Customer Reviews

The Fever

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This brisk read is one of the most provocative pieces of short fiction that I've read. The narrator gradually strips away the varnish of deceit and self-deception that have come to define his day-to-day existence and meaning of his life. As he does so, he begins to see with gut-wrenching clarity his economic, social and political relationships with friends, family, nation, and the world.

Intended as one person play for small groups, this monologue reads as well as it is experienced theatrically.

I have just finished The Fever. I feel guilt, and awe. I am smitten by the images of wealth I know and images of suffering and poverty I know. What are these sights? Has my original reaction, when I first saw them changed? Do I know how life works? Where are my ideals?
This is a silent walk out of the theatre. That is, assuming I ever saw The Fever performed. Knowing Wallace Shawn as an actor I figure a flurry of humorous and bizarre moments would sustain my attention, because of his distinct personality, whether they were called for or not. But then a weight of truth and alienation. The Fever is not funny. But it is vividly alive, and if you think everything is okay, then it is dead. With The Fever, nothing is okay.
A necessary piece of moving socio-political theatre.

Well, I'll add my praise to the other two reviews of this wonderful little book. It's hard to characterize The Fever - I guess it's a long short story, all told from the point of view of an affluent American who, for various reasons, finds himself alone, and physically and mentally very unwell, in a small unstable 3rd World country. What Shawn's done is rather like what Peter Singer did in a recent essay in the NYTimes - he has taken the one of the hoariest of moral problems -- distributive injustice -- and breathed new life into it. Both Singer and Shawn seem to accomplish this by returning to a rather simple, almost naive approach to the guilt of affluence and tranquillity in a world of scarcity and terror. Both insist that we must end our narcissistic attention to our precious feelings and instead subject our actions in the world to a clear and unforgiving critique, a critique that will ideally lead to a new and enlightened set of actions based upon humility and generosity. Perhaps this comment makes The Fever sound like a hectoring sermon -- it's anything but. The prose is fast, funny, quirky, and provocative. I keep coming back to this book...