The Man Who Fell To Earth (1999) - Plot & Excerpts
As a non native English speaker, I discovered the adjective 'poignant' only six years ago thanks to a Canadian friend (thanks, Vicky). She chose it to comment a photo I took involving a bowler hat hanging from a chair while an out of focus blonde girl in the background stood on her toes to take off a branch of autumn leaves from the frame of a mirror over a washbasin.To be honest with you, the photo was nothing special. Perhaps my friend was ironic. Or maybe not.What I know is that from that day on I have been struggling to find the right contest to use the same word.The thing is that poignancy doesn't seem to apply to many things I see around me. Besides, the word 'poignant' doesn't come up very easily in conversation. 'Touching' and 'moving' are my natural choices.Now my quest is over. For 'The Man Who Fell to Earth is a poignant novel'. I wouldn't call it in any other way. It's certainly a sad story, but there is a delicate almost intimate feeling around it and within it that makes poignancy at home. I've never watched the movie adaptation taken from this book and starring David Bowie, but I am somewhat sceptical on the ability of the Hollywood industry to create and deliver the same atmosphere of the book. Walter Tevis was not your typical sci-fi writer and 'The Man Who Fell to Earth' is not your typical work of science fiction either. No surprise that Tevis himself referred at his so labelled 'sci-fi novels' (this one and Mockingbird are his most famous works) as 'speculative fiction' rather than science fiction.Given all that, you might not be surprised to find plenty of introspection here as well as recurring and symbolic references to paintings by Klee, Bruegel, Manet, and Van Gogh. Which is not the standard cup of tea for a sci-fi novelist. At the same time, the 1980s and 1990s imagined by the author in 1963 are not that technologically advanced to leave you flabbergasted. No flying machines. No smell-o-vision cinemas. No androids dreaming of electring sheep. In fact, what happens is quite the opposite: there is no hint that humankind ever made it to the Moon (as it did only six years after this book got published) as well as that any significant leap forward took place either in mass production of goods or scientific research.This is not a coincidence. The author wants the readers to focus on the main character. And the main character might look like a man, but - as it happens - doesn't belong to the human race but comes from planet Anthea. That he 'fell' to Earth and brought with himself enough blueprints and chemical formulas to give humankind progress and make himself a billionaire in the process is all a part of a masterplan. Now the problem for the Anthean visitor is that he starts feeling overtired and lonely. If he were a man, he would soon discover that money can't buy health, love and happiness. But he comes from Anthea, accumulates cash for a purpose and doesn't seek for disillusion thus going straight into alcoholism.Walter Tevis was an expert on this. And I'm sure there's much of him in Mr Newton, the Anthean visitor. It's true that the author indulges way too much on what each character drinks, if they drink it straight, bitter or on the rocks and whether they stir their drink and,if so, for how long. As a matter of fact, all the three main characters in the novel had, have or will have problem with the booze to the point that they often wish to get drunk. I cannot deny that this subplot is somehow simplistic: after all there's nothing new in alcohol seen as a painkiller, a nectar of wishful forgetting and - at the same time - a weapon of self destruction. And yet Tevis' writing made me forgive him for all that first hand insistence on alcohol. What ultimately wins here is a powerful story that is beautifully told and is still topical today. The uneasiness of Mr Newton, the Man who Fell to Earth, first in dealing with Earthlings and then with himself is non extraterrestrial, but very much a human feeling.
I read this novel as a young teen in 1968, bought a copy of it in the early 80s, and then finally read it again, last month (October 2014). A strange encounter with a young man on a train in 2012 prompted me to read his novel Mockingbird and to re-read The Queen's Gambit, which I did before re-reading The Man Who Fell to Earth. Of the three, the most smoothly written is The Queen's Gambit, but the other two novels are permeated with a despair (and implicit hope) that is almost intoxicating. In both Mockingbird and The Man Who Fell to Earth, the burden and fate of the world lies on the shoulders of extra-human beings, a sui generis superrobot in the former and in the latter a humanoid being from a planet he calls Anthea (most likely Mars). These extra-human beings perceive mankinds's fate and understand mankind's faults and limitations, and both despair that they cannot make things right.This is a quasi-religious reading of Tevis's novel, but if it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, then...The Anthean alien comes to Earth as part of a rescue mission, his job to build a ferry that can bring the few hundred of his kind back with him to Earth. Their plan is not global conquest; instead they hope to be able to advise leaders on Earth how best to avoid the catastrophes they did not have the foresight themselves to avoid.The alien (aka Thomas J. Newton), barely endures the planet's greater gravity, which is always pressing his delicate frame. Newton quickly amasses a fortune with novel patentable ideas and processes, and then martials numerous specialists and crews and equipment in rural Kentucky to build his spaceship, whose purpose he does not divulge. Three years elapse and all is going exactly as it should—everything on schedule—Newton cannot speed up the process, and he continues to feel pressure. He drinks alcohol to excess, though there is no visible diminution in his twice-human mental capabilities. The drink eases his physical pain but it also increases his capacity to understand human emotion, especially the emotions that arise out of attachment, loss, and grief.When he is finally able to reveal his identity to a sympathetic human, the momentary uplift is immediately stolen from him, and the CIA—then FBI—arrest, interrogate, and essentially biopsy him. When the FBI medically process him, though he protests at each stage, he is blinded. He is released but the government has made it impossible for him to resume work on the spaceship so that it's launch will be in sync with Anthea's orbit.Tevis takes the reader deep into the mind of his despairing savior, and he succumbs to regret, despair, and lethargy. Though still in possession of great wealth, Newton is reduced to a helpless, alcohol-fueled melancholy. In the final interview with the man whom he'd shared his identity, Newton asserts impotently, "I came to save the world." As affirmation of that diminished promise, he writes out a check to his friend for one million dollars.Is mankind worth saving? Would mankind submit to salvation? Is the savior up to the task? What if that savior were to realize the futility in trying to aid beings who could not understand nor appreciate the gift?Good stuff, and Tevis brings some real depth into his creation of the Anthean, especially as he begins to sadly and aimlessly develop new longings for those whom he'd left on Anthea. While there is some weak expository writing around some of his worldy machinations and in the characterization of his money man Farnsworth, the novel is spare and evocative, ultimately haunting.
What do You think about The Man Who Fell To Earth (1999)?
I had nearly forgotten why people start reading in the first place: the joy of an honest story. I'm so used to the writer as the essential protagonist, the writing as his conflict, and whether or not I want to throw away his book as his comedic or tragic end. But this just unfolds cleanly, without seeming consciously written at all. Never an "ohhh that was beautiful" and very rarely a distracting wince. I got deeply engaged without any self-discipline at all. It's lightening-quick and so satisfying that I had to, for the first time, linger in a subway station to finish a book because I didn't want to wait until I got home. (And that precise location, my friends, was the enigmatic, Escher-like layer of the W 4th St. station, between the blue and the orange floors, quite possibly the smelliest place out there, just to attest to the refreshment of the reading experience.)I have the DVD and cannot wait to watch it - maybe even tonight.Why only 4 stars then? Because I'm still moonlighting as a snob. And, as such, switching back to Gravity's Rainbow and its two essential companions.
—Jodi Lu
Questo libro va letto. Va letto per una serie di motivi che sono questi:1)L'idea L'autore, grazie all'espediente sci-fi dell'alieno che sbarca segretamente sul nostro pianeta, ci permette di avere un punto di vista "laterale", rispetto al mondo civilizzato che ci circonda: scienza, società, politica. Rielabora efficientemente il concetto di alienazione nella società post-moderna e post-industriale.2)Lo stile Uno stile asciutto, essenziale nel descrivere pensieri e rapporti dei personaggi, ma non per questo non pregno di significato. Tevis sa cosa vuole dire e cosa far dire ai suoi personaggi, ce l'ha chiaro in mente e sa come dirlo. Non c'è ridondanza, non c'è tautologia. Non è uno di quegli autori che ti sfianca con lo stesso concetto fino a fartelo entrare nella zucca. Il messaggio è semplice, chiaro, sta soltanto al lettore coglierlo.3)L'intreccio Il ritmo è misurato, mai troppo lento, mai troppo accelerato. Non è quello che si definisce un page-turner (che di solito son schifezze, nda), ma i colpi ed i cambi di scena si susseguono armoniosamente, dando al lettore il tempo di elaborare e fare propria la storia. Non c'è la volontà di spiazzare il lettore ("ed ora qualcosa di completamente diverso"), ma di condurlo per mano fino al centro della storia.Detto questo, quando un autore azzecca queste tre cose, per me non c'è null'altro da chiedere.
—Giuseppe
The problem with this book is that author must have thought that the only way to make a person seem deep is to make them an alcoholic--alcoholism defines all three main characters in the book. It's like an actor who finally wins an academy award after playing a drunk (when it is probably the easiest part to play). The vast majority of interactions in the book include drinking, which Tevis describes in painstaking detail, over and over again--what they are drinking, how they are drinking it, what the other characters think of what and how they are drinking, whether they stir their drinks or not, what the other characters think about whether they stirred or not. It's excessive. Actually, many of the non-interaction scenes are about the same. Personally, I don't find alcoholics all that interesting. However, the book itself still isn't bad. If the author had found more creative ways to express the tragic elements of the human experience (besides alcoholism), it could have been a great book. The story itself is intriguing and the essence of the book-- that this alien undergoes a very human experience--is novel and will stay with me.
—Brian
