The Affirmation by Christopher Priest

 

“There was a duplication of myself involved, perhaps even a triplication.
There was I who was writing. There was I whom I could remember. And there was I of whom I wrote, the protagonist of the story.”
― Christopher Priest, The Affirmation

Among the most remarkable novels I’ve ever encountered. Here are the opening lines: “This much I know for sure: My name is Peter Sinclair. I am English and I am, or I was, twenty-nine years old. Already there is an uncertainty and my sureness recedes. Age is a variable; I am no longer twenty-nine.”

However, with each page we turn, the more we discover that, along with Peter’s age, nearly everything else is variable - other than the unfolding drama narrated at a slow pace in a rather flat voice by the brooding, morose Peter, a man who has recently lost his father, his girlfriend and his job as a chemist for a large pharmaceutical company, the surrounding people, places and things in his life repeatedly shift and glide in diverse and assorted combinations. Novel as jigsaw puzzle with all identical interlocking pieces. Put it together any way you like and watch the emerging picture change each time.

Sound extraordinary? It is extraordinary. So much so, rather than commenting on developing story line or overall plot, below are several pieces of the jigsaw taken from the opening chapters to serve as enticement to treat yourself to Christopher Priest’s out-of-this-world imagination as you read his tour-de-force novel. Looking at your own life may never be the same again.

Imagination is the Key - Peter escapes dirty, stinking, noisy London to a rundown, dilapidated secluded country cottage thanks to a friend of his father’s. For Peter, this is a time for contemplation and inwardness. Obliged to do some restoration, repair and painting in lieu of rent, Peter imagines what the rooms of the cottage will ultimately look like when restored. He completes one room with a final coat of white paint and is elated - what he had imagined for the room came to be realized. Ah, so it’s imagination first; realization second! With this insight, to bring a measure of order and clarity to his own life, Peter goes about imagining his past, sifting through his memories in a way that isn’t too rigid or pedantic on one side nor too wild and anarchic on the other.

Flash of Realization – Trying to remember all those details – things like your teachers and all the children in each of your classes in grade school along with the subjects you learned - and keep it all straight in your mind is nearly impossible. Peter makes a critical discovery – he should have to write it all down. Time to dig out that typewriter his older sister Felicity gave him the previous Christmas. Peter reflects: “I wrote because of an inner need, and that need was to create a clearer vision of myself, and in writing I became what I wrote.” And the more Peter writes, the more he recognizes a simple recounting of facts is insufficient; what he needs is story. Thus, Peter’s writing moves from nonfiction to fiction, a fictional autobiography distilling a “higher truth.”

New World; New Man – Creative juices flowing, imagination on fire, Peter invents a parallel world where England becomes Faiandland, London becomes Jethra, older sister Felicity becomes Kalia and girlfriend Gracia becomes Seri. To the south of Faiandland, there is a vast network of islands, each island an independent country. To all the inhabitants of Jethra and Peter’s protagonist, another Peter Sinclair, the islands signify wish and escape. Sitting at his typewriter in his white room, Peter thinks: “I had found myself, explained myself, and in a very personal sense of the word I had defined myself." Quite the transition for a man who spent years as a chemist for a pharmaceutical company!

Major Disruption - But then it happens - older sister Felicity pulls up with her car and beholds her brother living in the middle of filth, including a mountain of empty whisky bottles piled up in the backyard. Forever overly judgmental, Felicity eyes his white room as a complete garbage dump. Peter recoils: “She was perceiving it wrongly. I had learned how to write my manuscript by observing my white room. Felicity saw only narrow or actual truth. She was unreceptive to higher truth, to imaginative coherence, and she would certainly fail to understand the kinds of truth I told in my manuscript.” Felicity insists Peter leave the cottage and come live the clean life with her family. Peter acquiesces but resolves no one other than himself would ever read his manuscript.

Voyage to Dream Archipelago – Peter is the other Peter in his created world, on a ship south of Jethra. Now that he has won the lottery, he is headed for an island where he will undergo a surgical operation that will give him immortality. Quite a prize! However, the operation comes with a price: he will lose all his memory. Peter’s past will have to be reconstructed from the information he completes in a detailed questionnaire. Peter tells medical staff there is no need – just so happens he has a manuscript he wrote two summers ago containing his autobiography!

Again, these are mere snapshots from the narrative. The plot curves, twists, bends, warps and thickens in penetrating ways not only for Peter but for a reader. At one point in the Dream Archipelago, after his operation, Peter wakes up in a white room with his head shaved, scars on his neck and skull and other parts of his body. And his memory gone. All of this, especially the loss of memory, has an eerie echo of someone who has undergone electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).

Does this hint that Peter’s parallel world has been created to serve as an elaborate shield in order for him to deal with his need to submit to such treatment? Are we dealing with a case of serious mental imbalance? Or, expressed in less politically correct terms, is it quite possible a large portion or even all of Peter’s story is the concoction of a madman? Perhaps, in this case, being a madman is more of an asset than a liability. Recall the sign at the entrance to the magic theater from Hermann Hesse's novel Steppenwolf: FOR MADMEN ONLY. Questions to consider as you take a literary Christopher Priest-style magic carpet ride reading The Affirmation.


Lead singer in a rock group? Photo taken back in the early 1970s when author Christopher Priest was in the same age range as Peter Sinclair, protagonist of The Affirmation.