The Sight

by Brian Moore

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

Unknown Binding

About the author

Brian Moore (1921–1999) was born into a large, devoutly Catholic family in Belfast, Northern Ireland. His father was a surgeon and lecturer, and his mother had been a nurse. Moore left Ireland during World War II and in 1948 moved to Canada, where he worked for the Montreal Gazette, married his first wife, and began to write potboilers under various pen names, as he would continue to do throughout the 1950s.

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1955, now available as an NYRB Classic), said to have been rejected by a dozen publishers, was the first book Moore published under his own name, and it was followed by nineteen subsequent novels written in a broad range of modes and styles, from the realistic to the historical to the quasi-fantastical, including The Luck of Ginger Coffey, An Answer from Limbo, The Emperor of Ice Cream, I Am Mary Dunne, Catholics, Black Robe, and The Statement. Three novels—Lies of Silence, The Colour of Blood, and The Magician’s Wife—were short-listed for the Booker Prize, and The Great Victorian Collection won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

After adapting The Luck of Ginger Coffey for film in 1964, Moore moved to California to work on the script for Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain. He remained in Malibu for the rest of his life, remarrying there and teaching at UCLA for some fifteen years. Shortly before his death, Moore wrote, “There are those stateless wanderers who, finding the larger world into which they have stumbled vast, varied and exciting, become confused in their loyalties and lose their sense of home. I am one of those wanderers.”

Reviews

[Cecily · Rating 2 out of 5]

The main character of The Sight, Benedict Chipman, is a wealthy New York lawyer who is a one-dimensional and irredeemably horrid man. A caricature.
“His interest in other people was limited to the extent of their contribution to his purse, his pleasure, or his self-esteem.”

Your death

When my grandparents' generation were terminally ill, next-of-kin were advised not to tell their loved-one. That seems extraordinary nowadays, especially as the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults Bill is currently going through Parliament.

Personally, I think it's only right that, in general, doctors give their patients an honest prognosis. That still leaves the possibility of various forms of unexpected death, and yet I can't imagine wanting to know in advance, even if I believed in fortune-telling of any kind. Then again, I suppose that even without any diagnosed condition, actuaries and pension advisers often calculate a likely life-expectancy. Maybe that's why I hate pension discussions.

Morbid thoughts. That's what this story has left me with.


Image: A medium with her hands revealing a crystal ball (Source)


Genre

I don’t think this story belongs in an anthology of “fantastic(al) literature”. One character believes in second sight, but no one else seems to, although another character tries to play safe, just in case there’s something in it. That made it rather an anti-climax.

Quotes

“Afternoon sunlight merciless on the thin grey hair.”

“Buddy’s only effect on his uncle was to relieve him of any regrets about not having a son of his own.”

Short story club

I read this in Black Water: The Anthology of Fantastic Literature, by Alberto Manguel, from which I’m reading one story a week with The Short Story Club, starting 4 September 2023.

(I can’t find a free and legitimate online link to this story.)

You can join the group here.

[Connie G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chipman is the type of person who wants to control everything in his life. Now, his possible death is something is cannot control. He goes from not believing in Mrs Leahy's second sight to feeling she can predict the future and becomes unhinged psychologically. Chipman is not used to being pitied or dependent on other people.

We don't know if Mrs Leahy really has the second sight, or is just making an informed guess because she knew other people with melanoma. Either way, Chipman is in a situation where he cannot control the outcome. Will he die from melanoma or from his overwhelming fear of dying?

[George Ilsley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chipman is a self-centred privileged type, of the sort who used to often be seen in fiction. Moore's short story, "The Sight", is a tale of a man, Chipman, coming to grips with his own mortality, discovering that he does not control his destiny as much as he felt he should, and that not all of life's challenges and inconveniences can be managed by reaching for the cheque-book.

I've read some of Moore's novels but have none catalogued here since that was so many moons ago.

This short story I found to be mostly in the realm of the "realistic" rather than fantasy — in that the events of the story are not entirely outside common experiences. They are exaggerated perhaps, sharpened for dramatic purposes, but not implausible.

The unknown, you see, is not really that unknown. It is just not talked about.

[Hester · Rating 4 out of 5]

A modern fairy tale . Horrible monarch ( New York lawyer) confronts his own mortality . From control to chaos .

[Larrry G · Rating 2 out of 5]

A fascinating dive into the eternal dilemnas of free will and prescience . . . NOT.
In hindsight, I would not read this misery inducing rubbish, OK yes I would for the continuity of the Short Story Club. At the age this was written, the state of cancer treatment was such that you could look at what is going on as one quack or another administering untimely death sentences to a practically deserving POS. But just like there are formidable alternatives to capital punishment, here the main character has to live with being "persecuted" by the smarmy, undeserved kindness of those most, ahem, near and dear to him, as they perhaps drive him in despair to his deathbed (thus a self-fulfilling prophecy like the ancient tales?). Nothing more to see here, move along smartly.

[Petergiaquinta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poor Benedict Chipman! This ill-fated man in a grey flannel suit reminds me more than a little of a dying mid-Twentieth Century Ivan Ilyich, another rich old douche bag who treated his servants poorly and took way too long to die. At least this story was blessedly shorter and provided a few chuckles along the way.

Moore's story reads like something from the glory days of pulp mags, but since I know nothing of the author I have no context for real knowledge here. It has that Twilight Zone kind of late ‘50s/early ‘60s vibe to it, so while maybe having aged badly, like many of Rod Serling’s scripts this story gives a sock in the jaw to the patriarchy and questions its social hierarchies.

Bonus points for the shout out to Mrs. Tiggywinkle!

+++++++++++++
Read for GoodReads discussion group

[Sandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5

[Vintagebooklvr · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 1/2 stars.