come down to visit us in the most normal way in the world. They brought us gifts. They brought flour and dried milk and eggs; sheets of polythene, cellotape, nails, tools of all kinds. They gave us fur rugs, coal, seeds, candles. They brought...the city around was almost empty, and all one had to do was to walk into unguarded buildings and warehouses and take what one fancied. But most of what was there were things no one would ever use again or want to: things about which, in a few years' time, if some survivor found them, he would have to ask, "What on earth could this have been for?" 

As these children did already. You would see them squatting down over a pile of greeting cards, a pink nylon fluted lampshade, a polystyrene garden dwarf, a book, or a record, turning them over and over: What was this for? What did they do with it? (208).

How easy it is to float along into the internal rooms beyond the wall, yet as the reader who carries none of the risk or burden of the actual scenario outside in the crumbled city often craves to get back to the action, to the terror that awaits a small old woman living out her days quietly in an apartment that has no security--a door that can be broken in, a ground floor window that can be smashed, and no real protectors or truly trustworthy people.

Despite the kindness of Gerald's pack, there is no safety. Not even the illusion of safety.

But these visits, these gifts, did not mean that in another mood, on another occasion, they would not kill. And because of a whim, a fancy, an impulse (208).

That mysterious interior that Lessing opens up becomes a call for us, who still live in stable societies and have the luxury to do such inward exploring, to realize the impermanence of our superficial lifestyles and equip ourselves internally as much as materially.

As a narrative, what makes Memoirs stand out is the spiritual and psychological layers that give a companionable depth to what would be, without that, another dystopian novel. The internal element allows us space to breathe, to think, to fear while lending a subtlety to the story that is missing in so many others.

Plight of the Modern Man in Castaway by James Gould Cozzens

By the end of James Gould Cozzens' Castaway, we see the plight of the modern Western man in all his solitude, surrounded by a mastered material abundance and heaps of time with which to enjoy it, yet the howling void within goes again disconsolate. In this way, the book might be thought of as a parable, but closer to approaching allegory.

It is also, in some ways, a retelling of Robinson Crusoe. There is an ominous footprint, after all, and it is never considered a signifier of hope or a mark from a potential friend.

Castaway was first published in 1934. The material satisfaction one might find today far surpasses what was available then, but the lesson is the same.

Opening the book, the reader finds a man only known as Mr. Lecky prowling the basement of a department store that we learn has nine floors loaded with everything any shopping mall in a major city would sell. But why is he there, and especially, why is he alone? No workers, no shoppers, the place is closed, and Mr. Lecky never once seriously considers leaving the place. We can only deduce something catastrophic has happened in the outside world, and there are not many survivors.

By the time Mr. Lecky has secured himself, has assured himself he's finally alone in the gigantic building, and all nine floors are of his kingdom, under his lordship, he finds himself miserable. The familiar (the department store) has become the unfamiliar (the department store unmanned, idle, eerie), and has become once again, with the help of a sleek apartment floor model with a completely furnished living room, bedroom, and dining room, familiar (as much as home away from home can be).

In his new living room, Lecky reads a book, "...doggedly, paragraph by paragraph, page by page" (105), because of the sketch of a naked woman on the cover. He assumes there must be something worth reading inside. With all his immediate needs satisfied, he figures he might really enjoy a book. He quickly tires of it. On the table are two bottles of witch hazel, which he'd heard a person could drink like alcohol, possibly.

 Outside it was as good as dark, and having got up and seen it, he came back; but he did not sit down or take his book again. He stood bemused, rubbing his chin. Finally he looked at the two bottles on the bureau (105).

And then after having tried a few sips of witch hazel:

It caused him nothing but a feeling of warmth in his stomach, so after a while, he would seem justified in drinking more, if he wished to, hoping to enjoy greater warmth (105).

That was the first lesson I learned in Microeconomics. If one candy bar brings us happiness, the instructor shouted out to us, then by that logic, two candy bars bring us even more happiness. And a third triples the happiness. Until eventually you puke (but he didn't mention that).

Never mind that Mr. Lecky has access to a store of shelves filled with books. Rows and rows of knowledge at his disposal. He could also reflect on what has happened, on what has marooned him in the department store. He could meditate. Develop a longer term plan. He could write about his experience. But quickly he becomes discontented when he's finished the several-days' tasks of securing his fortress.

Every possible good one could need for subsistence, and nearly every other invention to satisfy desires beyond what one needs to live is available, uncontested, and free to Mr. Lecky, yet after he secures his surroundings and hauls everything he'll require for the next few weeks to his stronghold, we see a man discomforted by his own self, by the silence, and by the lack of something as simple as needing a practical chore to do with his hands.

Cozzens leads us along with a slow, considerate prose style. Every consideration of Mr. Lecky is taken into account. Which way he turns, which way he looks, at what does he look, and all of his plans to fortify a section of the mall to secure himself should there prove to be somebody else lurking in one of the nine mega floors. This pushes the larger, circumstantial why and what-for questions further out of range, out of the way.

He learns how to use a gun, but only after a tedious run-through of every gun in the sporting goods section, where he tries to match the ammo with the circumference of the barrel. The reader is kept very close to Mr. Lecky's physical actions, and that effect ties our brains to the must-do, must-have survival mode of a man hunkering down like he's on a deserted island, except with every modern day material good and delight available.

Mr. Lecky had meant only to knock the cover off; but his sharp blow was inaccurate. The neck smashed, strewing glass splinters, syrup, and a few of the figs in a mess on counter and floor. Mr. Lecky was annoyed. Furthermore, he feared that bits of glass might have embedded themselves in the remaining fruit. Setting down his gun, he made a meticulous examination, for he believed that swallowing glass would surely kill him. Partly satisfied that he was not about to eat any, he began to pick the figs out, cautiously looking over each before thrusting it in his mouth. Once or twice the grating of the fine seeds on his teeth made him pause; but hunger urged him on. Setting down the empty bottle, he could think of nothing to fetch and eat next but a second ham (35).

The attention to detail, notably the panicked crunching of the fine seeds on his teeth, is a brilliant exhibit of how careful a man would be who knows there is no doctor on call or nearby, yet can barely contain his hunger.

Cozzens keeps the reader mired in each action, the smashing of a bottle, the taste of the food, the urge of the stomach, the phantom sound somewhere far off in the store. Mr. Lecky's senses might not be the greatest, but that's all he's got. We don't penetrate his mind deeply enough to get a reading on his beliefs or his past with anything more than a superficial glance or plain justification.

This style lends credibility to the earnestness of the narrative. It also invites the reader to chide Mr. Lecky on apparent missteps. It's very easy for the reader to get into the habit of thinking, "Well, you fool, why don't you do this, or that?" Or, "If I were in this situation, I'd certainly do this or that first." And Mr. Lecky's decisions and actions become shocking at points, which turns into reflection for the reader.

For writers who like to over explain their concept, the situation their character finds himself in, and what's at stake, Cozzens' Castaway is a lean example of how suspenseful a literary work can be by dialing back the speculation and sticking close to home to the character's actions. But that has to be done correctly, of course.

Cozzens has entered the reality of his Mr. Lecky with his own consciousness, and the decisions the character makes feels organic and justified by his short conclusions of why he must do one thing, like build a shelter, or another, like secure a lavatory. For Mr. Lecky's faults feel like his own, as does his miserable listlessness by the end.

James Gould Cozzens. Castaway. 1989. Elephant Paperbacks. 115 pages.