I was not charmed.
I feel a bit badly about rating this as low as I have, because I wonder if there's some cultural differences that I'm not taking into account, but if I'm being honest. I didn't enjoy it -- as modern fable, or pop-philosophy. Everything about it felt rushed, and forced -- the deal that the Protagonist does with the Devil felt like a con from the start. At least Faust has what he imagines will be a bit of fun in exchange for his soul -- here, the doomed narrator allows the Devil to eliminate three random things from the world, in exchange for one single day of extra life. Which he then proceeds to waste on contemplating what the next thing to be eliminated might be.
So, what if telephones, movies and clocks disappeared from the world? We'll never really know, because the author "fixes" the rules of his little thought experiment so that, although the things have supposedly disappeared (Did they ever even exist? Don't ask me ...), the memory of the things (and their uses/consequences) still come naturally and unquestioned to the inhabitants of the novel's world. Movies have supposedly disappeared, but people quote from their favourite movies, and remember movie dates. Telephones are gone, but people remember long, passionate phone calls -- and the public phone booths from which the calls were made ... It makes no sense ....
The best Faustian stories consider the way that, doing a deal with the devil, we poor mortals are almost always the losers -- we might think we've weighed up the cost of the exchange, and whether our souls (or whatever) were worth it, but the devil always wins. (If you have never seen it, go search out the movie "Bedazzled" with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, which is one of the funniest takes on the Faust story that you could ever hope to see. Time and again, hapless devil-dealer Moore is tricked by Satan Cook so that the wishes he negotiated in exchange for his soul don't work out to be quite as attractive as he had hoped. It's a hoot.)
So shouldn't the Narrator, knowing that he wants to be reconciled with his father before he dies, realise that he can't make contact, because phones no longer exist? Isn't the 24 hour reprieve that he negotiated with the devil now meaningless, because clocks no longer exist?
As a thought experiment, or even a little philosophical rumination on the importance of certain things in our lives, it's completely half-baked.
I feel a bit badly about rating this as low as I have, because I wonder if there's some cultural differences that I'm not taking into account, but if I'm being honest. I didn't enjoy it -- as modern fable, or pop-philosophy. Everything about it felt rushed, and forced -- the deal that the Protagonist does with the Devil felt like a con from the start. At least Faust has what he imagines will be a bit of fun in exchange for his soul -- here, the doomed narrator allows the Devil to eliminate three random things from the world, in exchange for one single day of extra life. Which he then proceeds to waste on contemplating what the next thing to be eliminated might be.
So, what if telephones, movies and clocks disappeared from the world? We'll never really know, because the author "fixes" the rules of his little thought experiment so that, although the things have supposedly disappeared (Did they ever even exist? Don't ask me ...), the memory of the things (and their uses/consequences) still come naturally and unquestioned to the inhabitants of the novel's world. Movies have supposedly disappeared, but people quote from their favourite movies, and remember movie dates. Telephones are gone, but people remember long, passionate phone calls -- and the public phone booths from which the calls were made ... It makes no sense ....
The best Faustian stories consider the way that, doing a deal with the devil, we poor mortals are almost always the losers -- we might think we've weighed up the cost of the exchange, and whether our souls (or whatever) were worth it, but the devil always wins. (If you have never seen it, go search out the movie "Bedazzled" with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, which is one of the funniest takes on the Faust story that you could ever hope to see. Time and again, hapless devil-dealer Moore is tricked by Satan Cook so that the wishes he negotiated in exchange for his soul don't work out to be quite as attractive as he had hoped. It's a hoot.)
So shouldn't the Narrator, knowing that he wants to be reconciled with his father before he dies, realise that he can't make contact, because phones no longer exist? Isn't the 24 hour reprieve that he negotiated with the devil now meaningless, because clocks no longer exist?
As a thought experiment, or even a little philosophical rumination on the importance of certain things in our lives, it's completely half-baked.
