I Hear Voices

by Paul Ableman

At once confined and liberated by his madness, the hero and narrator of I Hear Voices takes us on journeys through his private, transfigured city. The vehicle is his own deranged mind, fueled by the absurdities of modern life. Lovers of Beckett and Ionesco will recognize much in Paul Abelman’s world, where the fantastic and the real coexist in a hilarious, disquieting detente. This first American edition brings to a new audience a literary masterpiece which was originally published in 1958 by Olympia Press in Paris; Maurice Girodias claimed that it was the book that gave him the greatest pleasure to publish.

The narrator of I Hear Voices is a young schizophrenic who, on the wings of his madness transports himself, and the reader, through a wondrously transfigured city where the real and the fantastic blend together in a seamless enchantment. The continual stream and buzz of events is often comical, occasionally wrenching, and always unpredictable. Encounters with Miss Carpet, The Commissioner, Merkitt, and Mrs. Oil, among others, are filled with poignant satire and disquieting honesty in this vision of the fragmentation of contemporary life. I Hear Voices is an unforgettable adventure, and a major literary experience.

Genres: Fiction

167 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Paul Ableman was an English playwright and novelist. He wrote an eclectic mix of literary novels, erotic fiction, television novelizations, and non-fiction.

Ableman was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, into a Jewish family, and brought up mainly in New York. He later settled in Hampstead, London. His father was a tailor and his mother was a small-time actress.

Ableman was married twice, first to Tina Carrs-Brown in 1958; then to Sheila Hutton-Fox in 1978 until his death in 2006.

Reviews

[Anna Prejanò · Rating 4 out of 5]

Il racconto si dipana come un filo lunghissimo dall'inizio alla fine, un filo esile ma resistente, che accompagna il lettore nel labirinto di un delirio schizofrenico senza spezzarsi mai. Grande arte narrativa, ma sobria, quasi timida, senza sfoggio, senza eccessi, senza sbavature. Tutto succede dentro la mente, ma una mente talmente "fuori di sé" da incarnarsi in una realtà totalmente esterna, concreta, dalla quale è bandito qualsiasi affondo psicologico. Il suo correlativo oggettivo è l'immagine ricorrente dell'uovo, mistico, ermetico e surreale come quello di Piero della Francesca. Il segreto che forse vi è racchiuso evapora: "lo perdo, lo perdo, anche se lo tengo ben stretto, anche se, non come se fosse troppo sottile e tenue da trattenere, ma piuttosto come se le nostre relative velocità fossero tanto diverse che, nel preciso istante in cui la mia mente gli si chiudeva attorno, quello fuggisse, in un lampo, fuor della portata del mio pensiero". Non posso dire che questo libro mi sia piaciuto veramente. Ma mi ha lasciato una fortissima impressione quasi fisica.

[Mac · Rating 2 out of 5]

Takes the unreliable narrator to its logical conclusion, in a way, and gives up on any sense of reality. Our schizophrenic guide to the world here doesn't make anything concrete available, which makes it very difficult to stay with the text.

[Abbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

You know you're getting into a special sort of novel when one of the dust jacket blurbs praises it for being "clinically accurate." It's a poignant first-person narrative by a schizophrenic, equally funny and heartbreaking.