334

by Thomas M. Disch

If Charles Dickens has written speculative fiction, he might have created a novel as intricate, passionate, and lacerating as Thomas M. Disch's visionary portrait of the underbelly of 21st-century New York City. The residents of the public housing project at 334 East 11th Street live in a world of rationed babies and sanctioned drug addiction. Real food is displayed in museums and hospital attendants moonlight as body-snatchers.

Nimbly hopscotching backward and forward in time, Disch charts the shifting relationships between this world's inheritors: an aging matriarch who falls in love with her young social worker; a widow seeking comfort from the spirit of her dead husband; a privileged preteen choreographing the perfectly gratuitous murder. Poisonously funny, piercingly authentic, 334 is a masterpiece of social realism disguised as science fiction.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Dystopia, Speculative Fiction, Short Stories, Literature, Science Fiction Fantasy

201 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1972

About the author

Poet and cynic, Thomas M. Disch brought to the sf of the New Wave a camp sensibility and a sardonicism that too much sf had lacked. His sf novels include Camp Concentration, with its colony of prisoners mutated into super-intelligence by the bacteria that will in due course kill them horribly, and On Wings of Song, in which many of the brightest and best have left their bodies for what may be genuine, or entirely illusory, astral flight and his hero has to survive until his lover comes back to him; both are stunningly original books and both are among sf's more accomplishedly bitter-sweet works.

In later years, Disch had turned to ironically moralized horror novels like The Businessman, The MD, The Priest and The Sub in which the nightmare of American suburbia is satirized through the terrible things that happen when the magical gives people the chance to do what they really really want. Perhaps Thomas M. Disch's best known work, though, is The Brave Little Toaster, a reworking of the Brothers Grimm's "Town Musicians of Bremen" featuring wornout domestic appliances -- what was written as a satire on sentimentality became a successful children's animated musical.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The end of the world. Let me tell you about the end of the world. It happened fifty years ago. Maybe a hundred. And since then it's been lovely. I mean it. Nobody tries to bother you. You can relax. You know what? I like the end of the world.”
― Thomas M. Disch, 334

Thomas M. Disch’s 1974 novel, a mix of science fiction and Zola-like social realism, eyeballs 334 East 11th Street, New York City, home to a teeming mass of miserable, poverty-stricken occupants of a 21st century multistory apartment beehive - Thomas Hobbs's philosophy of life as nasty, brutish, and short on a continual supply of amphetamines. Sorry to report, much of Disch's disturbing futuristic world has become harsh reality for huge chunks of our current-day population.

Forty-eight chapters, five long and forty-three short, feature interlinking snapshosts of a dozen or so men and women bound by their common plight of sordidness and desperation. To share a glimpse of what a reader is in for, below are commentary on two of the chapters: first, a longer one, a tale about college student Birdie Ludd in battle with the forces of darkness; and the second, a shorter tale, a vivid sketch of an outing at a most unusual art exhibit:

THE DEATH OF SOCRATES
Birdie Ludd has finally made it out of high school (P.S. 141) into one of New York City’s colleges only to sit in class listening to a professor on a TV yack nonstop about the life of Dante and how nearly everyone according to the Italian author’s Inferno will be tormented in hell, most certainly all the Jews.

When a Jewish girl in the class says that doesn’t seem fair, the professor’s assistant simply replies there will be a test on the covered material. As Birdie is quick to recognize, none of what he is being force fed has any relevance to his everyday life and since teaching is done by television, there is absolutely no possibility of dialogue or a lively interchange of ideas; rather, he is required to simply swallow and regurgitate what he is given.

Summoned to the front office, a Mr. Mack informs Birdie his score on the mandatory state test of “twenty-seven” was a mistake and Birdie is now being reclassified as a “twenty-four,” which means he will not be allowed to father any children. Poor Birdie! He complains it isn’t his fault his father has diabetes. But we learn there are more factors to consider, things like Birdie lacking any exceptional service for the country or the economy.

Additionally, we read how Birdie losses points because of his father’s unemployment pattern but gains a few points “by being a Negro.” Goodness, sound like Disch’s futuristic world has the deck stacked against blacks. What else is new? Perhaps not so coincidentally, Philip K. Dick's novel Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, also published in the 1970s, maps out genetic engineering geared to eliminate the US black population.

Birdie pens an essay for class entitled Problems of Creativeness, that ends “Another criteria of Creativeness was made by Socrates, so cruelly put to death by his own people, and I quote, “To know nothing is the first condition of all knowledge.” From the wisdom of that great Greek Philosopher may we not draw our own conclusions concerning these problems. Creativeness is the ability to see relationships where none exist.”

Read carefully, this essay reveals a highly imaginative, creative, intelligent mind buried under bad English and disastrous inner city public education. Thus the title of Disch’s tale, The Death of Socrates, bestows a double meaning. As they say, a mind is a terrible thing to waste – and observing the social forces crushing Birdie Lund’s brilliant mind makes for one sad, profound story.

Although Birdie is squashed and squeezed by cramped urban seediness, our young man has the capacity to perceive beauty radiating, glowing on the inside, even in dumb vending machines and blind, downtrodden faces. And, as to be expected, he has to continually fight through mass media and pop culture saturation – singing the words of commercials and viewing the movement of autos and ships as if moments from movies and television shows.

One of the saddest endings I’ve ever encountered: Highly intellectual, sensitive, aesthetically attuned Birdie Lund feels trapped no matter which way he turns. As a last resort, he sees but one option open to him. Here are Disch’s concluding words: “The same afternoon, without even bothering to get drunk, he went to Times Square and enlisted in the U.S. Marines to go and defend democracy in Burma. Eight other guys were sworn in at the same time. They raised their right arms and took one step forward and rattled off the Pledge of Allegiance or whatever. Then the sergeant came up and slipped the black Marine Crops mask over Birdie’s sullen face. His new ID number was stenciled across the forehead in big white letters: USMC 100-7011-D07. And that was it, they were gorillas.”

A & P (2021)
Lottie is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, at an exhibit were there are rows and stacks and pyramids of cans, boxes, meats, dairy, candy, cigarettes, bread, fruits, vegetables – all with individual brand names. Juan is so delighted just to be with her here at the museum. For Lottie, this is a time of perfection, one she wishes she could hold forever: “The real magic, which couldn’t be laid hold of, was simply that Juan was happy and interested and willing to spend perhaps the whole day with her. The trouble was that when you tried this hard to stop the flow it ran through your fingers and you were left squeezing air.”

Juan picks up a carrot that has the look and feel of being real but, of course, as part of the art exhibit, the carrot is not real. Visitors were given instructions as they entered the exhibit on what they would see and how to appreciate the art. The food and containers and cans are all fake, no matter how “real” they look – the Met’s tape said so, thus it must be true. But Juan insists, at the top of his lungs, that the carrot is real. One of the guards strides toward Juan and both he and Lottie are thrown out.

We can all recognize how this unusual art exhibit takes Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes and Campbell Soup Cans and expands the concept quantitatively. Arthur C. Danto has written extensively on how Warhol’s creations herald in the “death of art” in the sense that objects of art are no longer separate from everyday objects, no longer special pieces like landscape oil paintings or marble sculptures; rather, the art world defines what is and what is not art. Traveling uptown from his downtown cockroach infested 334 mega-apartment, Juan doesn’t buy into the art world’s artificial distinction. Damn, it’s a carrot! A subtle Thomas M. Disch comment on the would-be state of the visual arts in the years following Warhol and the “death of art.”

Again, these are but two of forty-eight chapters. I hope I have whetted your appetite to sample more of Disch's novel. Special thanks to Goodreads friend Manny Rayner for alerting me to this forgotten classic.



"He knew without having to talk to the rest that the murder would never take place. The idea had never meant for them what it had meant for him. One pill and they were actors again, content to be images in a mirror."
- Thomas M. Disch, 334

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disch coulda been a contender. From 1965 to around 1972 he was on fire, the living breathing cursing drugged up gay personification of New Wave SF, which was a whole thing where JG Ballard’s the only alien planet is Earth and exploring Inner Space not Outer Space was the thing to do. New Wave SF became a feature of the counterculture, and I’d like to explain all that but I’m exhausted thinking about it. There was a lot going on in those years. Not just John & Yoko. And in SF there was a big fight, and who doesn’t like a good literary punch-up? The New Wave SF types were taking Borges, Joyce, Calvino, Angela Carter, and the Mothers of Invention, and acid, and adding that to the brattish pulpy extreme-vision origins of SF which was despised, I mean despised by haughty litterateurs, and coming up with stuff like John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar, Brian Aldiss’ss Barefoot in the Head and Report on Probability A , Michael Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius stuff, it was all really far out and experimental and all. The American version of this was Thomas Disch and Samuel Delany and Harlan Ellison, whose Dangerous Visions anthology is almost a one-stop shop for this stuff.

After several hot sf novels and many littler sf stories Disch appears to have discovered that there isn’t any money in sf, which I think anyone could have told him & so swerved into horror. I read one of his large horror novels, The M.D. , and it was awful. Now I read this 1972 novel, and it’s sad. Because he was a great writer, had a skittery, amused, angular, jagged, unexpected style, a wicked turn of phrase, but because this was New Wave the idea of mollycoddling the reader with a strong narrative was anathema so what we get here is a futurised version of Life : A User’s Guide by George Perec. I think Thomas Disch had a great novel in him but didn’t get round to writing it.

[Manny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like most of Thomas Disch, this book is criminally underrated. It's a series of episodes centering around the same set of characters, living in a dystopian near-future New York City; it's hard to know whether to call it a loosely-structured novel, or a tightly integrated collection of short stories. The most natural comparison point is a movie like Short Cuts, Magnolia or Crash, with multiple intersecting story-lines and a big ensemble cast.

My favorite sequence must be Angouleme, where a bunch of bored, very smart pre-teens decide to murder an old man, just for the hell of it. They even give him the code-name "Alyona Ivanovna". It doesn't quite work out the way they expect. Another one I found particularly memorable is about a woman who falls in love with her social worker, after he reads her a passage from a novel featuring a sex scene on a sofa with a defective leg. They're sitting on a sofa with a defective leg at the time; surely that can't be a coincidence? I'll leave it to you to guess whether it is or not, but once again, things don't work out as planned.

In fact, it's rare for anyone in this collection to feel that they have the remotest degree of control over their destinies. I doubt that Michael Bay has ever considered filming it, and it's not the sort of book that's likely to leave you smiling. Except over the quality of the writing, which is, as usual with Disch, quite excellent. Hasn't that critical reappraisal got into gear yet?

[S̶e̶a̶n̶]

I had trouble getting into this one, in part because I was also reading Oblivion at the same time and, frankly, was more interested in that. After I finished it, I paid more attention to this, but it still didn't keep me that engaged. For such a relatively short novel, there is a lot going on in here as far as characters and the skipping around so much in time, and not having fully digested the first half or so likely played a role in my lack of engagement. (For what it's worth, the part of the summary that describes it as 'social realism disguised as science fiction' is accurate.)

[Stephane · Rating 5 out of 5]

334
Thomas Disch
Published in 1972

Wow, this was quite the book... First, the important stuff: this is not a book for the faint of heart or the easily offended. Disch writes well, he can turn a nice sentence, he uses a broad range of vocabulary while remaining precise and his dialogues are crisp, often funny. All the good stuff is there. But his prose is also quite crude, so be warned.

This is a dystopian story, but it says science fiction on the cover so that would fit the bill as well. I even heard that there was an edition with a space ship drawn on it, which would make no sense whatsoever. We could argue all day about what this book exactly is, so a broader denomination, such as speculative fiction, might be useful. Heck, one could even call it a literary experiment, especially when considering the structure of the second part. More on that later.

The tittle of the book refers to the street number of a building (334) where all the characters live, in New York, circa 2025. As in most typical dystopia, nobody is having fun. Some of the themes developed are, in no particular order of importance, overpopulation, degradation of environment and family structure, dependency to the welfare state, birth control... To gain reproductive rights, one must elevate and maintain his Regent score, a number based on various standardize intelligence tests, heredity, parents behaviour and other mostly inane factors. Disch did not foresee computers, but he does bring up the omnipresence of the screen (everybody is always watching teevee…) as well as the ubiquity of porn.

The book begins with five short stories, followed by a series of vignettes narrating the tribulation and ultimately the demise of one family. To me, the first two stories were the strongest, while the third one was borderline incomprehensible (the type of story where the key to understanding it is delivered towards the end and I found it frustrating more than anything else...) The last two stories were good, without being memorable.

The second part of the novel is really a suite of snapshots exploring the life of one family. Shifting constantly between characters, points of views and time, it seems confusing and hard to follow at first, but it gets progressively clearer, as Disch deftly drops hints allowing the reader to get a better picture of what is happening. It works more as a character study than as a storyline and not much seems to happen at times. But we do emerge with a strong sense of the atmosphere of this future created by Disch. The ending is really, really, really (!) strong and I was quite impressed with it.

One last consideration: this is a depressing novel, telling depressing stories in a depressing way, set in a depressing future with depressing characters… I hope this makes it clear. I don’t really know much about Thomas Disch, but this book felt to me like it was written by someone that really meant it, if that makes sense. Disch took a magnifier to some flaws he perceived in his world in the 70’s, and then poured in it pure bile, disdain and anger. The results is impressive, at time confusing, but always entertaining. I will be looking for more of his books.

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Someone likened this to Perec's encyclopedia apartment complex, but Disch's exploration of the near future of urban life really is closer-tethered, to one exceptional / not-so-exceptional family. A 21st-century Glass family, I say, ever seeking without finding. The opening stories form a series of fine-honed relatively stand-alone sociologies -- population, civics, work, leisure -- but the core is the title piece, an oulipan prism winding along three axis with an exceptional precision rarely seen in ostensible genre fiction, human as it is formal.

[DRM · Rating 5 out of 5]

This confirms my belief that Disch is the best writer no one has ever heard of. The first half of this are somewhat interconnected short stories in the not too distant future which range from entertaining (Bodies), disorienting (Everyday Life), strangely sweet (Emancipation), chilling (Death of Socrates), and phenomenal (Angouleme). The second half are vignettes about a family living in a lower income housing project of a not too distant dystopian future New York. Its skilled kaleidoscopic presentation of this society's daily minutiae is sort of like a sci fi version of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying complete with frequent narrator changes. At times it can be very challenging with little explanation provided as to how this society came to be, but that's part of the reason why its so appealing: Disch allows the readers to make their own interpretations of all the raw data provided within 334's pages.

[Michele · Rating 4 out of 5]

I nearly gave up on this book about 30 pages in, but I stuck with it and am glad. Disch is an impressive writer, with poetic turns of phrase and artfully unusual constructions. I grew to like the characters, despite their flaws, though I wanted more of Alexa and the very interesting idea of time-travel-as-therapy. The storyline is intricate, and near the end I had to refer back earlier sections because of the twists and turns and intersections (the diagram of the last third of the book was great!). By the end I felt that my brain had been turned inside out, and looking at the book I had the sense that I was holding not a linear representation of a tale with a beginning, middle, and end, but a tiny four-dimensional model of a chunk of space-time, which is a pretty neat trick.

[Allan Dyen-Shapiro · Rating 5 out of 5]

How is it that I'd never heard of this guy? Within the last few months, I read his three most critically acclaimed novels, and each is better than the last. 334 is actually a series of vignettes, all centered on a particular government housing project in NYC whose address is 334. Disch uses science fiction in order to accomplish satire, to stretch to the level of ridiculous. However, he's talking about the daily lives of most Americans. His subjects are average people--no remarkable types here. And he continues with a thesis developed elsewhere, that regardless of how absurd a situation is, one must buy in to some extent, because it it the only way to exist. And when one can't buy in, one kills oneself (as Disch did in 2008).

So, this novel starts out with a country dominated by standardized tests--and this was published in 1974! Except in Disch's world, you need a high score in order to be allowed to breed.

Then he shows us a world in which hospital orderlies steal bodies, as nobody really cares about most of them anyway, as patients die and sell them to outfits that offer necrophilia services. But what happens when one was insured for a proper cremation by unknown relatives and they must get the body back?

My favorite episode centered on a drug he made up that allowed users to take part in forming their own hallucinations. So a college graduate who'd majored in history--completely unemployable--lives simultaneously in the present and in the 300-400 AD or so range. And her psychiatrist treats both of her personalities!

This author is completely fascinating, utterly hysterical, and truly thought provoking.

Strongly recommended!

[Olethros · Rating 3 out of 5]

-Distopía depresiva y descorazonadora donde las haya.-

Género. Ciencia-Ficción.

Lo que nos cuenta. En un futuro cercano, en el 334 Este Calle Undécima de Manhattan hay un edificio que forma parte de los proyectos federales MODICUM, con sólo un 30% más de habitantes que el número óptimo planificado y en el que viven o con el que tienen relación diferentes personajes cuyas vidas, a veces sólo pinceladas de las mismas, vamos conociendo. Novela compuesta por diferentes relatos y novelas cortas relacionados entre sí, escritos entre 1967 y 1973 pero unidos para dar forma a este volumen en 1974.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com....

[Pete Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the novel (or more correctly, set of linked stories) which for many showed how Disch was often too clever by half for the rest of us. The novella ‘Angouleme’ included here was the subject of a book-length critical essay by Samuel R. Delany, who argued that despite the absence of scientific themes its speculative setting made it inherently science fiction. A snapshot of the 21st century lives of the people who live in 334 East 11th St, New York, it ranges from being at turns darkly comic and farcical to sharply realistic and unfailingly sympathetic. The science fiction is there in places but played down to the everyday while the social realism is played up, to the point that 334 takes the reader into immersive layers of intricacy, and with a Dickensian eye for detail that shrugs off the fact that this is all meant to be about ‘the future’. Neither was it ever meant to be a fun read in the way that Camp Concentration could be, and if Disch’s last posts on his Live Journal Endzone were indicative of the direction his thoughts were heading in his last weeks, he’d been there already in fiction with 334’s closing sentences. Someone – and really I can only mean Terry Gilliam – could probably make a very decent film of this.

[Shane · Rating 1 out of 5]

So I bought this book around 16 years ago when I first moved to Florida. At the time I was a working on a huge tracking project that had the project code 334. This project is what allowed me to move to Florida and keep my job, because no one else was familiar with the project, so my company had to let me work from home. Anyway, I thought the connection was interesting.

Unfortunately, I finally started reading it (long after project 334 had ended and I changed jobs) and didn't like it at all. When I was younger and had a lot more time I might have given it more of a chance, but instead I got to page 35 before giving up because I just didn't understand anything that was going on. There were also some pretty disgusting scenes that seemed gratuitous.

[Andrew · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sometimes you have a book which you just keep reading because you're sure something will - if not actually happen -coalesce from the strands to make it interesting. "334" (and do not be swayed by the false promise of the spaceship cover) is quite simply a tiresome, difficult mess. A cast of barely distinguishable characters fail to live well in a sketchily realised future society. Any potential is wrecked by the scattershot rendering of disengaging prose. If anything happens it's told in such a way that nothing is felt to happen. More a collection of vignettes than a novel I would consider this unpublishable if it wasn't in my hand. No doubt many will disagree...

[Ben · Rating 1 out of 5]

Really unconvincing, really wasn't enjoying it, couldn't bring myself to finish it because I just didn't care.

I think maybe I'm getting burned out on New Wave SF in general.

[Simona F. 'Free Palestine, Stop Genocide' · Rating 1 out of 5]

Romanzo noiosissimo, inutilmente lungo, didascalicamente ammonitore ma, più di ogni altra cosa, frequentemente incomprensibile. Anche rileggendo più volte le frasi, non riuscivo a capirne il senso. Spesso mi è sembrato che le informazioni non fossero sufficienti per interpretare la frase o addirittura tutta la scena descritta. L'edizione letta non ha aiutato, con tutti i suoi errori!
Quel poco materiale interessante che c'era, si è perso fra un guazzabuglio di informazioni inutili e in accenni talmente minimi da non suscitare alcuna curiosità.

[Chip · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another very dark and sick speculative fiction. You name it, this book has it - murder, suicide, incest, prostitution, necrophilia, exotic sex, racism, etc. There isn't much of storyline except that each story takes place in or around the grim apartment complex 334 and has many members of common family. It uses a poor technique seen quite a lot in the 60s and 70s of extrapolating situations to the dire end. To add to the confusion, the second half of the book jumps non-linearly through time.

[Laura L. Van Dam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Esta "novela", si es que se la puede calificar de novela, es muy atípica. Es una serie de relatos sobre los habitantes de un edificio en una New York del futuro - el 334 del título. La sociedad está en decadencia y la mayoría de los habitantes tienen apenas lo básico, proporcionado por una agencia gubernamental (MODICUM) y hay una élite de ingenieros y programadores. Tampoco se pueden reproducir libremente debido a la escasez de recursos, hay que pasar una serie de tests para ello.
Los dos primeros relatos "La muerte de Sócrates" y "Cuerpos" me gustaron tanto, que pensé seriamente que este libro iba a convertirse en uno de mis favoritos de toda la vida, con esa atmósfera entre Blade Runner y Max Headroom que tienen. Lamentablemente los dos siguientes "La vida cotidiana en los últimos años del Imperio Romano" y "Emancipación" no me gustaron tanto. Me parecieron interesantes (pero no tanto como los primeros) los dos últimos "Angulema" y "334", este último no es un relato sino una colección de viñetas cortísimas sobre los integrantes de una familia del edificio y sus descendientes.
Lo mejor que tiene el libro es cómo los personajes del 334 aparecen relacionados en distintos roles a través de todos los relatos, nacen, mueren, aparecen y desaparecen en la historia en distintos lugares y tiempos. Además tengo que decir que me encantó la forma de escribir de Disch, por lo que este libro no va a ser el único que lea de este autor.

"El fin del mundo. Déjame decirte algo acerca del fin del mundo. Sucedió cincuenta años atrás. O Quizá cien. Y desde entonces, ha sido encantador. Lo digo en serio. Nadie trata de molestarte. Te puedes relajar, ¿sabes? Me gusta el fin del mundo."

[Ralph Palm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting, incredibly complicated. The first part is little different than a collection of short stories, but they each hint and themes and characters developed later. There's a *chart* to help the reader follow the narrative leaps in the second half, across 3 characters, different years (out of sequence), and narrative type ('another point-of-view', fantasy, reality, and monolog). There's a total of 43 different vinettes in this section, and amazingly they seem to add up to a story. It's a fun read if you like novels like puzzles.

Another plus: technically a science fiction novel, it wears its exposition so lightly it's hard to even tell most of the time. For example, there is a drug depicted in the novel that gives certain characters an elaborately detailed fantasy life--a sort of pharmacological virtual reality. While several passages occur in these alternate realities, the SF mechanism through which they occur isn't explained until about halfway through.

I think I would have to read it a few more times to pick up on all the connections and interactions. For example, a seemingly throwaway character from one of the early stories (Martinez) turns out to be the estranged husband of one of the main characters (Juan). It's only later that you realize it's the same person (=Juan Martinez).

I haven't read a book that's both challenging and entertaining in a long time. It's usually one or the other, for me. I didn't rank it 5/5 only because I wouldn't recommend it for everyone: I could easily see how the narrative tricks might seem like tedious affectations, and there's a lot of profanity and disturbing imagery. But if you don't mind that stuff, then I heartily recommend it.

[Nathaniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

“She climbed down from the gym with a sense of loss: she had offered herself to History and History had refused. With a sense, equally, of what a fool she’d been.”

(from “Everyday Life in the Later Roman Empire”)

*

“And anyhow the world doesn’t end. Even though it may try to, even though you wish to hell it would—it can’t. There’s always some poor jerk who thinks he needs something he hasn’t got, and there goes five years, ten years, getting it. And then it’ll be something else. It’s another day and you’re still waiting for the world to end.

Oh, sometimes, you know, I have to laugh. When I think— Like the first time you’re really in love and you say to yourself, Hey! I’m really in love! Now I know what it’s about. And then he leaves you and you can’t believe it. Or worse than that you gradually lose sight of it. Just gradually. You’re in love, only it isn’t as wonderful as it used to be. Maybe you’re not even in love, maybe you just want to be. And maybe you don’t even want to be. You stop bothering about songs on the radio and there’s nothing you want to do but sleep. Do you know? But you can only sleep for so long and then it’s tomorrow. The icebox is empty and you have to think who haven’t you borrowed any money from and the room smells and you get up just in time to see the most terrific sunset. So it wasn’t the end of the world after all, it’s just another day.”

*

in a lot of ways this was really good — some moments I would go so far as to describe as transcendent. but I just. can’t get over how disturbing — unnecessarily so, imo — “Bodies” was. that and the occasional weirdness about race take this down a star.

[Stuart · Rating 2 out of 5]

A story about the social underclass in a near-future NY dystopia - exactly as grim as it sounds
As another Goodreads reviewer quipped "Thomas M. Disch coulda been a contender" back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with his two most challenging social-realist novels being Camp Concentration (1968) and 334 (1972), though this latter is not a novel so much has a serious of interlocking stories set in a giant impoverished tower block in a poor dystopian future where life is regulated, the underclass' population is controlled, and life generally sucks. The stories here are about the sad, desperate lives of the people stuck in these circumstances - it's very realistic, with no sugar-coating or heroism or overcoming the odds. It's only borderline SF really, an extrapolation of how things were going in the 1970s in the US, and while it didn't get things right, almost no SF speculating on the near future every gets remotely close to be fair.

Having said that, after reading the first two stories The Death of Socrates and Bodies, and skimming the next one Everyday Life in the Later Roman Empire, things were just too depressing to move forward. I totally respect the authorial choice to just depict a lousy future scenario without any upbeat elements, since that is a legitimate statement to make. But it makes for a very downbeat reading experience, and if I want to feel down I just have to turn on the news after all. I don't need 100% escapism, but do need a little more hope in my fiction. This was too tough to swallow.

[xenia · Rating 4 out of 5]

there's a scene here, where a mother, evicted from her apartment, sets all her furniture outside on fire, and when she disappears back into the apartment complex, her daughter settles onto a smouldering mattress, to be engulfed by the flames completely

—but then a fireman extinguishes the flames

i don't think i've read a book that captures the lethargic, ecstatic and idiotic feeling of desolation, so sincerely and ironically, at the same time

one time, during a depressive spell, my gp asked me whether i had suicidal ideations, and i replied 'isn't that normal?' she slowly shook her head, with an expression half bemused, half pitying

i dedicate this book to her

[Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not sure how to classify 334 and perhaps that is not necessary. Maybe It is a futuristic novel / collection of short stories. The book is set in the 2020s (written in 1973). Literary with not too much focus on tech and action, rather on relationships.

In a strange way it reminds me of the graphic novel Building Stories by Chris Ware - both being based on a building and its inhabitants and the mood of the story.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent novel, one of the best that came from the New Wave movement. It's similar to the kind of thing that John Brunner and Norman Spinrad were doing at their height. It's fragmented and episodic, but comes together satisfyingly in the end, and seems as relevant now as it was when originally released.

[Jessica Donohoe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd give it 4 stars, generally, but just 3 for Disch. He keeps my expectations very, very high.

Kept.

They're still up there. It's just, you know, he is to. Up there. In the ether.

[b · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favourite book. Best book I’ve ever read.

[Philip · Rating 4 out of 5]

2024 Book #10:
334 (1972) by Thomas M. Disch

Not really a novel, but more of a loosely connected set of episodes set in a dystopian future New York. I’m generally mixed on this book, but I think the good parts outweigh the bad. On the good side, we have some of the strongest prose I’ve read all year. Disch is a master at crafting perfectly incisive sentences and paragraphs. Yes, sometimes they go on a little too long; but at no point do I feel like he’s “showing off.” (Compare this to, for example, the laborious ostentation of Tom Wolfe.) In addition, 334 is quite a funny book. We are introduced to a large cast of characters who go about life with little control over their circumstances, and they sometimes find themselves in utterly ridiculous predicaments. A hospital staffer misguidedly sells a corpse to a necrophiliac; an elderly woman, totally misreading the signs, falls in love with a college student doing research on her. But Disch’s tonal approach to humor is wry, smirking, and controlled, not zany and chaotic as it would be in Sladek, Bester, or even Pynchon (or for that matter, most New Wave sci-fi). All of this to say that Disch’s novel is more subtle and “literary” than a lot of the genre fiction that I’ve read. And this might also contribute to the negative aspects of the book. For one, there’s not much in the way of speculative elements. While 334 explores a few dystopian social structures, they’re only slight exaggerations of the conditions we live under now (but maybe this is a sign of good dystopian fiction?). The book is also overlong, occasionally boring, and often plotless. I found it difficult to keep track of all the characters and their interrelationships. But if you have the patience for it, 334 might be worth it to get a taste of one of sci-fi’s more underrated writers. (low 4/5)

[Carl Barlow · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a near-future, over-populated New York City, various folk try to make sense of their senseless lives... or just succumb because that's so much easier.

Other than a few references to population control, designer babies, artificial wombs, hints at widespread soporifics -whether in the food or via super-addictive television shows- to keep citizens docile, there is very little here that could be classed as SF (indeed, other than the artificial wombs bit, it's arguable if ANY really could be). 334 is social comment: mainly grim, blisteringly brutal, blisteringly honest, social comment. It has no real plot, its various components and episodes interconnecting in a myriad of ways and readily readable in any order (and thus, I suppose, variously interpretable). There's a lot of Samuel R. Delany in it, a dash of Kafka, but it remains painfully, jaw-droppingly, Thomas M. Disch.

Recommended for those who would have Thought provoked.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2339104.html

The disjointed narrative failed to engage me, and I felt that the stories never quite concentrated sufficiently on either near-future world-building or interesting characterisation. It was interesting that Disch correctly saw the politics of reproduction as being so prominent in the twenty-first century, although the detail has turned out rather differently.

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/334-by-thomas-m-disch/

My concentration was at a low ebb in August 2014 because of my role at that year’s Worldcon, and I think that I was unfair. It’s not actually a novel; it’s a group of six short pieces, with a shared setting and some shared characters, all set in and around 334 East 11th Street in New York, so I was demanding more coherence than necessary. Within each story, the characterization makes sense. And I’ll get to the world building.

I have come back to it as one of the relatively small number of books set in 2025, looking at next year as science fiction saw it. Actually only one and a half of the six shorter pieces that make up the book is explicitly set in 2025, and the longest piece (which shares the title “334”) has 43 sections, all dated to the years 2021, 2024 and 2026, so none of them in 2025. I missed that when I did my 2021 and 2024 write ups.

It’s interesting that the politics of reproductive health is one of the themes of the book. The 2020s of Disch’s world are over-populated and subject to government regulation, particularly in deciding who gets to have children. The first story is about a young man whose social rating is too low to allow him to become a parent, and his efforts to overcome that. Another is about a couple who do qualify for children, and decide that the male partner will be the one who actually becomes pregnant.

Otherwise, it’s a typical late 60’s / early 70’s story, set in a rather grim dehumanising dystopian society, where advances in technology haven’t brought much improvement for most people and the smart people exploit the cracks in the system. Somewhat depressing.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very good book, but that's not to say that it's fun to read. It isn’t science fiction in the normal sense of being about advanced technology or a predicted future that is different from the present in which the author lives. Instead, it can be seen as a story stemming from the impulse: “My God, what if things just go on the way they are?”

What’s disturbing about it in some ways is that it seems far more accurate in its cynicism than many of the more positive science fiction of the 1970s. Disch lived in New York at the time when the many great Housing Projects were first built, and watched as poor people were moved into “planned” communities that seemed to offer everything but in fact provided no hope or sense of possibility for the future. He sets his novel in one of these projects (a fictitious one at 334 E. 11th St, just a few blocks south of the actual Stuyvesant Town project), with his central characters a family of people who have been living in such places for the past fifty years. The story takes place in the 2020’s fifty years from the time he wrote.

It’s easy to apply terms like “Kafkaeasque” or “dystopian” to this novel, but what really stands out to me is the humanity of the characters and the reality of their futile hopes and welfare-state aspirations. I was crushed when Mrs. Hanson fell foolishly in love with her social worker, and deathly embarrassed for her at the white trash dinner she prepared for him, although on another level I was laughing with Schadenfreude. The novel's entire message appears to offer no hope for the characters, and no escape for the residents of 334 beside the hope for a quick and easy death.

I paused while reading this at one point to look up Thomas M. Disch on wikipedia. It turns out that he committed suicide, not long after the death of his partner of many years, but also in connection with the impending loss of his New York City apartment. This is a case of life imitating art in the worst way imaginable, but at least the world still has Disch’s book as a plea to find some better way for handling urban poverty and ignorance.

[Bart Everson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like Nova, this is a good novel by an author capable of greatness. I admire Disch, and was saddened when he took his life last year. I have a collection of his stories, entitled Fun with Your New Head that is amongst my very favorite books.

334 is called a novel, but it fits that descriptor loosely. It reads more like a collection of interrelated stories. (And indeed my friend Frank described it as a classic example of a "fix up" novel, since some of the stories were published separately first.) I'd describe it as five short stories followed by a fugue-like novelette.

It's bleak stuff, or at least it seems to be so intended. Disch envisions a very near future which is not so much a dystopia as a triumph of mediocrity. I found one sentence on page 102 that seemed to encapsulate the spirit of the whole book:

Smells filmed every surface like cheap skin cream.

Of course it's hard to sustain interest over the length of a novel in characters who are thoroughly unsympathetic. My objection is that the most oppressive force in the book would seem to be the author himself. His loathing for humanity somewhat overwhelms the characters themselves. I imagined that after the final page, once the author was done, things would have to get better for most of them. In other words, I didn't find his vision thoroughly convincing.

The tales in Fun with Your New Head are bleak too, but with a darker, more horrific edge. Both books are suffused with despair, but I found 334 subtler, more realistic, and a bit of a snooze. The problem with a thoroughly realistic bleakness is that it's not very much fun.