Bad times of a telepath
4 stars
The early 70s were a comedown. Not for me personally, I was only 9 when this book came out, and life was sweet. But Silverberg offers us a pretty bleak artefact from 1972. It tells the story of a telepath who is tormented by his ability to read minds. It wasn't always this way. His gift had previously been the source of ecstasy for the protagonist David Selig. But as he approaches middle age, it's all fading away.
Selig also provides a bleak account of the supposed golden age he has lived through, the 1960s. There is a neat summary of the worst year of that decade, 1968. It was the year of atrocities in Vietnam and the assassination of Martin Luther King. Selig gets a telepathic glimpse in the mind of Richard Nixon as his motorcade rolls by, and it's as bad as you'd expect. When his girlfriend experiments …
The early 70s were a comedown. Not for me personally, I was only 9 when this book came out, and life was sweet. But Silverberg offers us a pretty bleak artefact from 1972. It tells the story of a telepath who is tormented by his ability to read minds. It wasn't always this way. His gift had previously been the source of ecstasy for the protagonist David Selig. But as he approaches middle age, it's all fading away.
Selig also provides a bleak account of the supposed golden age he has lived through, the 1960s. There is a neat summary of the worst year of that decade, 1968. It was the year of atrocities in Vietnam and the assassination of Martin Luther King. Selig gets a telepathic glimpse in the mind of Richard Nixon as his motorcade rolls by, and it's as bad as you'd expect. When his girlfriend experiments with LSD it causes a psychic explosion which immediately destroys their relationship.
In fact, Selig is a nasty character, neurotic and cruel, unappealing even when he is aware of his own shortcomings. What makes this book good (along with its historical cadence) is Silverberg's own gifts as a wordsmith. It's beautifully written. The words fly off the page and Selig's story is compelling even if his personality is repellent.
The bleak take on the 60s also reminds me a little of the film "Withnail and I", where the characters are desperate to get out of the decade with their sanity intact, and only one of them makes it. "Dying Inside" is not nearly as much fun, but it is a very good book.