Inspiring Older Readers

posted on 26 Jan 2017

Mockingbird by Walter Tevis

Published in 1980 and nominated in that year for the Nebula Award, Walter Tevis’s dystopian novel, which is set at some undefined time in the future, tells the story of a humanity so enfeebled by its dependency on robots and computers that it is facing its inevitable extinction. Crucially, this is a future in which human beings have lost the ability to read or write and as a result they have also lost any sense of history or the ability to ask questions.

We are told – quite a way into the book – that the action is set in the geographical territory we currently think of as America and that the world population has reduced to the low millions with no children having been born for a generation. Initially this seems to be the result of a malfunctioning computer that was charged with controlling fertility rates through the administration of contraceptives in the food and the endless stream of soporific drugs provided for the population. Later however we discover this is a deliberate plan to exterminate the human race masterminded by the de facto head of what passes for Government, Bob Spofforth – a ‘Make-Nine’ generation super-robot. Spofforth is an android with human form who was programmed using the algorithms of a real human being and, as a result, he has what passes for human feelings. Sadly however, the feelings aren’t Spofforth’s but echoes of the consciousness that programmed him – a fact that leaves the robot in a sort of permanent state of existential doubt. While suicide seems to be a favourite pastime of the remaining human population, this is a solution not available to Spofforth because he is programmed to serve humanity and cannot be decommissioned while human beings continue to need help. Above all else, he desperately wants to die and he reasons – logically – that his only way out is to ensure the eventual extinction of humanity and in doing so overcome his programming by making his own existence no longer necessary.

One day Spofforth’s world is disturbed by news that a man, Paul Bentley, is trying to contact him who has learned to read. Learning to read and teaching others to read has been made illegal in this future state and so Spofforth closets him away in a basement with the task of watching a cache of old silent movies and reading the captions in order to establish what the films are all about. The reason why he’s put to this enigmatic task isn’t really explained but we are left to assume that this is to satisfy the android’s growing curiosity about humanity and it’s emotions. One day while walking the streets of old New York Paul happens on a young woman sleeping rough at a local zoo – Mary Lou – who turns out to be both a dissident and  it transpires, because she’s dropped out and doesn’t take the drugs offered to her,  is fertile. When Spofforth discovers this and the fact that she has also learned to read with Bentley’s help he sees an opportunity to live out the fantasy of family life buried deep in his adopted psyche. In order to set up home with Mary Lou he dispatches Bentley to a penal colony.

The second half of the book plays out the story of how Bentley escapes and tries to return to Mary Lou – his brush with Evangelical survivalists is particularly vivid – and also deals with Mary Lou’s pregnancy and Spofforth’s dawning realisation that these two readers might offer him what he really wants – not an idealised family life but death.

Tevis’s view of the future is a bleak one – there aren’t too many things here that will lift the spirits – but ultimately the message seems to be Larkinesque ; what will remain of us after everything is accounted for is love. Does Bentley and Mary Lou’s discovery of love and compassion, alongside Spofforth’s eventual demise, offer humanity a new chance? Will they go on to spread literacy and fertility amongst what is left of the human race – well, we don’t know but to me it seems unlikely.

Tevis is a skilful writer and he has a pretty extraordinary range – he is also the author of The Hustler and The Man Who Fell To Earth – and his choice of Mockingbird for the title of this book is deliberately enigmatic. It refers back to a phrase that haunts Paul Bentley -  only the mockingbird sings at the edge of the forest – something he doesn’t understand the meaning of intellectually but which he feels is emotionally meaningful. So does the title reference the loss of the natural world and our place in it; or, is it a ‘mockery’ of the world humanity has created? Alternatively, is it a commentary on the hopes and actions of Spofforth, Paul and Mary-Lou? Any of these might be true.

I tell you what; read it for yourself and see what you think.

 

Terry Potter

January 2017