Word: charlock
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...general, the sequel (The Carpetbaggers Run for President) is a form favored by authors whose main interest is cash. But more and more serious writers are adding rooms and views to already created structures. In Numquam, Lawrence Durrell continues his story (begun in Tune) of the "thinking weed" Felix Charlock and his struggles with the vast Merlin corporation. Isaac Bashevis Singer transplants the children from The Manor in Poland to The Estate in America. Elsewhere in Europe, Sarah Gainham conducts what is left of her cast of Viennese characters from Night Falls on the City into the postwar...
...Firm, an international syndicate with tentacles in all the world's major markets. It is the embodiment of 20th century scientism, an emotionally neutral, self-perpetuating system of techniques that can be used for good or evil. Drawn into The Firm's cushy embrace is Inventor Felix Charlock, who sees himself as a "thinking weed," a pun on Pascal's definition of man as a "thinking reed." The Firm wants Charlock for his new recording device, which leads to the development of the ultimate computer, Abel. This electronic memory bank is capable of deducing an individual...
...plot unfolds, Charlock marries Benedicta, the boss's daughter and the lady of the shotgun. Having become a key man in The Firm, with access to its inexhaustible assets, Charlock discovers the paradox of freedom: when all things are possible, nothing is possible. Denied the abrasive stimulation of uncertainty and risk, his creativity grows sluggish. A trip to the gambling tables owned by The Firm proves to be an exercise in boredom. Life for Charlock is reduced to a finite game that, like ticktacktoe, is impossible to lose once the rules have been learned...
...length, Charlock tumbles on an inexpensive way of turning a few cents worth of salt into a revolutionary washday product, and wants to donate the discovery to the betterment of mankind, but The Firm opposes him. His last attempt to exercise free will has been thwarted, and now he learns that his idea of freedom was illusory: he needed The Firm as much as it needed him. Charlock's most important discovery is that the slave is born with his chains. He retires to perfect Abel as an engine of revenge. There is a Hitchcock ending that is best...
...paddlewheeler and took the "Submarine Voyage." It may be that these adventures will find their way into Durrell's next novel: as a man and a writer, he has learned how to enjoy civilization and its discontents. Perhaps this is what Durrell suggested when he had his Felix Charlock declare: "We should tackle reality in a slightly joky way, otherwise we miss its point...