Decay of society parallels decay of the
city (4/5)
In 2010, I read my first Charles Platt
novel: The City Dwellers (1970). It was a fair novel composed of four
parts, all of which read like separate stories in a regressively chronological future
history. It was moderately interesting, so I kept it in my library. My second
Platt novel was in 2012 with Garbage World (1967), which was Platt’s
first novel but still as flawed as The City Dwellers—nothing really to
entice the mind of the reader other than the unusual plot setting.
I haven’t gotten around to another
Platt novel since then, but one recent review by Tarbandu of Platt’s novel The
Twilight of the City (1977) piqued my interest. The reviewer panned the novel
after only reading 83 pages. When checking ISFDB, I saw that The Twilight
Years is actually a variant title of The City Dwellers. I didn’t
remember the book being that bad, so I bumped it to the front of my
to-read queue to give it some justice—only if it deserved justice.
Rear cover synopsis:
“In the 21st century,
when urbanization is reaching its limits, the population suddenly slumps…
The city is killing man—strangling and crushing humanity as effectively as
the jungle destroyed the civilizations of the past.
The characters—zombies, slum-dwellers, a pop star and an
architect—move like tiny insects through the vast empty street and concrete
landscape of the city.
The Loners decide to opt out of civilization…
The Civics dare not venture beyond the city limits…
which will survive?”
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My one qualm with this otherwise
introspective novel is Platt’s role of women. As the citizens of the city commit
to maintaining their archaic urban lifestyle yet their lives decay around them,
it’s almost as if the role of women, too, begin to decay into submissiveness. The
women tend to take submissive or pleading roles in each of the following
encounters. Platt’s prerogative or a symptom of the city’s decay?
A few notable examples:
- “[S]he pressed herself hard against him, wanting him to make love to her” (23)
- “She tried to stifle her cry when he entered her” (38)
- “When he entered her she shut her eyes and gave way to his strength” (58)
- “[S]he gave herself, pulling up her knees and shutting her eyes” (62)
- “[S]he took out her dentures and started kissing down his body, arousing him till he was ready to take her” (71)
- “[S]he pressed herself to him … she responds passively, enduring him with resigned acceptance” (147)
- “She frowns. ‘Please let me stay here with you …. Please?’” (150)
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Part 1:
Jaded by the age
of nineteen, Greg, a pop music superstar popular with the sub-teen female
demographic, has been spoiled by Owen, his manager, with his pick of
promiscuous sub-teens and burnt out on the Total Experience concerts. The
mindlessness of his hysteric fans reflects the dull-minded chaos of the radio
(9-10) and the incessant chatter of the mind (30) when stressed. Owen sets up
Greg with a 25-year-old healer of man, but his lack of mature experience causes
him more stress than fun.
The central theme to this part of the
novel is Greg’s overexposure to the extremes of fame in parallel to city
dweller’s overexposure to the extremes of the inhumanity of the city. Greg’s
slightly older companion, the “healer of man” named Cathy, is better adjusted
to the randomness of life as she’s been in contact with heart-broken men more
than twice her age.
Though she’s only six-years senior to
Greg, their experiences in life and in music contrast greatly; perhaps this is
a plot by Owen in order to Greg to become more mature. Considering that Greg’s
life is all about his pop music, Cathy has very little to connect with as she
has a totally different pop music experience:
I grew up with pop music when there were groups, it
was simple, maybe a few lights, the music was life instead of taped, it wasn’t
staged. Loud, but not overwhelming. There wasn’t the personality cult, the
calculated hysteria. (16)
In contrast to his amoral and
extravagant lifestyle on the stage, Greg lives a meager lifestyle in the slums
of the city, which doctors have been warning everyone of being “unhealthy for
mind and body” but what was most important for Greg was the “now and here in
the centre, setting tastes and interacting with everyone else … He was them
they were him” (19).
The constant exposure to activity
enervates Greg’s senses, making him susceptible to the errant experiences,
pushing him—and all citizens of the city—closer toward insanity. While the
stress attacks psychologically first, the latent generational effects are
physiological. In Greg’s day and age, population is peaking and the prior
generation are observing the drastic change: “We get so used to it, the
overcrowding, population still rising, people pressing close all the time …
people don’t see how it produces pressures—eat, buy, consume, hurry, the whole
consumer business” (28).
Just as the tides of pressure
eventually inundate and destroy the impressionable mind of Greg in a fit of
mindlessness (30) akin to the mindless jabber of the radio (9-10), so too do
the mental barriers of resistance begin to crumble for the city dwellers. Added
pressures to shift down through states of amorality for the loaded promise of
relief from the strain where emotion can sweep over them forgetting
“everything, living it, being it, drowning in it” (58). In order to feel more
human, the city dwellers combat the insensitivity of the city by indulging in
the polar opposite of their stern uniformity—goodbye turgid logic, hello raw
emotion.
Part 2: Julius and
Hilary left the city for want of a more rustic and peaceful existence in the
countryside. Julius had burnt out on his cityscape paintings and has found
bucolic comfort in the toil that a farm provides: crops, animals, and
maintenance. After two months of isolation and strife with his wife, his old
friend from the city, Clement, and his old retinue descend on the farm for two
reasons: to relive life recklessly like the old days and to pass a warning of
the country’s pending dire state.
Switching to extremes like the city
dwellers in “Part 1”, Julius and Hilary flee the city in favor of the country,
where the face just as many obstacles as they had in the city, just in
different form. Having fled the depopulation and economic crisis (65) of the
city, the city’s absurdities, trivialities and dichotomies are replaced by the
brute force of man versus nature (life on the farm) and the subtle nature of
man versus man (marital conflict).
However, history does not disappear
from their lives; old personal grudges between the pair silently begin to wedge
them apart. To further drive that wedge between them, the unexpected visit of
their old artistic friends from the city descends upon the farm. The absurdity
is obvious in their outfits—“Polaroid pants. Distorting suits. X-ray shirts and
swirl-painted ties (69)—yet the news the bring carries much more significance:
the birth rate has been dropping for a long while and no one knows when the
crunch will come; tens of thousands of industries depend on each other and the
drop in births is affecting their growth; deflation sets in and nervousness
settles in (79-80).
In contrast to their fears, the city
dwellers bring a mobile party with them, intent on living it up with Julius
like they had in the past. The monotony of the farm breaks, shatters as Julius
indulges in reliving the past: sex, drugs, and revelry; however, his care for
the farm still remains, as evidence by his outrage over his so-called friends’
destruction of his property and their mistreatment of his pregnant cow.
Julius’s wife is outraged by all the
antics and confronts him about the choice they must face: live in disparity in
the country or rejoin the fold in the city. The factors begin to add up: “I’m
not interested in the money … I can’t go back to the old rituals. Life out here
isn’t perfect, but maybe no perfect solution exists” (79). Yet, the pressure of
conformity remains and the magnetic draw of uniformity compels them to face
that very choice of (1) living frugally alone in conflictual tension or (2)
living in conflict of choice amid the tension of the hordes.
Part 3:
To conserve
resources, people have been amassed in the cities in order to preserve their
way of life regardless of the abysmal birthrate and the lack of female babies.
Outside the city, Loners live among the structural decay of humanity’s golden
years, much like Reid, Vincent and Amanda. The trio find an injured Civic and,
against Vincent’s advice, they take him from the location where other Civics
hunt him down. Though they’re leery of the outsider, the man offers his excuse:
to live like a Loner.
Life in the civic centres hasn’t
improved, regardless of their attempts to enforce normality like they once
knew. When the 3-to-1 sex ratio unbalances their idea of monogamy (95), the
Civics get desperate. Their beloved city and its city ways have turned on its
inhabitants; though man built the
cities, “the cities destroyed man; they fed his intellect for a while, but
ruined him biologically, psychologically … decaying as the buildings decay”
(104-105). Though already inherently defeated, the Civics continue to grasp at the
straws of their disappearing life.
Outside the civic centre, Loners dot
the decaying landscape of the city’s superfluous suburbs, “cold and empty and
lifeless; but sometimes it was beautiful” (88). Ubiquitously monotone pillars
of concrete hide the earth’s horizon, utilitarian apartment blocks eclipsing
the sight of both figurative and literal greener pastures. The apartments, “sealed
container of slow time, empty and bare as monastic cells” (89), are the
so-called home to the nomadic Loners. While the Civics hopelessly stick to
their decomposing lifestyle without facing the facts, the Loners have adopted a
fatalism in tune with their depressing environment as a “one-generation people”
who “learn to live with the city instead of trying to fight circumstances”
(104):
Life is as it is, perfect or imperfect, and if you’d
stop fighting it and accept it as it is, you wouldn’t worry any more about
making it better. There just isn’t any point. We’re as the end of the road. (106)
When the tripartite loose marriage of Reid,
Vincent and Amanda discover an injured man—a Civic at that—Reid and Amanda appeal
to their humanistic senses to help the man who is admittedly running from authorities
because of a simple letter sent to the governor… now he’s guilty of subversion.
The man on the run, Johnson tags along with the Loners from rooftop to rooftop
to monorail lengths while avoiding the sights of the band of Civics after him.
Johnson says he escaped the civic centre
for fear of arrest and for want of living like a Loner amid the rubble, but Vincent
has his doubts about the man’s true motivation; he repeatedly asks Johnson what
information he’s hiding. Vincent’s fatalistic uncaring attitude toward Johnson’s
life sets the Civic on edge though Amanda welcomes him with literal open legs
and Reid with figurative open arms. This good cop/bad cop attitude of the
Loners is better than Johnson’s city experience where all fight a losing fight.
Part 4:
Though the city is
only populated by a few hundred, madness still grips the minds of many.
Marauding droves of petrol fume spewing cars race around the roads in chaos,
uncaring if they die, destroy or maim. Manning and Neal, grandsons of the
cynical Wickens, are at differing opinions about the old coot and his own
opinion about the future of the city. When one marauder finds a lone female,
Manning unwittingly ignites both the next citywide riot and the cynicism of the
naysayers.
The tie that once bound city dwellers
together—the knot of common sense—has long worn away, leaving a gnarl of
anarchy in its place. Proximity and conformity may have broken the city
dwellers (Civics) generations ago, but now the state of the city's decay almost
reinforces their decay of rationalism and humanity. Such is the state of the
once proud city that it now resembles the dereliction of its suburbs where the
Loners had roamed, proud of their individuality. The city—in it, the Civics—and
the suburbs—in it, the Loners—now look in similar states of irreparable
deterioration.
The distinction between civic centre and lone zone
is blurred now; as the buildings decay, so they come to look alike. The people,
too, cannot be divided into separate groups with separate philosophies.
Philosophy has died with the interest in the future; men live only from day to
day, in small communities from which they seldom stray. (131)
Civilization has digressed to the point
of roving bands of heathens, albeit heathens with petrol cars and an innate
thirst for recklessness with said cars. The broad threat of a declining
birthrate has been eclipsed by the specific threat to one's own life; the worry
over economic collapse has been overshadowed by finding one's next meal. Having
tried to keep their Civic way of life preserved, it has actually become
stagnant and the rioting way of the reckless threaten to destroy what remains
of the stagnation.
Wickens is a symptom of his era where
things had started to turn belly up long ago; he sees no future in the city, no
future for man. His two grandsons have conflicting views on the old man:
Manning feels sympathy for the hateful ideas and aims to foster him into a
sense of love for the world’s death throes; Neal, however, is a victim of the
elderly man’s spite and his recluse lifestyle hides his intentions toward the
aging man.
Sheldon is a member of the wild band,
whose recent foray outside the city has secured a lone female. When Manning sees
Sheldon leading her in tow toward a secluded spot, he tails them and peeps at
their progressive sexual activity. The girl spots the voyeur and screams,
sending him running for safety from the rage of Sheldon. This small spark of
irregularity in the simple Civic’s life can has disastrous consequences as the
heathen hordes of men had laid riot to the city a number of times, each time terrorizing
the frail structures of both the people and the city, which are inseparable
from one another… until the city’s apocalypse nears.
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Obviously, though The City Dwellers (1970) and The
Twilight of the City (1977) are variant titles according to ISFDB, the review of
this novel contrasts greatly with Tarbandu’s own brief synopsis:
The narrative revolves
around the actions of three young people: Bobby Black, the superstar singer and
showman of the emerging genre of ‘Suicide Rock’. Bobby’s songwriting partner is
the taciturn, calculating Michael. And then there is Lisa, who came to the City
with a headfull of dreams and stars in her eyes, only to find that dreams die
fast on the hard and unforgiving streets of the ghetto.
I have yet to read The Twilight of the City and I’m frankly
frightened to attempt it due to Tardandu’s forewarnings, but don’t let the
connotation keep you from reading The City Dwellers. It’s a worthwhile
read and, perhaps, one of Platt’s best novels… not that I’ve read more than
two.
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