In Paddy Chayefsky’s ALTERED STATES, a brilliant young scientist obsessed with exploring the relationship between consciousness and matter undergoes a series of experiments with horrifying results. This is the novel that inspired the 1980 movie directed by Ken Russell. It’s even more fun to read this story than rewatch the classic movie.
Chayefsky is one of my favorite screen writers, giving us some of my favorite movies of the ’60s and ’70s: NETWORK, THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY, HOSPITAL, and then of course 1980’s ALTERED STATES. I loved the ideas in the movie so much that when I found out Chayefsky based it on a novel he’d written, I had to have it. The problem was the only copies available were used, and I have a massive allergy to mildew. Whereas I could spend hours in a used bookstore in my younger days and come out with armfuls of cheap gems, these days I can’t stand being in one for longer than 10 minutes. I obtained a few copies but couldn’t get through even a few pages, even after using every trick in the book to dry them out.
Fast forward to a week or so ago, and I learn they finally adapted the book to a Kindle version. What this means: Basically, the publisher scanned the paperback and created a Kindle file, resulting in some weird formatting issues. What it also meant: I finally got to read it.
In the novel, Eddie Jessup is a brilliant scientist obsessed with using various ancient drugs and sensory deprivation to cultivate hallucinations that he believes are actually primal memories, allowing him to regress farther and farther back to the original self, the first thought, the creation of the universe. What he ends up finding terrifies him. Emily, his wife, is far more practical, believing there is no ultimate truth and humans live with pain, and the way they truly live well is by loving others. These viewpoints clash frequently in the novel.
It’s a smart book by an obviously smart writer, packed with interesting ideas. Chayefsky was a far more gifted screenwriter than he was a novelist, resulting in long-winded expositions and monologues loaded with exclamation points. But the ideas are fantastic, smart, interesting–I look at ALTERED STATES the same way I did THREE-BODY PROBLEM, which honestly in my view was not well written as a dramatic narrative yet completely fascinating as a novel of ideas.
So, I’d recommend this one if you’re looking for something different and weird that punches you in the brain.
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