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The Alteration
In Kingsley Amis’s virtuoso foray into virtual history it is 1976 but the modern world is a medieval relic, frozen in intellectual and spiritual time ever since Martin Luther was promoted to pope back in the sixteenth century. Stephen the Third, the king of England, has just died, and Mass (Mozart’s second requiem) is about to be sung to lay him to rest. In the choir is our hero, Hubert Anvil, an extremely ordinary ten-year-old boy with a faultless voice. In the audience is a select group of experts whose job is to determine whether that faultless voice should be preserved by performing a certain operation. Art, after all, is worth any sacrifice.
How Hubert realizes what lies in store for him and how he deals with the whirlpool of piety, menace, terror, and passion that he soon finds himself in are the subject of a classic piece of counterfactual fiction equal to Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle.
The Alteration won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science-fiction novel in 1976.
How Hubert realizes what lies in store for him and how he deals with the whirlpool of piety, menace, terror, and passion that he soon finds himself in are the subject of a classic piece of counterfactual fiction equal to Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle.
The Alteration won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science-fiction novel in 1976.
204 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1976
About the author
Kingsley Amis
151 books511 followersBest known novels of British writer Sir Kingsley William Amis include
Lucky Jim
(1954) and
The Old Devils
(1986).
This English poet, critic, and teacher composed more than twenty-three collections, short stories, radio and television scripts, and books of social and literary criticism. He fathered Martin Amis.
William Robert Amis, a clerk of a mustard manufacturer, fathered him. He began his education at the city of London school, and went up to college of Saint John, Oxford, in April 1941 to read English; he met Philip Larkin and formed the most important friendship of his life. After only a year, the Army called him for service in July 1942. After serving as a lieutenant in the royal corps of signals in the Second World War, Amis returned to Oxford in October 1945 to complete his degree. He worked hard and got a first in English in 1947, and then decided to devote much of his time.
Pen names: [authorRobert Markham|553548] and William Bill Tanner
This English poet, critic, and teacher composed more than twenty-three collections, short stories, radio and television scripts, and books of social and literary criticism. He fathered Martin Amis.
William Robert Amis, a clerk of a mustard manufacturer, fathered him. He began his education at the city of London school, and went up to college of Saint John, Oxford, in April 1941 to read English; he met Philip Larkin and formed the most important friendship of his life. After only a year, the Army called him for service in July 1942. After serving as a lieutenant in the royal corps of signals in the Second World War, Amis returned to Oxford in October 1945 to complete his degree. He worked hard and got a first in English in 1947, and then decided to devote much of his time.
Pen names: [authorRobert Markham|553548] and William Bill Tanner
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February 15, 2019
The Alteration - Surely one of the most imaginative and oddest novels I’ve ever read, a striking cross between, believe it or not, Anthony Trollope and Philip K. Dick, as if Kingsley Amis wrote his novel on the weekends after sipping tea and chatting with Mr. Septimus Harding from Trollope’s The Warden on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and enjoying the time-bending hallucinogenic drug Chew-Z from Philip K. Dick’s The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch on Tuesday and Thursday. Sound incredible? It is incredible. Here are a number of facets of this literary diamond as to why it is both out-of-sight and a kissing cousin to our present world:
ALTERNATIVE HISTORY
It’s England and the year is 1976. There’s been no protestant reformation, no eighteenth century age of enlightenment, no Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud or Frederic Nietzsche. Europe has been in cultural deep freeze for the past nearly five hundred years, a continuation of the church dominated middle ages right up until the end of the twentieth century. Everything and everybody is part of Catholicism – even Jean-Paul Sartre is a Jesuit writing in Latin and David Hockney along with Willem de Kooning create religious art for the mother church.
THE ALTERATION
Ten-year-old Hubert Anvil has a special gift - he has, by far, the most beautiful singing voice in living memory. There would be great benefit to the church and, according to the Abbott and other church officials, greater glory to God almighty himself if Hubert submitted to a surgical operation, an “alteration,” so as to retain his superb God-given talent and become a world-renowned castrato. The theme of being castrated, living in arrested development resonates throughout the novel, to note just two: 1) European civilization held in check by demonizing all science and technology, and 2) literature held in check by making science fiction illegal, especially science fiction addressing imaginary alternate worlds or parallel histories.
CLANDESTINE READING
Back at the dormitory of their church-run school, Hubert and his buddies are addicted to their favorite kinds of banned books: TR and CW. And that's Time Romance (TR), science fiction with a focus on inventive ingenuity, and Counterfeit World (CW), anti-church novelistic twists to present-day reality. One of these CW books is written by an author with the name of Philip K. Dick, the title being The Man in the High Castle, an invented world free of church domination. For those familiar with the real PKD and his actual novel with this title featuring an imagined 1960s America after a Nazi and Japanese victory and also a novel within the novel, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, about a fictionalized world after a Nazi and Japanese defeat, we recognized Kingsley Amis has turned PKD’s novel inside out and upside down. As William Gibson writes in his Introduction to this New York Review Books (NYRB) edition: “This business of TR and CW strikes me, as it plays so artfully through the book, as likely the best Jorge Luis Borges story Jorge Luis Borges never wrote."
ACROSS THE POND
There is one province free from church dominion – a slice of America referred to as New England. Kingsley Amis adds even more spice to his counterfactual equation by having Hubert along with his three roommates discuss a Counterfeit World (CW) story that puts forth the preposterous notion this New England colony under the British Crown declared itself an independent republic in 1848 and now, in 1976, is the greatest power in the world. One of the boys reacts: “‘Wish-wash!’ said Decuman loudly, pulled himself up and repeated quietly, ‘wish-wash. That mean little den of thieves and savages the greatest Power in the world?’” Did I mention how The Alteration is kissing cousins with our present day?
NATIVE AMERICANS
One of my favorite parts of the novel is how Amis incorporates Native Americans (called “Indians” in the novel). The Indians share a large measure of the work for the New Englanders since in this version of history there never was any importation of slaves from Africa. One New Englander tells Hubert how these Indians are not to be treated as fully human, having smaller brain capacity and a stunted sense of morals (ah, another arrested development!). However, in many ways, Amis conveys the nobility and compassion of these non-Christian peoples in much the same manner as we find in James Fennimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans.
THE IRON FIST
Between sips of tea, many of these Brits who are members of the church chat about this man or that woman not heeding God’s will. If we read ever so slightly between the lines in Amis’s alternate world, we can see how religion is being used as a billy club to not only strangle an individual’s sexual activity and critical reasoning but to keep an entire society and culture within tightly circumscribed boundaries. Another William Gibson quote: “It’s a terrifyingly serene totalitarian nightmare, its massive stasis threatened only, we eventually discover, by the extent of its own success.” You do not have to be a fan of science fiction or alternative histories to take an enjoyable readerly plunge into this highly engaging, philosophic novel.
Kingsley Amis - Author with soaring imagination. The Alteration, a world where the priests burnt William Shakespeare's books and playhouse before excommunicating him and sending the playwright off to New England.
September 15, 2020
Brexit Prophesied
If the Protestant Reformation had never occurred, many other unfortunate events might have been avoided: The Thirty Years War In Central Europe, The Glorious Revolution in England, The Jacobite Rebellion in Scotland, dozens of relatively minor but bloody conflicts around the world, and, who knows, perhaps even the French and American Revolutions, and the two World Wars. If the Christian Church had stayed united, then, would the world have been a better place today?
Not bloody likely according to Amis. The world might have been more peaceful but at the cost of systematically oppressive corruption. The Industrial Revolution would have been stifled at the steampunk stage because of clerical bureaucracy. Science would been taught a salutary lesson by Galileo’s defeat and rightly considered an inherently heretical undertaking. Electricity might well be classified as a superstition and suppressed. The teaching of evolution might indeed have merited the death penalty.
And, perhaps most significantly, the Church, by virtue of its role in the endorsement and consecration of the monarchy by divine right, would continue to participate intimately in human governance. In fact the Church would likely have retained its traditional partnership status as the eyes and ears of government in every parish in every civilised land. The populace wouldn’t stand for such pervasive surveillance (and its expense) except as a necessary part of its eternal salvation. The offices of county councils must be modest to demonstrate appropriate official penny-pinching. But cathedrals must of course rise majestically and ornately from exactly the same tax base.
The Alteration of the title is a euphemism for the quaint medieval custom, preferred by popes and princes of the church, of surgery to remove the hormone-producing glands of young boys. The purpose, of course, was godly - the preservation of musical talents given by God to the lad that would otherwise be lost in adolescence. The matter was not considered lightly given the consequences. Removal of the designated organs was certainly irreversible; but the ultimate professional success was not ensured. There was an ample repertoire for the castrati voice; but even within a limited market there was also intense competition. Much to consider and debate therefore.
The European Union was created by the Treaty of Masstricht in 1993, two years before Kingsley Amis died but seventeen years after Alteration was written. The book, therefore, could not have been meant, of course, as an allegory of the return of Christendom by the back door. Surely Amis was not making a pointed political commentary relevant to affairs of the day.
Or could it that he was doing exactly that? Perhaps Amis was sufficiently culturally prescient that he could sense the real impetus behind European integration, namely the restoration of an international spiritual bond through a parallel political force which penetrated deeply into each country? It has occurred to more than one historical commentator that the EU more than resembles a rather better-functioning Holy Roman Empire after all.
And the crucial decision about the hapless English lad - whether or not to have his bits lopped? It would of course be even more far-fetched to suggest that Amis had anticipated the existential agony of Brexit. Except that the real reason for the vote to leave the EU was the feeling of emasculation in the country. The national potency had been eliminated, many felt, by the progressive erosion of sovereignty. The heirs of Englishness were in jeopardy!
Amis hints at the English attitude toward authority, especially ecclesiastical authority, when he gives, the family chaplain’s response to the senior churchman suggesting the boy’s mutilation:
Of course it could all be bollocks, as it were.
If the Protestant Reformation had never occurred, many other unfortunate events might have been avoided: The Thirty Years War In Central Europe, The Glorious Revolution in England, The Jacobite Rebellion in Scotland, dozens of relatively minor but bloody conflicts around the world, and, who knows, perhaps even the French and American Revolutions, and the two World Wars. If the Christian Church had stayed united, then, would the world have been a better place today?
Not bloody likely according to Amis. The world might have been more peaceful but at the cost of systematically oppressive corruption. The Industrial Revolution would have been stifled at the steampunk stage because of clerical bureaucracy. Science would been taught a salutary lesson by Galileo’s defeat and rightly considered an inherently heretical undertaking. Electricity might well be classified as a superstition and suppressed. The teaching of evolution might indeed have merited the death penalty.
And, perhaps most significantly, the Church, by virtue of its role in the endorsement and consecration of the monarchy by divine right, would continue to participate intimately in human governance. In fact the Church would likely have retained its traditional partnership status as the eyes and ears of government in every parish in every civilised land. The populace wouldn’t stand for such pervasive surveillance (and its expense) except as a necessary part of its eternal salvation. The offices of county councils must be modest to demonstrate appropriate official penny-pinching. But cathedrals must of course rise majestically and ornately from exactly the same tax base.
The Alteration of the title is a euphemism for the quaint medieval custom, preferred by popes and princes of the church, of surgery to remove the hormone-producing glands of young boys. The purpose, of course, was godly - the preservation of musical talents given by God to the lad that would otherwise be lost in adolescence. The matter was not considered lightly given the consequences. Removal of the designated organs was certainly irreversible; but the ultimate professional success was not ensured. There was an ample repertoire for the castrati voice; but even within a limited market there was also intense competition. Much to consider and debate therefore.
The European Union was created by the Treaty of Masstricht in 1993, two years before Kingsley Amis died but seventeen years after Alteration was written. The book, therefore, could not have been meant, of course, as an allegory of the return of Christendom by the back door. Surely Amis was not making a pointed political commentary relevant to affairs of the day.
Or could it that he was doing exactly that? Perhaps Amis was sufficiently culturally prescient that he could sense the real impetus behind European integration, namely the restoration of an international spiritual bond through a parallel political force which penetrated deeply into each country? It has occurred to more than one historical commentator that the EU more than resembles a rather better-functioning Holy Roman Empire after all.
And the crucial decision about the hapless English lad - whether or not to have his bits lopped? It would of course be even more far-fetched to suggest that Amis had anticipated the existential agony of Brexit. Except that the real reason for the vote to leave the EU was the feeling of emasculation in the country. The national potency had been eliminated, many felt, by the progressive erosion of sovereignty. The heirs of Englishness were in jeopardy!
Amis hints at the English attitude toward authority, especially ecclesiastical authority, when he gives, the family chaplain’s response to the senior churchman suggesting the boy’s mutilation:
“Lyall felt he could not say which of two things was harder to put up with, the Abbot's conversational style, with its bland coherence and assumption of severely limited cogitative powers in the hearer, or his recurrent look of pleased surprise as each fresh piece of evidence of his wisdom or moral worth turned up, but between them they were likely to implant in certain minds a hardy seed of revolt.”Exactly, that lingering seed which sprouted into Brexit.
Of course it could all be bollocks, as it were.
September 30, 2017
Nuts. Cojones. Balls.
Balls, Balls, Balls.
If you're going to read The Alteration, get used to thinking about testicles. Amis could just as easily have titled this book Never Mind the Bollocks or, most aptly considering the main drama of the narrative, A Farewell to Balls.
For make no mistake, this is the story of a young man and his dearly loved, but direly threatened gonads.
You may not think a book about the fate of a set of pre-pubescent nuts is your bag, but I'd wager you'd be wrong. Amis' story is the most interesting kind of alternate history and it is both subtle and comedic in its execution.
In The Alteration Amis creates a 1970s world based on a history where Martin Luther never kicked off the schism in Catholicism that led to Protestantism, rather , in this timeline Luther went to Rome, sold out and was crowned pope. As a result there was never any Reformation or counter-Reformation wars, no WW1, no WW2 between the European nations. Without these distractions Europe's vast foreign empires have endured, while a dangerous detente exists between the Christian lands and their only real enemy - the Islamic world.
Amis' 1970s are a stultifyingly conformist, backward place, and 'Science' is literally a dirty word, not used in polite company (or practiced at all, under penalty of death). Technology has stagnated, and electricity is distrusted, so primitive diesel vehicles roam cobbled streets lit by oil lamps in the Britain of 1976, and the masses remain under the spiritual (and often physical) control of the frocked celibates of the priesthood.
Hubert, a young composer and singer of progidgous talent, has caught the eye of the church heirarchy, who crave the boy's angelic voice and the glory it could bring them and their institution. Knowing that puberty will destroy his soprano voice they decide that Hubert must be altered- made into a castrati, an emasculated singer whose voice will never be changed by transition to manhood.
Hubert is informed of this change, and as you can expect, isn't totally stoked at the balls-for-permanently-squeaky-voice deal he is being offered. Permission for the procedure from his parents and their religious counsellor is sought, setting off a dangerous chain of events that range across the English countryside and all the way to the papal residence in Rome.
The Alteration is is a great read- pacey, convincing, and fun. Amis deftly plays with history making numerous jokes involving the changed status of great writers, scientists, etc. in his oppressive Catholic world. (A favorite regards the piously religious writings of a monk named Jean Sartre). his characters truggle with making their own choices against the ingrained obedience the church encourages, and I found their struggles as convincing as they are compelling.
As an alternate history The Alteration is one of the best I've read, as good as Ward Moore's Bring the Jubilee and Dick's The Man In The high Castle (a book Amis slyly mentions in his story).
As a complete novel, I feel the end of the book lets it down a bit. It felt abrupt to me, as though Amis decided he was done with this story before it reached its natural end. Still, this is a really entertaining read, and well worth your time, even if the final chapter is a bit of a balls-up.
Balls.
Balls, Balls, Balls.
If you're going to read The Alteration, get used to thinking about testicles. Amis could just as easily have titled this book Never Mind the Bollocks or, most aptly considering the main drama of the narrative, A Farewell to Balls.
For make no mistake, this is the story of a young man and his dearly loved, but direly threatened gonads.
You may not think a book about the fate of a set of pre-pubescent nuts is your bag, but I'd wager you'd be wrong. Amis' story is the most interesting kind of alternate history and it is both subtle and comedic in its execution.
In The Alteration Amis creates a 1970s world based on a history where Martin Luther never kicked off the schism in Catholicism that led to Protestantism, rather , in this timeline Luther went to Rome, sold out and was crowned pope. As a result there was never any Reformation or counter-Reformation wars, no WW1, no WW2 between the European nations. Without these distractions Europe's vast foreign empires have endured, while a dangerous detente exists between the Christian lands and their only real enemy - the Islamic world.
Amis' 1970s are a stultifyingly conformist, backward place, and 'Science' is literally a dirty word, not used in polite company (or practiced at all, under penalty of death). Technology has stagnated, and electricity is distrusted, so primitive diesel vehicles roam cobbled streets lit by oil lamps in the Britain of 1976, and the masses remain under the spiritual (and often physical) control of the frocked celibates of the priesthood.
Hubert, a young composer and singer of progidgous talent, has caught the eye of the church heirarchy, who crave the boy's angelic voice and the glory it could bring them and their institution. Knowing that puberty will destroy his soprano voice they decide that Hubert must be altered- made into a castrati, an emasculated singer whose voice will never be changed by transition to manhood.
Hubert is informed of this change, and as you can expect, isn't totally stoked at the balls-for-permanently-squeaky-voice deal he is being offered. Permission for the procedure from his parents and their religious counsellor is sought, setting off a dangerous chain of events that range across the English countryside and all the way to the papal residence in Rome.
The Alteration is is a great read- pacey, convincing, and fun. Amis deftly plays with history making numerous jokes involving the changed status of great writers, scientists, etc. in his oppressive Catholic world. (A favorite regards the piously religious writings of a monk named Jean Sartre). his characters truggle with making their own choices against the ingrained obedience the church encourages, and I found their struggles as convincing as they are compelling.
As an alternate history The Alteration is one of the best I've read, as good as Ward Moore's Bring the Jubilee and Dick's The Man In The high Castle (a book Amis slyly mentions in his story).
As a complete novel, I feel the end of the book lets it down a bit. It felt abrupt to me, as though Amis decided he was done with this story before it reached its natural end. Still, this is a really entertaining read, and well worth your time, even if the final chapter is a bit of a balls-up.
Balls.
February 18, 2018
I pick up Kingsley Amis with some trepidation, fearing more misogyny than the recommended daily allowance. But this was different. No alcoholic, adulterous husbands here.
This is, well . . . . Philip K. Dick calls this an "alternate-worlds novel". And he should know, as he's in the novel, or at least his novel ( The Man in the High Castle) is in this novel. Not quite science-fiction. It's a world where Sartre is a Jesuit priest, and Beethoven wrote twenty symphonies, and the most impressive battleship is the Edgar Allan Poe, named after the brilliant young general who perished at the moment of his greatest victory over the combined invading forces of Louisiana and Mexico in the War of 1845-50. Her sister ship is the James McNeill Whistler.
It's a world still dominated by the Catholic Church, although they now have an English pope who will drop the occasional f-bomb.
Into this world comes Hubert Anvil, ten years-old, and with a faultless singing voice. It is determined that Hubert should undergo an Alteration, a medical procedure you can guess, which will preserve his lovely voice, along with eliminating his inchoate sex drive. This latter consequence will spare him the same end as Father Lyall. Ghastly, that. And not a little ironic.
This was wonderfully imagined, funny, provocative, and a real page-turner. We like Hubert. A lot. And we want to know what happens. What does happen was a bit contrived, sadly. But it didn't ruin the experience.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
We like to think a book ends when the words end, the next page blank. But we know better. We close the cover, walk over to the shelves and find that space among the others, a final resting place. We walk away angrier or more hopeful, perhaps our view of things changed. Maybe we let a character follow us. Or we steal a phrase.
Or, maybe we enter our own alternate world.
This book ends with Hubert Anvil's soprano soaring at the Teatro Nuovo dell' Opera in a production of Valeriani's L'Arlecchinata. As far as I can tell, this is an opera that was never written, by a composer who never existed. Yet I heard it still.
I close the cover. Back to the real world, I check my email. I see that Paul has commented on a comment in Fionnuala's review of Bernard MacLaverty's Midwinter Break. Curious, I hit the link and see that they are going on about a piece of music from that book: James MacMillan's Seven Last Words from the Cross. I open up YouTube. This music is real. A soprano, looking mannish, opens the singing. Soaring. Later we will hear the pounding of nails, like an anvil.
When I closed this book, this is what I heard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRvcp...
I do not know when I'll be back.
This is, well . . . . Philip K. Dick calls this an "alternate-worlds novel". And he should know, as he's in the novel, or at least his novel ( The Man in the High Castle) is in this novel. Not quite science-fiction. It's a world where Sartre is a Jesuit priest, and Beethoven wrote twenty symphonies, and the most impressive battleship is the Edgar Allan Poe, named after the brilliant young general who perished at the moment of his greatest victory over the combined invading forces of Louisiana and Mexico in the War of 1845-50. Her sister ship is the James McNeill Whistler.
It's a world still dominated by the Catholic Church, although they now have an English pope who will drop the occasional f-bomb.
Into this world comes Hubert Anvil, ten years-old, and with a faultless singing voice. It is determined that Hubert should undergo an Alteration, a medical procedure you can guess, which will preserve his lovely voice, along with eliminating his inchoate sex drive. This latter consequence will spare him the same end as Father Lyall. Ghastly, that. And not a little ironic.
This was wonderfully imagined, funny, provocative, and a real page-turner. We like Hubert. A lot. And we want to know what happens. What does happen was a bit contrived, sadly. But it didn't ruin the experience.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
We like to think a book ends when the words end, the next page blank. But we know better. We close the cover, walk over to the shelves and find that space among the others, a final resting place. We walk away angrier or more hopeful, perhaps our view of things changed. Maybe we let a character follow us. Or we steal a phrase.
Or, maybe we enter our own alternate world.
This book ends with Hubert Anvil's soprano soaring at the Teatro Nuovo dell' Opera in a production of Valeriani's L'Arlecchinata. As far as I can tell, this is an opera that was never written, by a composer who never existed. Yet I heard it still.
I close the cover. Back to the real world, I check my email. I see that Paul has commented on a comment in Fionnuala's review of Bernard MacLaverty's Midwinter Break. Curious, I hit the link and see that they are going on about a piece of music from that book: James MacMillan's Seven Last Words from the Cross. I open up YouTube. This music is real. A soprano, looking mannish, opens the singing. Soaring. Later we will hear the pounding of nails, like an anvil.
When I closed this book, this is what I heard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRvcp...
I do not know when I'll be back.
April 7, 2017
"Off With His Balls!!!"
Or maybe, another alternate title, "What PKD would have written if he was mired in Lutherism and he wanted to write something to counteract the hedonistic oddity that was Gravity's Rainbow"
Seriously, this is what Philip K Dick would have written if he was focused on Popes and the total emasculation of humanity. And rather than Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, we've got a ton of snipping or at least talk of snipping going on. :)
Let me talk about the world-building. It's all way below the surface, with most of the action focused on this poor kid who's about to get his balls chopped off for the sake of his beautiful singing voice, but right below this is a bunch of straight homages to alternate histories and even a direct love letter to PKD's The Man in the High Castle, only taking the switch back WAY in the past, keeping science a dirty word and the Holy Roman Church in high supremacy.
Pretty cool, right? Well, yeah, I guess it would be based on just this description, but it really just feels like a "Poor me, I'm about to get snip-snipped, all the adults around me are acting REALLY strange, and now I'm getting asked questions like 'Do I play with myself and have you ever wondered what it would be like to do that with a girl?'"
Ahem. This is such a penis-oriented 70's novel. Like, totally. But it's really focused not on the bright side of parading about with a boner, but rather, the fear of losing that big "B" forever. Alas.
And it only gets really funny by the end of the novel with the global implications.
Too bad we didn't get a bit more of that earlier on, right? Alas.
Still, it's a pretty cool book on the straight traditional fiction front, with a lot of characters and grounded explorations, but the SF portion is still kinda light. That's my main complaint. Oh, plus, all the little crazy strangenesses that have crept into Political Christianity over the last six hundred years. :)
I don't know if I'd really recommend this for anyone except fans of The Man in the High Castle and people who like weird major twists in Catholicism.
Or maybe, another alternate title, "What PKD would have written if he was mired in Lutherism and he wanted to write something to counteract the hedonistic oddity that was Gravity's Rainbow"
Seriously, this is what Philip K Dick would have written if he was focused on Popes and the total emasculation of humanity. And rather than Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, we've got a ton of snipping or at least talk of snipping going on. :)
Let me talk about the world-building. It's all way below the surface, with most of the action focused on this poor kid who's about to get his balls chopped off for the sake of his beautiful singing voice, but right below this is a bunch of straight homages to alternate histories and even a direct love letter to PKD's The Man in the High Castle, only taking the switch back WAY in the past, keeping science a dirty word and the Holy Roman Church in high supremacy.
Pretty cool, right? Well, yeah, I guess it would be based on just this description, but it really just feels like a "Poor me, I'm about to get snip-snipped, all the adults around me are acting REALLY strange, and now I'm getting asked questions like 'Do I play with myself and have you ever wondered what it would be like to do that with a girl?'"
Ahem. This is such a penis-oriented 70's novel. Like, totally. But it's really focused not on the bright side of parading about with a boner, but rather, the fear of losing that big "B" forever. Alas.
And it only gets really funny by the end of the novel with the global implications.
Too bad we didn't get a bit more of that earlier on, right? Alas.
Still, it's a pretty cool book on the straight traditional fiction front, with a lot of characters and grounded explorations, but the SF portion is still kinda light. That's my main complaint. Oh, plus, all the little crazy strangenesses that have crept into Political Christianity over the last six hundred years. :)
I don't know if I'd really recommend this for anyone except fans of The Man in the High Castle and people who like weird major twists in Catholicism.
May 11, 2017
Very good. Very clever use of historical figures and cultural references. Those historical and cultural nods do make it a very cynical book. This novel is an attack on organised religion, in this case the Roman Catholic Church. Science is frowned upon and even suppressed in some cases. Even the enlightened practise apartheid and are ethnocentric.
I have been thinking about this book and Pavane by Keith Roberts. Amiss gives a nod to Pavane in this book as one of the many cultural references.
The similarities is that we have a catholic theocracy ruling England. Amis book covers the treatment of one specific individual by the ruling class. It is a very good tale and has one thinking about authoritarianism as a subject.
Pavane on the other hand has 6 chapters with each covering various individuals from all classes. Each chapter is vaguely interlinked so that made me feel that Roberts was able to get to the core of the individuals and how they used their circumstances within their class to their advantage, how they rebelled, how they lived, how they died. I prefer Pavane. It has a humanity about the characters that I found compelling, I had a sympathy for their circumstances. The Alteration did not quite get to that depth of characterisation.
My review of Pavane.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I have been thinking about this book and Pavane by Keith Roberts. Amiss gives a nod to Pavane in this book as one of the many cultural references.
The similarities is that we have a catholic theocracy ruling England. Amis book covers the treatment of one specific individual by the ruling class. It is a very good tale and has one thinking about authoritarianism as a subject.
Pavane on the other hand has 6 chapters with each covering various individuals from all classes. Each chapter is vaguely interlinked so that made me feel that Roberts was able to get to the core of the individuals and how they used their circumstances within their class to their advantage, how they rebelled, how they lived, how they died. I prefer Pavane. It has a humanity about the characters that I found compelling, I had a sympathy for their circumstances. The Alteration did not quite get to that depth of characterisation.
My review of Pavane.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
September 19, 2007
Before this I had only read a little of Lucky Jim, and Kingsley Amis seemed a little too macho and mean-spirited a writer for me. This book has that feel too, but it is still pretty good. This is an alternate history narrative, like Philip Roth's The Plot Against America. Events take place in a social-conservative's wet-dream version of England, circa 1970: almost every instance of technological or social progress starting with the renaissance has failed to happen. The Vatican still rules the western world (all of "Christiandom" except "New England"), and though low-life "inventors" have managed to sneak trains, dirigibles, and photography into people's lives, electricity is the work of the devil, and so there are no lightbulbs, telephones, or Thames Television to help Londoners swing. The protagonist's dad reads from the paper at the breakfast table and gets worked up over the two great threats to civilization: science and muslims. So depressing that this book was written in response to attitudes in 1976 UK, and here we are in 2006 US.
As a story, this book is only a little interesting: 10-yr-old Hubert Anvil is the best soprano in the world, and church authorities want to remove his balls to preserve the purity of his voice (the alteration). It is sometimes alarming to see that authors were plotting books around tired Freudian symbols well into the seventies. Amis mines that one for all it is worth, which isn't much. Amis is good at telling the story, though, and there isn't a lot of lag here.
What makes The Alteration worth reading is that the author seems intellectually opposed to the kind of traditionalist zeal that rules this book's world, but emotionally aligned with it. His careful and loving descriptions of quince jams, boarding-school discipline, cathedral naves, honor, pomp, hierarchical finery, starch, and galloping horses show that he is mourning the same values that he is mocking. That conflict comes across as weird and fascinating to a regular ol boring ol lefty like me. Amis is a spy back from the other side, and he shines a little light on conservative thinking and imagination. At one point a priest defends his toady behavior to another by saying, "[A] man does what he's told, goes where he's sent, answers what he's asked. And, after seeing to that, one is free." That strategy of public masking and loyalty to protect private reality explains all kinds of wide-stance hypocrisy to me.
As a story, this book is only a little interesting: 10-yr-old Hubert Anvil is the best soprano in the world, and church authorities want to remove his balls to preserve the purity of his voice (the alteration). It is sometimes alarming to see that authors were plotting books around tired Freudian symbols well into the seventies. Amis mines that one for all it is worth, which isn't much. Amis is good at telling the story, though, and there isn't a lot of lag here.
What makes The Alteration worth reading is that the author seems intellectually opposed to the kind of traditionalist zeal that rules this book's world, but emotionally aligned with it. His careful and loving descriptions of quince jams, boarding-school discipline, cathedral naves, honor, pomp, hierarchical finery, starch, and galloping horses show that he is mourning the same values that he is mocking. That conflict comes across as weird and fascinating to a regular ol boring ol lefty like me. Amis is a spy back from the other side, and he shines a little light on conservative thinking and imagination. At one point a priest defends his toady behavior to another by saying, "[A] man does what he's told, goes where he's sent, answers what he's asked. And, after seeing to that, one is free." That strategy of public masking and loyalty to protect private reality explains all kinds of wide-stance hypocrisy to me.
September 23, 2024
Check out my full, spoiler free, video review HERE.
The Alteration refers to two things here. First, this is an alternate history novel where the reformation didn’t take place and the British monarchy had some changes from our timeline. Second, they want to alter our 10 year old main character Hubert, see he has such a perfect voice for the choir that they are afraid puberty will change his voice, so the religious leaders want him castrated. This takes place in a 1976 very different from our own, where electricity is outlawed and the church holds most of the power across Europe and beyond. Very well written with great world building, the plot is entertaining but the ending was not what I expected.
The Alteration refers to two things here. First, this is an alternate history novel where the reformation didn’t take place and the British monarchy had some changes from our timeline. Second, they want to alter our 10 year old main character Hubert, see he has such a perfect voice for the choir that they are afraid puberty will change his voice, so the religious leaders want him castrated. This takes place in a 1976 very different from our own, where electricity is outlawed and the church holds most of the power across Europe and beyond. Very well written with great world building, the plot is entertaining but the ending was not what I expected.
May 3, 2013
Kingsley Amis does sci-fi well. If you're willing to call this sci-fi, which I'm sure many aren't. But whether you want to call it genre or not, Amis gets into the mood with this book and does what sci-fi, or speculative fiction, is meant: imagines a world very different from own. In this one the Reformation never happened. Luther became pope. England stayed Catholic. And the world is therefore a much more backward place. Science is a dirty word and the rituals and power of the Romish Church are omnipresent. Only America has, with its protestant faith and ideological slavery of the natives, advances technologically to a more recognizable present, since this book is set in the present, just a very different one.
So you can tell this is a pretty vicious attack on the Catholic Church. Waged with an intent and cleverness that Amis is very good at. Can you imagine living in the religiously dominant Middle Ages? It would probably suck. And of course the other thing Amis does is have fun playing with history. The Vatican, much of which is built by a Luther as Pope Germanium I, is austere and empty. Mozart lived and wrote to a fine old age while Beethoven was a short lived phenomenon. You have to be pretty knowledgable about English history, and architecture, and music, to catch all the references, but you get the sense of it and, as I said, the fun of this kind of book is the creativity and fun the author has in building an alternate time and place.
One also admires Amis's strength here. Whether its attack of the Catholic Church is too much or not, he deeply believes in the prevalence and awfulness of tyranny, and makes one think about its past, present, and potential future. This is not the average sci-fi book. Though different it is a the world of 1976, not 2076 Mars. Hubert Anvil is too clever to be a real kid. And the plot lines sometimes bumble into each other. But if you like inventive alternate worlds, this is a book you should read.
So you can tell this is a pretty vicious attack on the Catholic Church. Waged with an intent and cleverness that Amis is very good at. Can you imagine living in the religiously dominant Middle Ages? It would probably suck. And of course the other thing Amis does is have fun playing with history. The Vatican, much of which is built by a Luther as Pope Germanium I, is austere and empty. Mozart lived and wrote to a fine old age while Beethoven was a short lived phenomenon. You have to be pretty knowledgable about English history, and architecture, and music, to catch all the references, but you get the sense of it and, as I said, the fun of this kind of book is the creativity and fun the author has in building an alternate time and place.
One also admires Amis's strength here. Whether its attack of the Catholic Church is too much or not, he deeply believes in the prevalence and awfulness of tyranny, and makes one think about its past, present, and potential future. This is not the average sci-fi book. Though different it is a the world of 1976, not 2076 Mars. Hubert Anvil is too clever to be a real kid. And the plot lines sometimes bumble into each other. But if you like inventive alternate worlds, this is a book you should read.
August 25, 2016
This alternate history novel was given me as a birthday gift. Well chosen it was. It is cited by Philip K. Dick as "possibly the best" of the genre and introduced in this edition by William Gibson--both of whom appear, indirectly, within it. Dick, I'd imagine, liked its context, that being of a contemporary western world dominated by a reactionary and repressive Roman Catholic Church. Gibson praises it, exaggerating a bit, as representative of steampunk literature. I note it as being erudite, subtle and ironic.
My major complaint about this novel is that its portrayal of its protagonist, a ten-year old boy, is hard to believe. A gifted singer and composer, a junior Mozart as it were, young Hubert is also gifted in speech and manner, so much so that he seems at times an adult in disguise.
My major complaint about this novel is that its portrayal of its protagonist, a ten-year old boy, is hard to believe. A gifted singer and composer, a junior Mozart as it were, young Hubert is also gifted in speech and manner, so much so that he seems at times an adult in disguise.
May 31, 2022
A Brilliant Alternative History That Skewers Catholic Orthodoxy and Stagnification
I would never have know about this book were it not selected by David Pringle in his Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels as it's by a famous author of mainstream literature like Lucky Jim, and was one of his few forays into the fantastic. If only he had dabbled more often - his subtle but devastating depiction of a European world where the Reformation, Renaissance, and Industrial Revolutions never happened (along with WWI and WWII, to be fair, along with slavery in the New World) brilliantly captures the stultifying intellectual stagnation of Catholic Orthodoxy and suppression of science, independent thought, sexuality, and artistic freedom.
It's a horrific but perfectly extrapolated thought experiment where are the details are in the background, just below the surface story of a young choir singer whose voice is so sublime that the Church is desperate to trim his family jewels to the greater glory of Church and God. It's a hilariously subversive novel, with tons of clever details, not least of which is an alternative version of that most famous alternate reality novels, PDK's The Man in the High Castle. It often reminded me of my two other favourite classics in this mold, Ward Moore's Bring the Jubilee (1953) and Keith Robert's Pavane (1968).
I would never have know about this book were it not selected by David Pringle in his Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels as it's by a famous author of mainstream literature like Lucky Jim, and was one of his few forays into the fantastic. If only he had dabbled more often - his subtle but devastating depiction of a European world where the Reformation, Renaissance, and Industrial Revolutions never happened (along with WWI and WWII, to be fair, along with slavery in the New World) brilliantly captures the stultifying intellectual stagnation of Catholic Orthodoxy and suppression of science, independent thought, sexuality, and artistic freedom.
It's a horrific but perfectly extrapolated thought experiment where are the details are in the background, just below the surface story of a young choir singer whose voice is so sublime that the Church is desperate to trim his family jewels to the greater glory of Church and God. It's a hilariously subversive novel, with tons of clever details, not least of which is an alternative version of that most famous alternate reality novels, PDK's The Man in the High Castle. It often reminded me of my two other favourite classics in this mold, Ward Moore's Bring the Jubilee (1953) and Keith Robert's Pavane (1968).
May 6, 2024
Amis’i İngiliz mizahını pek bir güzel yansıttığı romanlarıyla tanıdım. Bu kitapta farklı bir tür deniyor. Bu denemesinden pek hoşnut kalmadım. Alternatif tarih sevdiğim bir tür de değil. Kitap farklı bir İngiltere anlatıyor. Kilisenin hakim olduğu, Sanayi Devrimi başta olmak üzere ilerlemeci hiçbir olayın gerçekleşmediği bir İngiltere. Arada sevdiğim fikirler bulsam da başarılı bir roman değil. Finalini de yakıştıramadım Amis’e. Kitapta sürekli The Man in the High Castle’dan bahsediliyor. Yakın zamanda okuyup karşılaştırmak istiyorum.
April 25, 2014
I can't believe I never heard of this book before. I always liked Kingsley Amis' novels, but apparently I hadn't read too many of them. Early this week I found it in a bookstore here in São Paulo and I was amazed by the synopsis - and by the William Gibson introduction (you can't go wrong with such a recommendation). So I bought it, naturally.
I read it in three days - and that's because I had work to do, alas. The Alteration is Alternate History of the best kind. Imagine PK Dick's The Man in the High Castle or Keith Roberts' Pavane. Dick, by the way, considered The Alteration "one of the best alternate-worlds novels in existence". The story takes place at the same time it was written, 1976 - a world almost entirely dominated by the Catholic Church, where the point of divergence was the promotion of Martin Luther to pope in the 16th Century. In this world, not much has changes since them, including in technology, where just now cars and planes are starting to appear - and electricity, though well-known, isn't used and is considered a luxury, or something from a TR, or Time Romance (the Science Fiction of this universe). A special treat for the reader (no spoilers here, I promise) is the alternate novels Amis invents for our delight. The reader will recognize many authors that exist here but will see many of his novels that they never wrote in our world.
The prose is also admirable, and the plot is convolute as it should, regarding a subject so delicate as the life of a young singer whose life is to be altered (in more than one way) forever by the will of the Church. This is not a book to be missed.
I read it in three days - and that's because I had work to do, alas. The Alteration is Alternate History of the best kind. Imagine PK Dick's The Man in the High Castle or Keith Roberts' Pavane. Dick, by the way, considered The Alteration "one of the best alternate-worlds novels in existence". The story takes place at the same time it was written, 1976 - a world almost entirely dominated by the Catholic Church, where the point of divergence was the promotion of Martin Luther to pope in the 16th Century. In this world, not much has changes since them, including in technology, where just now cars and planes are starting to appear - and electricity, though well-known, isn't used and is considered a luxury, or something from a TR, or Time Romance (the Science Fiction of this universe). A special treat for the reader (no spoilers here, I promise) is the alternate novels Amis invents for our delight. The reader will recognize many authors that exist here but will see many of his novels that they never wrote in our world.
The prose is also admirable, and the plot is convolute as it should, regarding a subject so delicate as the life of a young singer whose life is to be altered (in more than one way) forever by the will of the Church. This is not a book to be missed.
January 1, 2015
What an incredibly ingenious novel...and what an incredible story. This book is a good lesson in not being swayed by genera classification, or any classification for that matter, when deciding what to read. Although listed as alternative history or more generally as science fiction, it could be either or neither as it works so well on so many levels. The creation of an alternate present day reality, complete with familiar yet transformed, language, culture and customs works elegantly and the subtlety of modified historical events keeps you on your toes with recognition and realization sometimes not occurring until a chapter or two later, with an “oh yeah” slap to the head. The reader is invited to examine today's belief's, attitudes and scruples and then to consider their origins and how likely incidental chance and serendipitous fortune may have played a part. How much does power, corruption and tyranny influence our concept of art and science, as well as beauty and class? Here, Kingsley Amis imagines a counter-factual world that must be rethought and reexamined. A ten year old boy, Hubert Anvil is thought to have been blessed with the most beautiful voices in memory, quite possibly ever, but as nature will change his body as he ages, it's inevitable that his voice will change and his glorious instrument will be lost---unless an alteration can be made that will preserve it, regardless of the aftermath. After all, it's been done in the past in the name of God's glory. Read on.
October 25, 2013
Another quick review. This is a very fun novel, but one that took me three or four tries to get into. Once I did, I read the whole thing in about three days. The beginning is very dense - the central idea takes some time to manifest itself, and in the meantime the reader is left puzzling over what the hell is going on. A melange of highbrow culture is referenced and re-figured in the alternate world Amis has created, and it takes some time to work through it. At least one course in Art History or Architecture is a must for reading this book with any hope of following it. After about 30 or 40 pages the Narrative kicks in, and that is easier to follow and fun to read, but ultimately less rewarding than the beginning of the book.
I was disappointed when the book changed from "what if" ideas thrown at the reader rapidly, into a kind of standard runaway boy story. Finally, the deus ex machina at the end is truly painful - I imagine Amis just wanted to end the book quickly without doing any more research, and threw in the towel. The concept of the novel is fantastic, but I think someone like Neal Stephenson would have had more fun with both creating alternate references of current culture, and done a better job with an action story style narrative. Okay, but I would recommend Anathem by Stephenson for a longer, yet easier to read similar treatment. Good, but not great...
I was disappointed when the book changed from "what if" ideas thrown at the reader rapidly, into a kind of standard runaway boy story. Finally, the deus ex machina at the end is truly painful - I imagine Amis just wanted to end the book quickly without doing any more research, and threw in the towel. The concept of the novel is fantastic, but I think someone like Neal Stephenson would have had more fun with both creating alternate references of current culture, and done a better job with an action story style narrative. Okay, but I would recommend Anathem by Stephenson for a longer, yet easier to read similar treatment. Good, but not great...
May 19, 2013
Fantastic! Why no African slavery in the southern part of North America? Without the reformation, many fewer settlers, thus less need for labor? Note the names of the priests in the second to the last part of the book: Maserati (designed car for Mussolini), Satterthwaite (mathematician, theorem for determining statistical significance, inferences, and Berlinguer (leader of Italian communist party); in the other world of the novel, the three discussed with the pope various ways to solve population problem without birth control.
Good review, The New Republic, may 28, 1977.
Good review, The New Republic, may 28, 1977.
December 16, 2019
It took me a while to get the point of this book. At least as I read it, there are more than one way to take the title of this book, and the first of those layers of meaning that will become evident to the reader is the way that the author has made an alteration to history to create an alternate history where Martin Luther didn't go Catholic and so neither did Henry VIII, which had some serious changes to history but which make this account a minor key of our history that is told with some genuine humor. By the time the reader gets to the second chapter of the book, it becomes increasingly aware that there is another alteration that is meant besides that of the author's own alternate history elements, and that is the matter of castration, which is spoken of within the novel by the titular euphemism, as the hero of the novel spends most of the novel trying to avoid being castrated. It is striking just how bluntspoken the author is about this awkward and uncomfortable matter and others that occur during the course of the book. This certainly is not the usual way that a reader becomes familiar with the work of Kingsley Amis, who is more known for his trenchant novels about the troubled relationship of edge lords with the world around them.
The alteration begins with an introduction that places this obscure book in a larger context of novels that deal with the subject of Time Romance and point to its legitimacy despite its lack of popularity. Then we get to the novel itself, which takes about two hundred pages and tells a deceptively straightforward story about a young boy who is dealing both with his first crush on the daughter of the New England ambassador as well as with the looming reality of his castration to preserve a beautiful male soprano voice. His own uncertainty about his destiny and the refusal of a priest who is having an affair with his mother (and who ends up being castrated himself and killed in their house after he has run away) leads to complications, and his attempts to escape to New England are ultimately unsuccessful even if it leads him to finding new friends. Amis is unsentimental throughout in dealing with his family as well as the civil and religious authorities of this strange world where England remains Catholic, and the novel is certainly a good one.
If this novel is certainly an usual one in the body of work of the author, it is a compelling novel and one that is rather self-aware. Within the book, among much other content, there is a discussion about whether it is heretical for people to write alternate histories about men in the high castle or societies not too different from our own. The author (and the editor of this work who wrote the very excellent forward) are quite right to note that there are seditious purposes inherent in alternate history, something I engage in from time to time, because it views our history as being continent and not foreordained, and to believe that there are options about how a world may be that is different from how it is makes for autocrats who are unhappy about those who might imagine a world without their tyranny, which is automatically going to be problematic at best and criminal at worst. To be sure, I do not necessarily like a work because it is an alternate history, but this book is a very compelling and interesting novel that uses alternate history in a worthwhile manner.
The alteration begins with an introduction that places this obscure book in a larger context of novels that deal with the subject of Time Romance and point to its legitimacy despite its lack of popularity. Then we get to the novel itself, which takes about two hundred pages and tells a deceptively straightforward story about a young boy who is dealing both with his first crush on the daughter of the New England ambassador as well as with the looming reality of his castration to preserve a beautiful male soprano voice. His own uncertainty about his destiny and the refusal of a priest who is having an affair with his mother (and who ends up being castrated himself and killed in their house after he has run away) leads to complications, and his attempts to escape to New England are ultimately unsuccessful even if it leads him to finding new friends. Amis is unsentimental throughout in dealing with his family as well as the civil and religious authorities of this strange world where England remains Catholic, and the novel is certainly a good one.
If this novel is certainly an usual one in the body of work of the author, it is a compelling novel and one that is rather self-aware. Within the book, among much other content, there is a discussion about whether it is heretical for people to write alternate histories about men in the high castle or societies not too different from our own. The author (and the editor of this work who wrote the very excellent forward) are quite right to note that there are seditious purposes inherent in alternate history, something I engage in from time to time, because it views our history as being continent and not foreordained, and to believe that there are options about how a world may be that is different from how it is makes for autocrats who are unhappy about those who might imagine a world without their tyranny, which is automatically going to be problematic at best and criminal at worst. To be sure, I do not necessarily like a work because it is an alternate history, but this book is a very compelling and interesting novel that uses alternate history in a worthwhile manner.
July 11, 2014
A young boy Hubert has got a very brilliant voice. His father, mother and brothers are very proud of him. Certainly they wish cloudless future for him. An Abbot in one of the churches in England heard him singing many times. His voice captivated him. He thought up a nice plan. And here who said that radical religious monks are complete illogical folks? So the Abbot proposed a deal to the Hubert’s family.
Hubert was to be altered to serve for “the will of God” as a singer in the Abbot’s church. What’s the alteration here? You may ask. Simply, it’s just castration or becoming a eunuch. He was to be childless and without family of course. But in spite of it the same-self Abbot promised the boy wealthy future within borders of the church and Vatican’s dominion which included almost all the western Europe. Some political talks among monks appear in the book. You see they do wish, they want badly to settle their Catholic capital in Constantinople, now Istanbul.
Well, Hubert’s father is all for it. He wants his son to be altered for the sake of Christianity and for his future. He’s very pious person. But Mother thinks it’s appalling to cut her son’s testicles for preservation his beautiful voice for the needs of Abbot’s Church. Being a quite beddable woman, she, with her secret lover, Father Lyall wants to protect Hubert. Father Lyall didn’t sign a document allowing a surgeon to perform operation on the boy.
Ubiquitous Pope hears about the boy too. He‘s got his own ideas concerning the boy. Hubert must sing for Vatican choir. He invites Hubert and his family to Rome. He promises the boy such possibilities Huber would never have dreamed of. Still, he would have undergone castration that surely Hubert doesn’t want.
So what can he do? He has no right and power to act against “God’s will” and Church and Pope. There’s only one thing he can do. He wants to run from the Europe altogether. He heads for the New England (the USA) but an incidental sickness struck him in the half way there. You won’t believe it. The sickness has something to do with his testicles. A medical surgeon strongly advised a removal operation for the boy health was in danger. In the end Hubert had no other option but to join Papal choir.
I think the writer deliberately chose this sad finale. Of course he didn’t want to tell that Pope always gets what he wishes. No. Rather he wanted to arouse pity and compassion among readers towards the victims of any religious dogmatism.
Hubert was to be altered to serve for “the will of God” as a singer in the Abbot’s church. What’s the alteration here? You may ask. Simply, it’s just castration or becoming a eunuch. He was to be childless and without family of course. But in spite of it the same-self Abbot promised the boy wealthy future within borders of the church and Vatican’s dominion which included almost all the western Europe. Some political talks among monks appear in the book. You see they do wish, they want badly to settle their Catholic capital in Constantinople, now Istanbul.
Well, Hubert’s father is all for it. He wants his son to be altered for the sake of Christianity and for his future. He’s very pious person. But Mother thinks it’s appalling to cut her son’s testicles for preservation his beautiful voice for the needs of Abbot’s Church. Being a quite beddable woman, she, with her secret lover, Father Lyall wants to protect Hubert. Father Lyall didn’t sign a document allowing a surgeon to perform operation on the boy.
Ubiquitous Pope hears about the boy too. He‘s got his own ideas concerning the boy. Hubert must sing for Vatican choir. He invites Hubert and his family to Rome. He promises the boy such possibilities Huber would never have dreamed of. Still, he would have undergone castration that surely Hubert doesn’t want.
So what can he do? He has no right and power to act against “God’s will” and Church and Pope. There’s only one thing he can do. He wants to run from the Europe altogether. He heads for the New England (the USA) but an incidental sickness struck him in the half way there. You won’t believe it. The sickness has something to do with his testicles. A medical surgeon strongly advised a removal operation for the boy health was in danger. In the end Hubert had no other option but to join Papal choir.
I think the writer deliberately chose this sad finale. Of course he didn’t want to tell that Pope always gets what he wishes. No. Rather he wanted to arouse pity and compassion among readers towards the victims of any religious dogmatism.
November 27, 2020
Robert Heinlein wrote The Door Into Summer with an ambition to fit into one novel every possible way time travel, broadly defined, could be accomplished. The result is slightly impressive and mostly a joke, even if the novel itself isn't jokey. I was reminded of that book as I read Amis' novel The Alteration because something closely analogous is happening in it, except, where with Heinlein it's ways one might travel in time, with Amis it's ways one might lose one's testicles.
The setting is a world where the Catholic Church co-opted Martin Luther by turning him into Pope Germanicus. Yes, we're in alternate history territory, and I'm told this novel won a Hugo. Nevertheless, despite that, and the first paragraph of this review, and despite the hilarity the author was capable of in Lucky Jim, this novel mostly belongs on the shelf reserved for English literary novels of mid-20th century manners.
Amis does some seriously impressive work of empathy, imagining a world which, from what I understand of his autobiography, he must have regarded as distasteful: where the Catholic church is dominant in Europe in the present day, including in England...and where castrati still supply the demand for the finest in vocal artistry. How such a horrible practice might be rationalized by most people is shown quite plausibly, and as I say, it's an impressive accomplishment.
But people's motives are not presented in a consistently believable way. Then, to top it all off, we get a preposterous coincidence (a pair of coincidences, actually--and it's no coincidence the coincidences come in a pair, wink wink) and that's where this extreme novel turned preposterous. The entire ending is so weird, annoying, and even oddly flat, I don't know what to make of it. It does seem like the last 30 pages make the previous into a red herring. So, yeah, 4 stars, but I can't exactly recommend it.
The setting is a world where the Catholic Church co-opted Martin Luther by turning him into Pope Germanicus. Yes, we're in alternate history territory, and I'm told this novel won a Hugo. Nevertheless, despite that, and the first paragraph of this review, and despite the hilarity the author was capable of in Lucky Jim, this novel mostly belongs on the shelf reserved for English literary novels of mid-20th century manners.
Amis does some seriously impressive work of empathy, imagining a world which, from what I understand of his autobiography, he must have regarded as distasteful: where the Catholic church is dominant in Europe in the present day, including in England...and where castrati still supply the demand for the finest in vocal artistry. How such a horrible practice might be rationalized by most people is shown quite plausibly, and as I say, it's an impressive accomplishment.
But people's motives are not presented in a consistently believable way. Then, to top it all off, we get a preposterous coincidence (a pair of coincidences, actually--and it's no coincidence the coincidences come in a pair, wink wink) and that's where this extreme novel turned preposterous. The entire ending is so weird, annoying, and even oddly flat, I don't know what to make of it. It does seem like the last 30 pages make the previous into a red herring. So, yeah, 4 stars, but I can't exactly recommend it.
June 7, 2014
Fascinating book. The Alteration is a treasure simply for the wonderful uniqueness of its premise: a 1970s dystopia controlled by a Catholic church that never experienced the Reformation and Protestantism. It's a singularly fascinating riff on Philip K. Dick's Man in the High Castle, and written with a quality that makes me wonder if it is a taunt more than an homage, a flamboyant gesture seemingly saying 'that's all you did with the idea?' I'm sure Amis intended it as a clever homage, directly referencing the work within the story in a perfect intertwining of realities that would please Philip K. Dick, yet there is a gulf in quality between the two on evidence of this work.
Regardless, The ALteration stands on the shoulders of giants and offers up a meticulously crafted structure that consistently and constantly reinforces its theme. A young talented choir singer faces pressure from the church to be altered in order to preserve his youthful singing voice forever. Caught up in battles between powers in the world before he's ever really learned of their existence, the boy starts to learn what will be denied him, as he has no real agency of his own at this point, and by extension what the church attempts to deny the world in their quest for dominion.
The Alteration is well worth reading for its singular vision, however it is let down on occasion but he prose itself. Perhaps in aiming for too realistic of an older and altered form of speech, it can be a bit of mouthful and somewhat obscure at times. Certainly, a knowledge of history helps one catch the many subtle references made that separate the depicted timeline from the one we know as our own. Additionally, the end perhaps lets off a bit, and rather than exposing faultlines takes more of a 1984 approach in that dystopia is permanent. The final turn of the plot leaves something to be desired, but that doesn't stop this from being a must-read, simply because so few books cover a subject so odd with such pleasing results.
Regardless, The ALteration stands on the shoulders of giants and offers up a meticulously crafted structure that consistently and constantly reinforces its theme. A young talented choir singer faces pressure from the church to be altered in order to preserve his youthful singing voice forever. Caught up in battles between powers in the world before he's ever really learned of their existence, the boy starts to learn what will be denied him, as he has no real agency of his own at this point, and by extension what the church attempts to deny the world in their quest for dominion.
The Alteration is well worth reading for its singular vision, however it is let down on occasion but he prose itself. Perhaps in aiming for too realistic of an older and altered form of speech, it can be a bit of mouthful and somewhat obscure at times. Certainly, a knowledge of history helps one catch the many subtle references made that separate the depicted timeline from the one we know as our own. Additionally, the end perhaps lets off a bit, and rather than exposing faultlines takes more of a 1984 approach in that dystopia is permanent. The final turn of the plot leaves something to be desired, but that doesn't stop this from being a must-read, simply because so few books cover a subject so odd with such pleasing results.
November 17, 2012
Kingsley Amis's clever alternative fiction novel, "The Alteration" is equal parts disturbing and engaging. The world of the novel is one in which the reformation never took place and in which the church and the state remained closely intertwined and corrupt. Amis's deft and creative imagining of such a world is offset by his signature dark satire and the overall pessimistic tone out of which the characters of the novel are unable and indeed ultimately unwilling to escape. The story centers around Hubert a pre-adolescent choir boy whose exquisite singing voice the church leaders intend to preserve through his "alteration," the euphemism used throughout the book for his impending castration. While I recognize the craft of the artist in creating this story, I did not enjoy the reading of it. However if you like dark distopia novels this would be a great book to add to your reading list.
August 28, 2013
I somewhat uneven novel. The authors descriptive abilities are impeccable. The plot was fine until the ending. It felt like this was written under a deadline and that the author had grander plans for the book. Late in the book we are introduced to a plot line that the Pope and his advisers are thinking about, that plot line was either filler or something that was to be bigger in scope. The split between Europe and North America was interesting with Europe Roman Catholic and North America Protestant. The fact that the Indians in North America were treated as second class citizens seemed out of place, maybe this was done to make both sides bad guys, with no one able to truly hold the high moral ground.
July 13, 2013
One of the most clever alternative history novels (or CW, as it's referred to in the book) that I've had the pleasure of reading. On one hand, you have the puzzle of figuring out exactly what happened to turn the world into a repressive, anti-science theocracy. On the other hand, you have a compelling account of a young boy's struggle to understand the importance of sex and love in the face of losing out on those experiences forever. In other words, Amis combines the grandiose sweep of history with the intimately personal.
August 9, 2014
There are A LOT of details to the book's alternate universe that one has to sift through, making some sections very dense. The core story, though -- a page-turner about castration! -- is totally engaging and the overall premise is really different and interesting.
Read
July 17, 2022(mild spoilers follow)
A perfect dystopia for the 1970s -- a world in which that decade's two most distinctive cultural features, the cult of the visionary artist and the liberation of male sexuality, are precisely inverted. These two negations are combined in the central plot point, the proposed castration of a musical prodigy. This is treated most centrally as a question of philosophy of art: expression vs. ornamentation, composition vs. performance, individual vs. collective. The recurrent motif of visionary artists dead by suicide in a world which has no place for them spells this out pretty clearly. Amis is pretty learned and there are probably plenty of references in this book that I didn't get, to European art history especially (also a lot of snatches of dialogue in untranslated Latin, which hopefully didn't contain anything important).
Especially with the otherwise seemingly non-sequitur penultimate set-piece, what comes through here is a vision of totalitarianism as fundamentally allied with the death drive -- sexual sterility, cultural sterility, scientific backwardness, war, censorship, genocide. This is all really just a variation, in the musical sense, on a particular theme in Orwell's opus, although Amis's choice to ally scientific progress with eros/life/liberation betrays a slightly different sensibility. Capitalism and science and free love and Romantic art are all sort of rolled into a package, set opposed to a sort of Oriental feminizing bureaucratic tyranny that is intrinsically aligned with death.
The greatest challenge within the book to this construal is the intimations of even more rigid puritanism among the otherwise Eros-aligned North Americans. This reflects an actual paradox for this way of thinking about real-life history -- Americans have always been more indulgent in everything but sex, where they're almost always looking down prudishly on the euros. The issue of American race relations is also brought up in a similarly oblique way, in both cases as a kind of ironic note of hopelessness -- that perhaps, as in Levin's This Perfect Day, the liberal rebel can't really escape in this world; there is no liberal state, the liberal state is being on the run. That's a very 70s idea as well.
There is also some very blunt satire. You can tell as transparently as if he were a newspaper columnist, just from the text of this novel, that Kingsley Amis thinks avant-garde orchestral music is unfairly maligned, that 'speculative fiction' is a clumsy phrase best abandoned but that SF has a place in the literary canon, that NATO was excessively belligerent in dealing with the Soviet Union for cynical reasons of domestic politics, etc. Whether that kind of fairly blunt opining in the thin guise of fiction annoys you will probably vary -- I found it rather charming.
This is, indeed, a fairly funny book; it's clear that Amis was a satirist first and foremost. That's also clear in the negative sense that the story is somewhat poorly constructed, including some truly hackish plot developments that are hurried through almost in a state of embarrassment. Amis is also clearly no great psychological realist, and sometimes characters seem to take events with a little too much equanimity -- most egregiously, one has to imagine that a ten year old boy raised as a strict believing Catholic would have *some* kind of emotional reaction beyond boredom and irritation when he harkcrpgrqyl unf n crefbany nhqvrapr jvgu gur cbcr -- Kingsley Amis, not the character, was bored with that scene and wanted to hurry through it.
Overall this is hardly a work of genius (although it achieves some genuine lyricism at the very end, it's mostly very flat and pulpy on a mechanical level -- "workmanlike", as they call it; and the philosophical ideas really don't get the in-depth treatment they deserve). But I enjoyed it, and it gives one some neat ideas to chew on. Also maybe remarkable for being a very early steampunk novel; that's where you can really see Amis giving some thought to the worldbuilding, with the bits about railroads and bridges and train cars and such -- much more so than the historical "worldbuilding", which is really all tongue in cheek and meant to convey a philosophical point more than it is meant to be particularly serious or plausible.
Anyway. I liked it. Kind of cool and odd.
A perfect dystopia for the 1970s -- a world in which that decade's two most distinctive cultural features, the cult of the visionary artist and the liberation of male sexuality, are precisely inverted. These two negations are combined in the central plot point, the proposed castration of a musical prodigy. This is treated most centrally as a question of philosophy of art: expression vs. ornamentation, composition vs. performance, individual vs. collective. The recurrent motif of visionary artists dead by suicide in a world which has no place for them spells this out pretty clearly. Amis is pretty learned and there are probably plenty of references in this book that I didn't get, to European art history especially (also a lot of snatches of dialogue in untranslated Latin, which hopefully didn't contain anything important).
Especially with the otherwise seemingly non-sequitur penultimate set-piece, what comes through here is a vision of totalitarianism as fundamentally allied with the death drive -- sexual sterility, cultural sterility, scientific backwardness, war, censorship, genocide. This is all really just a variation, in the musical sense, on a particular theme in Orwell's opus, although Amis's choice to ally scientific progress with eros/life/liberation betrays a slightly different sensibility. Capitalism and science and free love and Romantic art are all sort of rolled into a package, set opposed to a sort of Oriental feminizing bureaucratic tyranny that is intrinsically aligned with death.
The greatest challenge within the book to this construal is the intimations of even more rigid puritanism among the otherwise Eros-aligned North Americans. This reflects an actual paradox for this way of thinking about real-life history -- Americans have always been more indulgent in everything but sex, where they're almost always looking down prudishly on the euros. The issue of American race relations is also brought up in a similarly oblique way, in both cases as a kind of ironic note of hopelessness -- that perhaps, as in Levin's This Perfect Day, the liberal rebel can't really escape in this world; there is no liberal state, the liberal state is being on the run. That's a very 70s idea as well.
There is also some very blunt satire. You can tell as transparently as if he were a newspaper columnist, just from the text of this novel, that Kingsley Amis thinks avant-garde orchestral music is unfairly maligned, that 'speculative fiction' is a clumsy phrase best abandoned but that SF has a place in the literary canon, that NATO was excessively belligerent in dealing with the Soviet Union for cynical reasons of domestic politics, etc. Whether that kind of fairly blunt opining in the thin guise of fiction annoys you will probably vary -- I found it rather charming.
This is, indeed, a fairly funny book; it's clear that Amis was a satirist first and foremost. That's also clear in the negative sense that the story is somewhat poorly constructed, including some truly hackish plot developments that are hurried through almost in a state of embarrassment. Amis is also clearly no great psychological realist, and sometimes characters seem to take events with a little too much equanimity -- most egregiously, one has to imagine that a ten year old boy raised as a strict believing Catholic would have *some* kind of emotional reaction beyond boredom and irritation when he harkcrpgrqyl unf n crefbany nhqvrapr jvgu gur cbcr -- Kingsley Amis, not the character, was bored with that scene and wanted to hurry through it.
Overall this is hardly a work of genius (although it achieves some genuine lyricism at the very end, it's mostly very flat and pulpy on a mechanical level -- "workmanlike", as they call it; and the philosophical ideas really don't get the in-depth treatment they deserve). But I enjoyed it, and it gives one some neat ideas to chew on. Also maybe remarkable for being a very early steampunk novel; that's where you can really see Amis giving some thought to the worldbuilding, with the bits about railroads and bridges and train cars and such -- much more so than the historical "worldbuilding", which is really all tongue in cheek and meant to convey a philosophical point more than it is meant to be particularly serious or plausible.
Anyway. I liked it. Kind of cool and odd.
February 3, 2020
When you come across the name Kingsley Amis (1922-95) you don’t expect to find it associated with science fiction. A novelist, poet, and literary critic, Amis is probably best known for his first published novel, Lucky Jim, which appeared in 1954. The book won a major literary award and is frequently included on reading lists in English literature classes. His much later novel, The Alteration, published in 1976, is far less likely to be recommended reading for college students. But it has somehow captivated William Gibson, one of our era’s leading lights in science fiction. And, reading it, I can understand why.
In his introduction to the 2013 reprint edition of the novel as a New York Review of Books Classic, Gibson refers to it as “one of the finest, most rigorously executed of all parallel-world novels.” Someone like myself who’s less familiar with literary jargon is likely instead to term it an example of alternate history, which indeed makes more sense to me. An alternate history of the Church, to be precise.
An alternate history of the church
Amis’s tale is set in 1976, the year of its publication. But the roots of the story lie in the early sixteenth century. In 1517, priest and theologian Martin Luther famously kicked off the Protestant Reformation, triggering centuries of often-bloody conflict between Catholics and Protestants. But in The Alteration, Luther instead has cut a deal with the Vatican and become Pope Martin I. The consequences that flow from that accommodation are dramatic.
Science is a dirty word
Undeterred by civil strife, the Church has mustered the strength to suppress the scientific revolution and thus the Enlightenment. Science is a dirty word in the world of this novel.
The Pope is the world’s most powerful person
England has remained Catholic, and its vast empire continues to heed the word of the Vatican. Only in the Republic of New England, where English Schismatics have congregated, has a spirit of innovation taken hold. Yet they all ultimately must answer to the Pope, the world’s most powerful person.
An endless holy war between Rome and the Turks
Rome is perpetually engaged in a Holy War with the Turks over territory in the Balkans.
London houses just one million
Urbanization has been limited by the pull of tradition throughout the countryside. For example, London is a city of little more than one million people (as opposed to the 7.5 million who lived there in the 1970s).
“A world lit only by fire”
Yet the world of 1976 in The Alteration is a world lit only by fire, to steal a phrase from William Manchester‘s magnificent 1992 study of medieval Europe and the Renaissance. And horse-drawn vehicles are still common on the streets and roads along with diesel-powered trucks, taxis, and “express-omnibuses.” Trains (“railtrack trains”) connect the cities.
Is ten-year-old Hubert to be “altered?”
The protagonist of The Alteration is ten-year-old Hubert Anvil, the star soprano of the choir at a Benedictine monastery in England. Hubert’s fame is so great that the director of the Sistine Choir has come to hear him sing. And Hubert now becomes the subject of intense interest from the Abbott to the boy’s parents and the Pope. The question is whether he is to be “altered,” that is, to be subjected to surgery that will castrate him to preserve his voice forever. And Amis adroitly builds suspense as the contending forces jockey for advantage. The Alteration is a deeply satisfying excursion into a past that might have been. It’s an alternate history of the Church, but it’s also a touching story of a young boy’s life in a dystopian tyranny.
In his introduction to the 2013 reprint edition of the novel as a New York Review of Books Classic, Gibson refers to it as “one of the finest, most rigorously executed of all parallel-world novels.” Someone like myself who’s less familiar with literary jargon is likely instead to term it an example of alternate history, which indeed makes more sense to me. An alternate history of the Church, to be precise.
An alternate history of the church
Amis’s tale is set in 1976, the year of its publication. But the roots of the story lie in the early sixteenth century. In 1517, priest and theologian Martin Luther famously kicked off the Protestant Reformation, triggering centuries of often-bloody conflict between Catholics and Protestants. But in The Alteration, Luther instead has cut a deal with the Vatican and become Pope Martin I. The consequences that flow from that accommodation are dramatic.
Science is a dirty word
Undeterred by civil strife, the Church has mustered the strength to suppress the scientific revolution and thus the Enlightenment. Science is a dirty word in the world of this novel.
The Pope is the world’s most powerful person
England has remained Catholic, and its vast empire continues to heed the word of the Vatican. Only in the Republic of New England, where English Schismatics have congregated, has a spirit of innovation taken hold. Yet they all ultimately must answer to the Pope, the world’s most powerful person.
An endless holy war between Rome and the Turks
Rome is perpetually engaged in a Holy War with the Turks over territory in the Balkans.
London houses just one million
Urbanization has been limited by the pull of tradition throughout the countryside. For example, London is a city of little more than one million people (as opposed to the 7.5 million who lived there in the 1970s).
“A world lit only by fire”
Yet the world of 1976 in The Alteration is a world lit only by fire, to steal a phrase from William Manchester‘s magnificent 1992 study of medieval Europe and the Renaissance. And horse-drawn vehicles are still common on the streets and roads along with diesel-powered trucks, taxis, and “express-omnibuses.” Trains (“railtrack trains”) connect the cities.
Is ten-year-old Hubert to be “altered?”
The protagonist of The Alteration is ten-year-old Hubert Anvil, the star soprano of the choir at a Benedictine monastery in England. Hubert’s fame is so great that the director of the Sistine Choir has come to hear him sing. And Hubert now becomes the subject of intense interest from the Abbott to the boy’s parents and the Pope. The question is whether he is to be “altered,” that is, to be subjected to surgery that will castrate him to preserve his voice forever. And Amis adroitly builds suspense as the contending forces jockey for advantage. The Alteration is a deeply satisfying excursion into a past that might have been. It’s an alternate history of the Church, but it’s also a touching story of a young boy’s life in a dystopian tyranny.
March 5, 2024
Katolik Kilisesi’nin egemenliğinin perçinlendiği, dizginlenecek herhangi bir gelişmişlik oluşumunun olmadığı gerçeklikte yıl 1976’da geçiyor roman.
On yaşındaki koro şarkıcısı bir çocuk üzerinden kurgulanan yüzeysel hikaye içerisinde özgürlüğün, bilimin, dinin, düşünce akışının boğucu rejimle bastırılması konularının her planda işlenmesini okuyoruz. Benim çok sevdiğim, etkilendiğim bir kitap olmadı. Geçtiği tarih çok daha eski gibi olmasıyla, atıfta bulunduğu kitabı bilmemle ve yavaş akışla eksiklikler hissettim. Alternatif tarih konusuyla bilim kurgu türünde olan bu kitap için beklediğim kurgu sağlamlığını alamadığımı söyleyebilirim.
On yaşındaki koro şarkıcısı bir çocuk üzerinden kurgulanan yüzeysel hikaye içerisinde özgürlüğün, bilimin, dinin, düşünce akışının boğucu rejimle bastırılması konularının her planda işlenmesini okuyoruz. Benim çok sevdiğim, etkilendiğim bir kitap olmadı. Geçtiği tarih çok daha eski gibi olmasıyla, atıfta bulunduğu kitabı bilmemle ve yavaş akışla eksiklikler hissettim. Alternatif tarih konusuyla bilim kurgu türünde olan bu kitap için beklediğim kurgu sağlamlığını alamadığımı söyleyebilirim.
April 9, 2024
Finaldeki o saçma ve gereksiz tesadüf, kitabın bütün etkisini söndürdü. Güzel bir alternatif tarih dünyası tasarlamış Amis , ancak bize o dünyayı tatmin edici detaylarla sunmak yerine konuyu adeta saplantılı bir şekilde bir noktaya odaklamış. Yazarın üslubunu sevdim ama bu roman çok daha iyi yazılabilirmiş. Notum 2.5.
April 14, 2017
Out of my five-book set I assembled to start a foray into the realm of alternate history (thanks to certain dystopic world circumstances), "The Alteration" was the first. As good an introduction to a new literary genre I wanted to explore as any, it also left me wanting to read more.
The premise to alternate history is that a certain historical event took place or was somehow changed. In this case, the Reformation never took place, Martin Luther became a pope and the UK in the '70s is a "bright" center of Catholicism worldwide, apart from Rome (which is also different, architecturally and culturally. No vespas there). Scientific progress has been frozen, electricity is anathema, the church is generally very inquisitive and curious (about whatever people do and think in their private spaces) and a smart young boy with a great voice must be snip-snipped (hence "The Alteration") to fit his manifest destiny and use his "divine" gifts for the only possible cause.
So far, so good. Sarcasm and irony are discreetely overflowing in the writing, witty references to culturally relevant figures are made (many, more or less obscure, more or less clubbing you in the head: look at me, I'm a reference! I'm Picasso and I'm painting glorious religious stained glass!) and the setting is exposed through oblique remarks, one weird trip and the eyes of a child who wants to understand what he is going to miss (hint: nobody manages to explain very well. I wonder why.)
There is a reference that I loved and almost brought the book into a very meta space: the forbidden books are essentialy science fiction and....alternative history!! top shelf, mentioning "The Man in the High Castle" and saying that ...it sounds too far-fetched to be a good book :D
Otherwise, the writing style is rather caricatural. It is definitely "striking fear into the hearts of men" (as a very wise Crow used to say), especially ones grown in the vat of a liberal society where we can do as we damn well please, thank you very much! The church as an institution and the pope as an individual are very obvious villains and the fat strokes depicting religious totalitarism are trying a bit too hard to make their point. The ending is also pretty weak and a sore point (coincidence? Divine intervention? "Divine" intervention through coincidence?) and I guess it was intended to be strictly ironic, but it is so forced it hurts. However, it is an alternate history book, therefore esentially asking the question "What if?". Well , if "The Alteration" were true, it would have been credibly fucking terrifying.
The premise to alternate history is that a certain historical event took place or was somehow changed. In this case, the Reformation never took place, Martin Luther became a pope and the UK in the '70s is a "bright" center of Catholicism worldwide, apart from Rome (which is also different, architecturally and culturally. No vespas there). Scientific progress has been frozen, electricity is anathema, the church is generally very inquisitive and curious (about whatever people do and think in their private spaces) and a smart young boy with a great voice must be snip-snipped (hence "The Alteration") to fit his manifest destiny and use his "divine" gifts for the only possible cause.
So far, so good. Sarcasm and irony are discreetely overflowing in the writing, witty references to culturally relevant figures are made (many, more or less obscure, more or less clubbing you in the head: look at me, I'm a reference! I'm Picasso and I'm painting glorious religious stained glass!) and the setting is exposed through oblique remarks, one weird trip and the eyes of a child who wants to understand what he is going to miss (hint: nobody manages to explain very well. I wonder why.)
There is a reference that I loved and almost brought the book into a very meta space: the forbidden books are essentialy science fiction and....alternative history!! top shelf, mentioning "The Man in the High Castle" and saying that ...it sounds too far-fetched to be a good book :D
Otherwise, the writing style is rather caricatural. It is definitely "striking fear into the hearts of men" (as a very wise Crow used to say), especially ones grown in the vat of a liberal society where we can do as we damn well please, thank you very much! The church as an institution and the pope as an individual are very obvious villains and the fat strokes depicting religious totalitarism are trying a bit too hard to make their point. The ending is also pretty weak and a sore point (coincidence? Divine intervention? "Divine" intervention through coincidence?) and I guess it was intended to be strictly ironic, but it is so forced it hurts. However, it is an alternate history book, therefore esentially asking the question "What if?". Well , if "The Alteration" were true, it would have been credibly fucking terrifying.
September 4, 2015
I've come back to this book after a couple of decades and it still holds up well as one of the two great alternative history books where there is no Reformation in Europe, leaving the Catholic church with a stranglehold that limits the development of science, technology and society (the other, of course, is Keith Roberts' lyrical Pavane).
The central theme to The Alteration is whether a ten-year-old boy with a superb singing voice should be turned into a castrato to preserve that voice for life at significant cost for the boy - but Kingsley Amis has immense fun with many references to familiar people, books and events, seen in the different light of the tightly Catholic Europe. The strange mix of Tudor and 1970s is done beautifully and atmospherically, as are the many differences between their world and ours (though it's never properly explained why Cowley, now known as Coverley, is the capital, rather than London). There are Protestants in this world - but they are mostly limited to New England, which despite being arguably better than Europe has its own problems.
Altogether a rich and delightful book with enough varied topics (the passage of child to adult, for instance, and the nature of being 'gifted' as well as the obvious social and religious themes) to engage anyone. I do have two issues. The minor one is that it is written in a language that is modern, but with a period feel to deepen that Tudor/1970s mix - which is fine, but distances the reader a little. The rather bigger one is the major plot twist in the final segment of the book - I won't give it away, but this is a twist that will not only have a fair number of readers wincing, but that is so improbable in the context that it makes the ending seem contrived. I understand what Amis is doing here, but he should have found a different way to do it.
Despite that, though, this is a great example of that wonderful mix of science fiction and historical fiction that is an alternative history, and well worth a try.
The central theme to The Alteration is whether a ten-year-old boy with a superb singing voice should be turned into a castrato to preserve that voice for life at significant cost for the boy - but Kingsley Amis has immense fun with many references to familiar people, books and events, seen in the different light of the tightly Catholic Europe. The strange mix of Tudor and 1970s is done beautifully and atmospherically, as are the many differences between their world and ours (though it's never properly explained why Cowley, now known as Coverley, is the capital, rather than London). There are Protestants in this world - but they are mostly limited to New England, which despite being arguably better than Europe has its own problems.
Altogether a rich and delightful book with enough varied topics (the passage of child to adult, for instance, and the nature of being 'gifted' as well as the obvious social and religious themes) to engage anyone. I do have two issues. The minor one is that it is written in a language that is modern, but with a period feel to deepen that Tudor/1970s mix - which is fine, but distances the reader a little. The rather bigger one is the major plot twist in the final segment of the book - I won't give it away, but this is a twist that will not only have a fair number of readers wincing, but that is so improbable in the context that it makes the ending seem contrived. I understand what Amis is doing here, but he should have found a different way to do it.
Despite that, though, this is a great example of that wonderful mix of science fiction and historical fiction that is an alternative history, and well worth a try.
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