I am currently reading Jonathan (now publishing as John) Katzenbachs newest novel, WHAT COMES NEXT. I happen to love Katzenbach and have never been disappointed by a thriller of his, and would particularly recommend THE ANALYST, THE TRAVELER, JUST CAUSE and THE SHADOW MAN among his previous. But this one violates a certain powerful pet peeve of mine. To wit: like many thrillers and horror novels, it violates the nature of a hallucination. In this book, a retired university professor is diagnosed with a form of dementia that includes vivid memory-triggered hallucinations. He has lapses of clarity, short and long term memory losses, and starts talking to his deceased brother, wife, and son -- all victims of various forms of violence -- in between moments of appalled clarity. It is understood that his mind is degenerating and that he will be gone, in every conscious sense, within a year. He witnesses the kidnapping of a teen girl and resolves to use his remaining time of clarity to help the police find her. In between, he is coached by his phantoms, and has long and involved discussions with them that include plenty of acknowledgment by them, and him, that they arent real. Now, I have absolutely no problem buying that he may experience his remaining cognitive ability in the form of the people hes lost. But the second he and them start TALKING about them being helpful hallucinations, I bail. Hallucinations dont work that way. Theyre not holographic projections. You cannot separate yourself from them. You can sometimes fight them and say, this isnt happening...at which point, if you succeed, they retreat. But hallucinations are for the most part as powerful as they are because you believe what youre seeing and are not capable of questioning it. To put it another way, you dont actually see and hear and smell an ambulatory movie; you *believe* you do. Belief is key. A wry, accepting Im crazy, lets use that, is contra-indicated. Because if you could do that, you wouldnt be hallucinating. Any thriller where a delusional person interacts with his delusions and says, I know youre not really there, mis-states what is going on in a delusion. Or, to put it another way, you can question whether youre going crazy, but only during your moments of clarity. The crazy subtracts your editor.
Posted on: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 13:54:57 +0000
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