Operators and Things
There are a few books that I return to every few years, for some obscure comforting quality that they offer me. I hesitate to even try to figure out what these books have in common, if indeed there is anything. It's possible that I originally read them when I was in some sort of specially receptive state, so that these books are imprinted on me.
One of them is a book I'm surprised isn't more well-known: Operators and Things, by the pseudonymous Barbara O'Brien, subtitled The Inner Life of a Schizophrenic. The publication history is not completely clear. Arlington Books copyrighted it in 1958, and the copyright was reasserted by the author in 1976, and I hazard the guess that this was after the initial 17-year term had expired. There is some text at the end of the book that can't have been written in 1958, and I guess further that the author added this text as part of the process of resurrecting copyright.
Isn't it like me to get distracted by such details before I describe the book?
The author had a schizophrenic episode two or three years before the main part of the book was written, which would be around 1955. Driven by weird delusions and hallucinations, she roamed around the country in a rather harrowing way, until finally her condition resolved, apparently spontaneously. She tells her story engagingly, with a clear, pragmatic voice, interleaving didactic passages to explain just what schizophrenia is (so far as anybody knows or knew).
The book's title comes from the content of the author's schizophrenic delusions. During her episode, she believed that certain people, a small proportion of the population, had a mental gift. They were able to read and manipulate the minds of the rest of the population. The gifted minority called themselves Operators, and disparagingly referred to the rest of us as Things. Things have almost no free will, it turned out, and most of what we do is the result of subliminal prompting by Operators. When the author's schizophrenia manifested, the Operators made themselves known to her, and placed her in situations that required her to abandon her job and travel around the US, pursued by imaginary perils.
After her delusions ceased, the author went through an almost equally weird recuperation; she could not think clearly in her usual way, and instead relied on guidance from a series of variously-manifesting hunches. Her delusion-ridden flight across the country (which occupied about six months of real time) and her mostly-sedentary recuperation (which took three or four months) occupy approximately equal halves of the book; some afterthoughts and musings on the nature of schizophrenia in general bring the narrative to a close.
The author comfortingly construes the whole episode to be a desperate attempt on the part of her subconscious mind to repair personality flaws that were making her unable to function. I'm not sure how much I buy this construction, though the explanation seems to fit the structure of her delusions and the way in which they eventually resolve.
It is unclear to me how much of the narrative to take literally. The author is a good storyteller, which might tempt her to artificially heighten the drama at various points; but she is understandably concerned with maintaining her anonymity, which causes her to suppress and disguise many details. (In fact this intentional vagueness adds to the dreamlike character of the whole work.) In particular, during her recovery she describes certain "paranormal" experiences, most of which are paranormal only if one chooses to interpret them in a certain way, but one of which gives me serious problems. The author is credulous about the possible scope of mental abilities, and perhaps she embellished this part of her tale, not realizing that she was crossing a line into unbelievability for some of her more materialistic readers.
Given that I am counting down the days to NaNoWriMo, one episode during the author's recovery resonated strongly for me. As creative therapy, she decided (or was prompted by a hunch) to write a novel. Although her conscious mind was nearly blank, she sat at her typewriter for two hours a day to watch, bemused, as well-formed narrative poured from her fingers. In the passage that follows, the term "the dry beach" is the author's metaphorical term for her own barren conscious mind. "Waves" are hunches or impulses from her subconscious.
The words came from nowhere, shot down into my fingers, and appeared magically on the paper. I made no mental preparation for the writing periods; the dry beach was incapable of making any preparations, even that of remembering to start writing at two o'clock each day. At the appointed hour a wave would roll in to remind me that writing time had arrived, I would look at the clock to verify the fact that it was tw o'clock - for the beach had only the vaguest idea at any time as to whether it was morning, afternoon, or evening - and I would find, always, that it was exactly two o'clock ...
I would sit at the typewriter, put my hands on the keys, and start in. I had almost no comprehension of what I was writing and no memory whatever of what I had written, once I had closed the typewriter ...
[p. 102, Signet paperback edition.] This is exactly the sort of experience I am hoping for. I'm hoping that my subconscious mind's storytelling talents can be released and harnessed. Many non-schizophrenic authors describe similar experiences. I won't know if they can happen to me unless I try.
One of them is a book I'm surprised isn't more well-known: Operators and Things, by the pseudonymous Barbara O'Brien, subtitled The Inner Life of a Schizophrenic. The publication history is not completely clear. Arlington Books copyrighted it in 1958, and the copyright was reasserted by the author in 1976, and I hazard the guess that this was after the initial 17-year term had expired. There is some text at the end of the book that can't have been written in 1958, and I guess further that the author added this text as part of the process of resurrecting copyright.
Isn't it like me to get distracted by such details before I describe the book?
The author had a schizophrenic episode two or three years before the main part of the book was written, which would be around 1955. Driven by weird delusions and hallucinations, she roamed around the country in a rather harrowing way, until finally her condition resolved, apparently spontaneously. She tells her story engagingly, with a clear, pragmatic voice, interleaving didactic passages to explain just what schizophrenia is (so far as anybody knows or knew).
The book's title comes from the content of the author's schizophrenic delusions. During her episode, she believed that certain people, a small proportion of the population, had a mental gift. They were able to read and manipulate the minds of the rest of the population. The gifted minority called themselves Operators, and disparagingly referred to the rest of us as Things. Things have almost no free will, it turned out, and most of what we do is the result of subliminal prompting by Operators. When the author's schizophrenia manifested, the Operators made themselves known to her, and placed her in situations that required her to abandon her job and travel around the US, pursued by imaginary perils.
After her delusions ceased, the author went through an almost equally weird recuperation; she could not think clearly in her usual way, and instead relied on guidance from a series of variously-manifesting hunches. Her delusion-ridden flight across the country (which occupied about six months of real time) and her mostly-sedentary recuperation (which took three or four months) occupy approximately equal halves of the book; some afterthoughts and musings on the nature of schizophrenia in general bring the narrative to a close.
The author comfortingly construes the whole episode to be a desperate attempt on the part of her subconscious mind to repair personality flaws that were making her unable to function. I'm not sure how much I buy this construction, though the explanation seems to fit the structure of her delusions and the way in which they eventually resolve.
It is unclear to me how much of the narrative to take literally. The author is a good storyteller, which might tempt her to artificially heighten the drama at various points; but she is understandably concerned with maintaining her anonymity, which causes her to suppress and disguise many details. (In fact this intentional vagueness adds to the dreamlike character of the whole work.) In particular, during her recovery she describes certain "paranormal" experiences, most of which are paranormal only if one chooses to interpret them in a certain way, but one of which gives me serious problems. The author is credulous about the possible scope of mental abilities, and perhaps she embellished this part of her tale, not realizing that she was crossing a line into unbelievability for some of her more materialistic readers.
Given that I am counting down the days to NaNoWriMo, one episode during the author's recovery resonated strongly for me. As creative therapy, she decided (or was prompted by a hunch) to write a novel. Although her conscious mind was nearly blank, she sat at her typewriter for two hours a day to watch, bemused, as well-formed narrative poured from her fingers. In the passage that follows, the term "the dry beach" is the author's metaphorical term for her own barren conscious mind. "Waves" are hunches or impulses from her subconscious.
The words came from nowhere, shot down into my fingers, and appeared magically on the paper. I made no mental preparation for the writing periods; the dry beach was incapable of making any preparations, even that of remembering to start writing at two o'clock each day. At the appointed hour a wave would roll in to remind me that writing time had arrived, I would look at the clock to verify the fact that it was tw o'clock - for the beach had only the vaguest idea at any time as to whether it was morning, afternoon, or evening - and I would find, always, that it was exactly two o'clock ...
I would sit at the typewriter, put my hands on the keys, and start in. I had almost no comprehension of what I was writing and no memory whatever of what I had written, once I had closed the typewriter ...
[p. 102, Signet paperback edition.] This is exactly the sort of experience I am hoping for. I'm hoping that my subconscious mind's storytelling talents can be released and harnessed. Many non-schizophrenic authors describe similar experiences. I won't know if they can happen to me unless I try.