Subject: REVIEW: Disch, _The M.D._

From: [email-masked] (Mary Tabasko)
Date: 31 May 91 15:41:50 GMT

Review Copyright (c) 1991 Mary Tabasko

%A Disch, Thomas M.
%T The M.D.
%I Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
%C New York
%D April 1991
%G 0-394-58662-X [ISBN]
%P 401 pages
%0 hardback, US$22.00

   Subtitled "a horror story," this new novel by Disch is a tale of power,
greed, manipulation, and betrayal. If it is a horror story, it's a cerebral
rather than a visceral one. The horror doesn't arise from things scraping in
closets, mutilated corpses, or slavering hell-spawn inflicting misery on
undeserving folk. It comes in observing how far one man with an unfair
advantage will go in his quest for personal power and wealth. It's certainly
not grist for the gross-'em-out horror-movie mill.

   The story, which begins in the 1970s and continues into the near future,
roughly brackets the life of William Michaels. Shortly before Christmas,
young Billy, upset after a nun at his school takes it upon herself to
disabuse her young charges of such pagan notions as Santa Claus, experiences
a vision of Jolly Old St. Nick himself. Santa reassures Billy of his
existence and recommends that, in the future, Billy just tell the nun what
she wants to hear. Billy asks the apparition about honesty of this tack and
is told that "lying is only wrong with someone you trust."  If you can't
trust Santa, who can you trust?

   After espousing dubious ethical principles, Santa extracts from Billy a
vow of secrecy about their meeting by offering to tell him where his older
brother keeps his instrument of younger-brother torment, his "poison stick."
As promised, the spirit later appears as Mercury, the god of doctors,
businessmen, and criminals, and reveals the location of the poison stick, a
gruesome parody of the caduceus made of a dead bird impaled on a twisted
stick. Mercury also offers -- for a price, because "power is never free" --
to tell Billy how to use the stick. The price is an oath of loyalty, and
Billy, like Faust, agrees to pay.

   The caduceus is governed by a set of rules that largely determines the
course of the story. It must be enchanted, for healing or hurting, by a
rhymed incantation, and any helping done must be balanced by harm.  The
caduceus can't kill directly, and neither can it be used to undo what it has
previously done. Finally, its strength grows with use; if it goes unused for
a long time, it can only hold a weak "charge."

   As the story progresses, Billy learns the importance of carefully wrought
curses. He learns by experimenting, and the results are often tragic. He
also discovers that Mercury is a trickster who likes to see that no good
deed goes unpunished. Like wishes made on the Monkey's Paw, attempts to use
the caduceus for good misfire in some unfortunate way, and the greater the
intended good, the more horribly it will go awry.

   Granting such power to so young a child ensures that he will never
develop a sense of right and wrong. For Billy, other people are tools to be
used via the caduceus to get what he wants. Even when he has misgivings, the
lure of power proves irresistible, and with the help of his powers, Billy
grows up to become Dr. William Michaels, not just a doctor, but a shrewd,
wealthy businessman and a famous researcher.  We watch as Michaels, driven
by greed and arrogance, builds an empire of research foundations and crooked
real-estate deals. But his empire, founded on the misbegotten powers of the
caduceus, is like a web of lies: it becomes more vulnerable to mistakes as
it grows. Inevitably, it all comes crashing down.

   This is an anti-heroic horror novel. Williams, rather than being the
character who saves us from encroaching evil, is instead the instigator of
the evil. Once the plot-furthering device -- the caduceus -- is introduced,
we can predict the basic rise-and-fall storyline. We watch, in horror, as
person's moral sense atrophies while he becomes more and more powerful. We
wait to see how far he will go; we hope he will be stopped.  Aside from
Mercury, there are no supernatural evils in the story, and as a result there
is a dearth of typical horror-story descriptive prose. That doesn't mean
that it's a "pretty" book, one that doesn't look at the goings-on, but if
you want reanimated corpses and such, you will be disappointed.

   I thoroughly enjoyed this book, but it's not pleasant tale. A story with
an anti-hero often provides a positive character somewhere, but there was no
one in this book that I really liked. Pitied, yes. Felt bad for, sure.
Liked? No. But Disch's writing kept me engaged anyway. I found a morbid
challenge in trying to predict how the incantations for good would go wrong.
I don't think the book is unflawed, though. One particular thing that didn't
ring true to me were some of the conversations that young Billy, his brother
and his step-sister hold. All of these kids are supposed to be smart, but
some of the exchanges (not all) are just too smooth. Maybe I just resent
kids who are more sophisticated than I am :), but I sometimes felt like I
was watching one of those commercials where adults provide the voice-over
dialogue for children. Many of the incidental characters struck me as rather
pre-fab, but it was fun to watch them surface again later in the story.

   I recommend this book, especially if you're feeling cynical and mean and
enjoying it. This book makes no attempt to promote faith in humanity; if you
consider how the story would look to an outsider, someone who knows nothing
of Mercury or the caduceus, it could describe the careers of multitudinous
politicians, executives and other members of the rich and powerful set. And
after reading the book, it doesn't take much effort to imagine your favorite
bad-guy in the role of William Michaels.

-- Mary

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*   This curious world which we inhabit is more  wonderful than it   *
*   is convenient; more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to   *
*   be admired and enjoyed than used.              -- H.D. Thoreau   * 
**********************************************************************

Mary Tabasko (no relation to the hot-sauce folks) 
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	    Pittsburgh, PA 15232-1110  
E-Mail: [email-masked]    /or/   [email-masked]