Memoirs Found in a Bathtub [ペーパーバック]

The plot is simple: An innocent, foolishly loyal aspiring agent enters his new occupation only to find out that those in power have plans of their own (which he just can't discover). Searching the confines of a "Building", a futuristic military-like establishment hidden underground, he seeks his mission, his purpose and the meaning of his existence. Ultimately, all those disappear before his eyes and turn into code. This skillfully written tale where not one word lacks meaning or purpose (or does it?) attempts to understand methods of population control. Could it be that political systems have, are and will rule their population through skillful semantics-control? (think NEWSPEAK) Lem posits that political rhetoric color not only our judgment but also our ability to perceive the world around us. Concentrating on the cold war tension between the US and CCCP, Lem explores systems which convert all their resources and their entire populations to one task: the destruction of the enemy. To accomplish their goal, they convert the minds of their subject. Much like a child who learns to adhere to the principles of society through the careful teaching of parents, teachers, TV, and others, a member of these societies learns to relinquish to his superiors the ability to judge his surrounding.

The Building's plan is simple: Through a carefully planned mission, our hero learns to loose trust in himself, loose his ambition and the ability to choose how and to whom to be loyal. He learns that he is a tool. He discovers that his only responsibility is to the Building, and that the Building alone can think for him, tell him what, how, and why to think. He learns that he is a part of the Building and that his duty is to serve a predetermined function which he himself can't alter. He learns that he can only make sense of the insane world around him, if he unconditionally adapts the strategies of his surrounding.

In the end, he discovers that a system like the Building has developed into a new life-form (who smiles and leads a life of its own), an organism whom we humans must ultimately serve and whose survival we must guaranty if we ourselves wish to live on. If you can deal with an unorthodox plot (if there is one), and like your books heavy on ideas, this is the book for you. Otherwise, stick with Jordan or Simmons - they're good, too.

With a book like this, what you get out of it depends to a large extent on what you bring to it. Aside from all the political satire, to me this book was about how people build explanations - how the mind reacts to a steady stream of sensory impressions which can be very noisy and confusing. To illustrate - I was at the scene where he is in the bathroom, shaving, while there is someone else dressed similarly to him, sleeping next to the bathtub. As the narrator shaves, he is going over the events of the recent past, trying to make sense out of them. He builds one paranoid theory after another, convinced that the whole building (i.e. the whole world) is against him, is out to get him. While reading this I was thinking - This guy is going crazy. No sane person would think this way. But the events dont make sense either. Maybe what is really happening is that he is caught in some sort of time loop, and the person sleeping next to the bathtub is he, from the past or the future!

At this point I stopped and burst out laughing because my theory was so much more preposterous than the ones the narrator was constructing! (yes, I read too much sf!). But the question of course is - if you are trying to make sense out of the world, how do you know which explanation to accept? Ockham's razor doesnt always help (who knows how to apply it in the real world anyway). And people's reactions tend to get increasingly bizarre the more pressure they are under.

Anyway this is my interpretation. I am sure when you read it you will come up with something entirely different, and thats the beauty of this book!

"Pentagon 3" is a concrete bullet stuck in the teeth of the Rockies. Walled off from the rest of the world by three miles of rock, it served as civilized mankind's last refuge in the face of an alien paper-devouring agent that has reduced the global culture of the twentieth century to embers. "Pentagon 3" existed for seventy-two years until a slight shift in the volcanic strata burst its cement envelope and flooded the innards with magma, preserving building's contents for posterity. A millennium later, this derelict is excavated and explored. One of the more interesting finds happens to be an almost perfectly preserved wad of a substance called "papyr", which apparently served for recording data. "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub" is the perfect transcript of these ancient texts, humanity's only glance into the heart of a bygone age.

The Building is a mysterious realm of double, triple, and quadruple agents, unmaskings and concealed microphones, infinitely meaningless passwords and rows of identical offices, containing no less identical secretaries. Here, everyone speaks in code, and every bit of sewage is hand-sifted in corresponding facilities. Don't be surprised to find metallic flies floating in your coffee: they're just trying to distract you from noticing the less obvious devices. What is the building's modus operandi? Has this ultimate Bureaucracy resorted to chaos, hoping that if documents circulate randomly, they will eventually reach the intended hands? Or is the Building completely and entirely infiltrated by the Antibuilding agents - and vice versa - so that everyone knows everything but has no one to tell? Or is there no Antibuilding at all? And what is our hero's Secret Mission?

"Memoirs" is completely and entirely applicable to every aspect of life. It edifies and puzzles, brims with revelations and never fails to surprise. It is full of bitter cynicism and unmasked sarcasm. It is funny and bewildering. It must be read.