A Man Divided

by Olaf Stapledon

1. A WEDDING FIASCO2. VICTOR'S EARLY LIFE3. BEGINNINGS OF OUR FRIENDSHIP4. BUSINESS MAN AND SOLDIER5. NEW START6. MAGGIE'S EARLY LIFE7. UNCERTAIN HAPPINESS8. A DISTRESSING INTERLUDE9. VICTOR FORGES AHEAD10. CHECK11. GLOOM12. STRANGE TRIUMPH***a selection from the first A WEDDING FIASCO 1921 VICTOR HAD REFUSED his bride at the altar! That was the brute fact which agitated the little party in the vestry. No amount of explanation could mitigate it. As best man I had been in a good position to observe events; and even I, who had formerly been fairly intimate with Victor, was completely taken by surprise. True, I had long suspected that there was something queer about him; but up to the very moment of his quietly shattering remark, as he put the ring into his pocket, I had no idea that anything serious was amiss. James Victor Cadogan-Smith, later to be known as plain Victor Smith, had seemed the ideal bridegroom. He was the son of a successful colonial administrator who had climbed by his own ability from a very lowly position, and had recently acquired a knighthood. The family had been humble "Smiths" until Victor's father had married the only child of a more aristocratic family, and had agreed to splice his wife's name to his own. The new "Cadogan-Smith" assured his friends that he had done this mainly to please his father-in-law. But in later life he used to say, "In those days my snobbery was unconscious." His son Victor was born in 1890. He was now a bridegroom of thirty-one, and certainly a catch for any girl. Looking at him in his wedding clothes, one could not help using the cliché "every inch a gentleman". His financial prospects were excellent. He was already reputed to be one of the most brilliant young business men of his city, and he was well established as a junior partner in a great shipping firm. Victor had come through the Great War, as we called it in those days, undamaged and with a Military Cross; and now, in the brief period of optimism that followed the war, it seemed that he had excellent prospects of working out for himself a triumphant business career in the phase of post-war recovery. To crown all, he had secured as his bride the charming daughter of the head of his firm. The wedding celebrations had been planned in appropriate style. The only factor which was not in perfect harmony with the spirit of the occasion, I fear, was the best man. I had been greatly flattered by Victor's request that I should fill this office, but I could not help wondering why he had not asked one of his many more presentable friends. His subsequent behaviour toward me almost suggested that he regretted his choice. Certainly I did not fit at all into the picture of a smart wedding; and from the moment when I found that I should have to hire a conventional wedding garment my heart had failed me. Victor must have found me a very inefficient manager, for he had to re-arrange almost everything that I had undertaken. I knew, of course, that in one of his moods he had sometimes an almost obsessive passion for correctness, but I had been surprised and exasperated by his meticulous scrutiny of every detail of our clothing and of the time- table of the honeymoon tour. At the church, Victor's erect and perfectly tailored figure had seemed the very pattern of orthodoxy; and Edith, I am sure, must have been admired by the whole congregation as the ideal bride, so "radiant" was she (yes, that is the fatally right word), and so expensively adorned.

Genres: Science Fiction

187 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1950

About the author

Excerpted from wikipedia:
William Olaf Stapledon was a British philosopher and author of several influential works of science fiction.

Stapledon's writings directly influenced Arthur C. Clarke, Brian Aldiss, Stanisław Lem, C. S. Lewis and John Maynard Smith and indirectly influenced many others, contributing many ideas to the world of science fiction.

Reviews

[MichaelK · Rating 5 out of 5]

After this I have one more Stapledon novel (DEATH INTO LIFE) to read, then I'll have read all of his out-of-print fiction. So far, this is only one of Stapledon's out-of-print works I'd like to see make a comeback. A MAN DIVIDED is Stapledon's take on a Jekyll&Hyde-style split personality story, written in a similar fashion to Stapledon's other biographical novels(ODD JOHN and SIRIUS): a friend of the extraordinary individual has written a biography about them. It's been a few years since I read SIRIUS and ODD JOHN, but I feel that I can confidently claim that A MAN DIVIDED is on par with both of them, though it is far less fantastical and much more personal, more grounded in the real world.

Victor, the divided man, has two conflicting personalities:

The Somnolent/Somnambulant/Sleepwalking Self is a classist snob who goes through life on autopilot, pursuing a typical business career, seeking wealth and status, wanting an upper class trophy wife, rarely reflecting on the world, other people, or his actions. Etc.

The Awake/Lucid Self has a strong social conscience and great empathy for the suffering masses; he wants to learn as much about himself and the world as he can, and change both for the better; he falls in love with a not-conventionally-attractive woman from a poor background, because he can see her inner beauty. Etc.

The conflict between the two plays out in a way which still resonates today. When the Lucid Self takes over, he calls off a planned marriage with a rich and attractive woman, because he realises that they do not truly love each other and would just be settling for a stable and socially acceptable, but ultimately unhappy, marriage; he realises that his business career is blind self-service which has made him a cog in an economic machine that exploits the poor and is indifferent to their suffering.

And so he embarks on a new life path.

But the Somnolent Self regains control, and thinks that he's gone through a strange idealistic phase and must get back to real-world, must return to his business career and secure an appropriate and lucrative marriage. He must sort out this mess and go back to chasing wealth and status.

Throughout the course of the novel the two selves develop, both affected by the other. There's a lot to be read into this book, and it certainly feels like the most personal of Stapledon's fiction. (Leslie Fiedler borrowed the title for his early - and problematic - biography of Stapledon, OLAF STAPLEDON: A MAN DIVIDED. Robert Crossley's OLAF STAPLEDON: SPEAKING FOR THE FUTURE is considered the definitive Stapledon biography.) I'd love to see this back in print; it presents Stapledon's ideas in a very different way to his other fiction, on a smaller scale than his future histories and in a story less fantastical than the other two biographical novels.