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Screen
First UK Edition hardcover with unclipped dust jacket, in very good condition. Jacket is slightly marked, and edges are creased and nicked. Board edges, corners and spine ends are bumped, spine is cocked, and page block is somewhat blemished. Pages are clear and unmarked throughout. LW
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1968
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About the author
Barry N. Malzberg
533 books135 followersBarry Nathaniel Malzberg was an American writer and editor, most often of science fiction and fantasy.
He had also published as:
Mike Barry (thriller/suspense)
K.M. O'Donnell (science fiction/fantasy)
Mel Johnson (adult)
Howard Lee (martial arts/TV tie-ins)
Lee W. Mason (adult)
Claudine Dumas (adult)
Francine di Natale (adult)
Gerrold Watkins (adult)
Eliot B. Reston
He had also published as:
Mike Barry (thriller/suspense)
K.M. O'Donnell (science fiction/fantasy)
Mel Johnson (adult)
Howard Lee (martial arts/TV tie-ins)
Lee W. Mason (adult)
Claudine Dumas (adult)
Francine di Natale (adult)
Gerrold Watkins (adult)
Eliot B. Reston
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 25, 2017
Of course Barry Malzberg wrote a metafiction about his own masturbation habits, and of course it's actually a decent book. This dude is like the most singular writer in American history. haha
April 9, 2023
Barry Malzberg's debut (I think) mainstream novel fits squarely in the tradition of 1960s American artistic fiction critiquing American cultural values. In this case, the value is the American obsession with movies, and especially with sexualized actresses. Malzberg portrays this obsession as self-destructive and grotesque. "Screen" is, thus, similar in tone and subject, broadly speaking, to the 1960s novels of Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Ken Kesey, and so on. It is also stylistically similar in its blending of inner and outer realities, blurring the distinctions between fantasizing and material experience.
The novel is about one typical (we assume) weekend in the life of Martin Miller. He is 24 years old, lives alone, and works in the Welfare Department of the federal government in New York. Miller dislikes his boring job, and makes so many shortcuts that he is likely to be fired on Monday. He does not seem to care because he believes that his haphazard attempts to get a job in the promotions department of a movie studio will somehow work out. Miller has an on-again, off-again relationship with co-worker Barbara, but likes to spend most of his time watching movies. In the movies, Miller engages in masturbatory fantasies in which he imagines himself as the male star of the movie having sex with the beautiful female stars. Miller finds this fantasy world of his increasingly more compelling and engaging than reality, but also deep down knows that these indulgences are unhealthy for him, and that in reality he is having a long, slow, destructive mental breakdown.
The novel begins with Miller watching the film "Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow," the title of the movie thus cluing the novel's reader into the structure of this novel. We get to know how boring his yesterday was, how unsatisfying his today is, and how uncertain his tomorrow will be. I have long maintained that Malzberg is an underrated novelist. He has great control of his subject, and follows the logic of the exposition to its bitter denouement with great rigor. I think that what makes him less famous than other writers is that the novels like "Screen" make for difficult and in some ways quite unpleasant reading. Malzberg digs deep into the psychological caves of the protagonist. In this case, he removes all the myths about dissatisfied youth and the supposed tragedy of American life. There is no romantic ennui, no principled rebellion against the establishment. Instead, there is selfishness, boredom, contemptuous sexuality, frustration with no satisfactory outlet, life without even a possibility of meaning something. "Screen" is in no way meant for casual reading or an uplifting message.
The novel is about one typical (we assume) weekend in the life of Martin Miller. He is 24 years old, lives alone, and works in the Welfare Department of the federal government in New York. Miller dislikes his boring job, and makes so many shortcuts that he is likely to be fired on Monday. He does not seem to care because he believes that his haphazard attempts to get a job in the promotions department of a movie studio will somehow work out. Miller has an on-again, off-again relationship with co-worker Barbara, but likes to spend most of his time watching movies. In the movies, Miller engages in masturbatory fantasies in which he imagines himself as the male star of the movie having sex with the beautiful female stars. Miller finds this fantasy world of his increasingly more compelling and engaging than reality, but also deep down knows that these indulgences are unhealthy for him, and that in reality he is having a long, slow, destructive mental breakdown.
The novel begins with Miller watching the film "Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow," the title of the movie thus cluing the novel's reader into the structure of this novel. We get to know how boring his yesterday was, how unsatisfying his today is, and how uncertain his tomorrow will be. I have long maintained that Malzberg is an underrated novelist. He has great control of his subject, and follows the logic of the exposition to its bitter denouement with great rigor. I think that what makes him less famous than other writers is that the novels like "Screen" make for difficult and in some ways quite unpleasant reading. Malzberg digs deep into the psychological caves of the protagonist. In this case, he removes all the myths about dissatisfied youth and the supposed tragedy of American life. There is no romantic ennui, no principled rebellion against the establishment. Instead, there is selfishness, boredom, contemptuous sexuality, frustration with no satisfactory outlet, life without even a possibility of meaning something. "Screen" is in no way meant for casual reading or an uplifting message.
June 17, 2022
Malzberg's "first" novel (he wrote erotica/porn novels under various pseudonyms before publishing this under his own name) reflects its author's previous "literary" concerns: explicit sexual content interspersed with musings on other matters. The sex is tedious, repetitive and annoyingly androcentric, but does contain an unusual figurative expression from time to time.
What I suspect continues to make this novel more-than-forgettable to most readers is the theoretical implications raised by the central conceit: the narrator is a young man who "uses" film (or _is_ used by film, it's unclear to me which description is more accurate) as a means to engage with various female movie stars in sex. This conceit is raised above the merely quotidian by the speculative element: how does this happen, and why? What (if anything) does it imply for the wider viewing public? Indeed, is it a commentary on the voyeurism inherent in cinema (a la Laura Mulvey among other theorists)?
Possibly. Malzberg's protagonist appears to be using this phenomenon as a way of learning lessons about mortality, the importance of living with other people and treating them as _more than_ objects to be used (his central "real" romantic object, in fact, becomes much much more important to the protagonist by the end of the book than she appears to have been before the commencement of the plot).
Overall, though, not only is the conceit not very interesting some 50 years on, but it's even a little dated. I think this work would probably only be of interest to cinema scholars and those who are looking for unusual erotica than for a general readership. Certainly, it is not as interesting as Malzberg's writing was to become over the next few years.
What I suspect continues to make this novel more-than-forgettable to most readers is the theoretical implications raised by the central conceit: the narrator is a young man who "uses" film (or _is_ used by film, it's unclear to me which description is more accurate) as a means to engage with various female movie stars in sex. This conceit is raised above the merely quotidian by the speculative element: how does this happen, and why? What (if anything) does it imply for the wider viewing public? Indeed, is it a commentary on the voyeurism inherent in cinema (a la Laura Mulvey among other theorists)?
Possibly. Malzberg's protagonist appears to be using this phenomenon as a way of learning lessons about mortality, the importance of living with other people and treating them as _more than_ objects to be used (his central "real" romantic object, in fact, becomes much much more important to the protagonist by the end of the book than she appears to have been before the commencement of the plot).
Overall, though, not only is the conceit not very interesting some 50 years on, but it's even a little dated. I think this work would probably only be of interest to cinema scholars and those who are looking for unusual erotica than for a general readership. Certainly, it is not as interesting as Malzberg's writing was to become over the next few years.
April 12, 2020
Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...
"Barry N. Malzberg’s use of the language of erotic literature to craft nihilistic black comedies matured in his later SF works. Screen, written for the controversial publisher of avant-garde literary fiction and erotica Olympia Press (first print of Nabokov’s Lolita, Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, etc.), demonstrates Malzberg’s non-genre desires. One of numerous novels he wrote for Olympia, some under pseudonyms, Screen was pitched to Malzberg by Maurice Girodas as it was an idea for a “book he could not get his other writers to tackle” (see this article for more on the press and Malzberg’s discussion of the book). According to Malzberg, it was written in two weeks (!!) but never generated [..]"
"Barry N. Malzberg’s use of the language of erotic literature to craft nihilistic black comedies matured in his later SF works. Screen, written for the controversial publisher of avant-garde literary fiction and erotica Olympia Press (first print of Nabokov’s Lolita, Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, etc.), demonstrates Malzberg’s non-genre desires. One of numerous novels he wrote for Olympia, some under pseudonyms, Screen was pitched to Malzberg by Maurice Girodas as it was an idea for a “book he could not get his other writers to tackle” (see this article for more on the press and Malzberg’s discussion of the book). According to Malzberg, it was written in two weeks (!!) but never generated [..]"
February 18, 2018
A journey into a man’s head as he goes to the movies and has sex with the female leads.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews