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Memoirs Found in a Bathtub

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Not for the casual reader, this devilishly complicated book will have you stumped in the end. So unless you wish to re-read it (in order to finally figure out what it was all about) don't bother with this one. But for those of you searching for that rare book that leaves you wondering and puzzled for days, weeks, years... well, this is it. From the brilliant mind of the best Polish sci-fi writer comes a satire and a comment on those wonderful societies of ours (take your pick: socialism, communism, etc.) and the methods of their tyranny.

The plot is simple: An innocent, foolishly loyal aspiring agent enters his new occupation only to find out that those in power have plans of their own (which he just can't discover). Searching the confines of a "Building", a futuristic military-like establishment hidden underground, he seeks his mission, his purpose and the meaning of his existence. Ultimately, all those disappear before his eyes and turn into code. This skillfully written tale where not one word lacks meaning or purpose (or does it?) attempts to understand methods of population control. Could it be that political systems have, are and will rule their population through skillful semantics-control? (think NEWSPEAK) Lem posits that political rhetoric color not only our judgment but also our ability to perceive the world around us. Concentrating on the cold war tension between the US and CCCP, Lem explores systems which convert all their resources and their entire populations to one task: the destruction of the enemy. To accomplish their goal, they convert the minds of their subject. Much like a child who learns to adhere to the principles of society through the careful teaching of parents, teachers, TV, and others, a member of these societies learns to relinquish to his superiors the ability to judge his surrounding.

The Building's plan is simple: Through a carefully planned mission, our hero learns to loose trust in himself, loose his ambition and the ability to choose how and to whom to be loyal. He learns that he is a tool. He discovers that his only responsibility is to the Building, and that the Building alone can think for him, tell him what, how, and why to think. He learns that he is a part of the Building and that his duty is to serve a predetermined function which he himself can't alter. He learns that he can only make sense of the insane world around him, if he unconditionally adapts the strategies of his surrounding.

In the end, he discovers that a system like the Building has developed into a new life-form (who smiles and leads a life of its own), an organism whom we humans must ultimately serve and whose survival we must guaranty if we ourselves wish to live on. If you can deal with an unorthodox plot (if there is one), and like your books heavy on ideas, this is the book for you. Otherwise, stick with Jordan or Simmons - they're good, too.

This is a wonderful book. Superficially it makes no sense. Events follow one another in an unending jumble that leaves you completely befuddled. The story is about a secret agent who is new on the job and is trying haplessly to discover what his real mission is supposed to be. However everyone he meets leads him in a different direction and the Building (Pentagon 3, which is entirely isolated from the rest of the world) is brimming with double, triple and quadruple agents.

With a book like this, what you get out of it depends to a large extent on what you bring to it. Aside from all the political satire, to me this book was about how people build explanations - how the mind reacts to a steady stream of sensory impressions which can be very noisy and confusing. To illustrate - I was at the scene where he is in the bathroom, shaving, while there is someone else dressed similarly to him, sleeping next to the bathtub. As the narrator shaves, he is going over the events of the recent past, trying to make sense out of them. He builds one paranoid theory after another, convinced that the whole building (i.e. the whole world) is against him, is out to get him. While reading this I was thinking - This guy is going crazy. No sane person would think this way. But the events dont make sense either. Maybe what is really happening is that he is caught in some sort of time loop, and the person sleeping next to the bathtub is he, from the past or the future!

At this point I stopped and burst out laughing because my theory was so much more preposterous than the ones the narrator was constructing! (yes, I read too much sf!). But the question of course is - if you are trying to make sense out of the world, how do you know which explanation to accept? Ockham's razor doesnt always help (who knows how to apply it in the real world anyway). And people's reactions tend to get increasingly bizarre the more pressure they are under.

Anyway this is my interpretation. I am sure when you read it you will come up with something entirely different, and thats the beauty of this book!

Like most Lem's works, "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub" defies ready classification. It is hardly a work of science fiction, unless you consider the inexhaustible amount of office supplies the Building goes through in the course of the novel. It makes do with but a rudiment of plot. And, of course, it is absolutely brilliant.

"Pentagon 3" is a concrete bullet stuck in the teeth of the Rockies. Walled off from the rest of the world by three miles of rock, it served as civilized mankind's last refuge in the face of an alien paper-devouring agent that has reduced the global culture of the twentieth century to embers. "Pentagon 3" existed for seventy-two years until a slight shift in the volcanic strata burst its cement envelope and flooded the innards with magma, preserving building's contents for posterity. A millennium later, this derelict is excavated and explored. One of the more interesting finds happens to be an almost perfectly preserved wad of a substance called "papyr", which apparently served for recording data. "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub" is the perfect transcript of these ancient texts, humanity's only glance into the heart of a bygone age.

The Building is a mysterious realm of double, triple, and quadruple agents, unmaskings and concealed microphones, infinitely meaningless passwords and rows of identical offices, containing no less identical secretaries. Here, everyone speaks in code, and every bit of sewage is hand-sifted in corresponding facilities. Don't be surprised to find metallic flies floating in your coffee: they're just trying to distract you from noticing the less obvious devices. What is the building's modus operandi? Has this ultimate Bureaucracy resorted to chaos, hoping that if documents circulate randomly, they will eventually reach the intended hands? Or is the Building completely and entirely infiltrated by the Antibuilding agents - and vice versa - so that everyone knows everything but has no one to tell? Or is there no Antibuilding at all? And what is our hero's Secret Mission?

"Memoirs" is completely and entirely applicable to every aspect of life. It edifies and puzzles, brims with revelations and never fails to surprise. It is full of bitter cynicism and unmasked sarcasm. It is funny and bewildering. It must be read.

One of my favorite books. If you're looking for a quick read or action, shop elsewhere. It's almost unbelieveable that something that twists language so much could translate so well. He's a genius and my opinion of his writing increases with every book I read by him. If you liked this try _The Investigation_.

this book drove me completely insane while reading it, as there seemed to be no real concrete...anything. And I think that was the point. A wonderfully funny, often maddening read from Stanislaw Lem, whos other books are no less good than this one. I would even hazard a guess that this would make a great movie, in the right hands.

Hilarious bureaucratic master-work reduces every paranoid cliche to the realm of the absurd. After a brief prologue (explaining the current state of the world), the memoirs take over the book and create an environment both instantly insane and memorabley accurate. Lem was always the funniest of the sci fi writers- he makes you think, the same time he causes you to laugh out loud. (it's like Kafka mixed with the Marx Brothers.) The un-named narrator will have you rooting for him from the first sentence. Even the final stark scene is somehow uncomfortabley amusing.

There is a fable in the Kabalistic tradition that the spiritual path is like a giant building with thousands of locked doors, in front of each door there is a key. Only, not a single key is in front of the door it unlocks. This idea fits well into this work of Lem. It is as if Jorge Luis Borges and Kafka, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., and Orwell got together to write a sci-fi novel. The protagonist finds himself (whether by chance or design) trying to find the ever elusive file which explains his mission, amidst an underground bureaucracy of espionage, spies and counter (and counter-counter) spies (from the Antibuilding, which may or may not exist), paranoia, and madness. Where everything is a code (right down to the smell of a rose), nothing is as it seems. Lem pokes fun at our attempts to search for meaning in an absurd world, all the while being humorous, philosophical, bitingly satirical, and always thought-provoking. If you liked the way Borges plays with notions of chaos/order and meaning/ meaninglessness in his short stories "Babylon Lottery" and "Library of Babel" (which Lem admits are favorites of his), or the consiracies within conspiracies of Robert Anton Wilson's fiction, you'll love this book!

I had my copy of Memoirs Found In A Bathtub confiscated by my 9th grade french teacher in 1977. Hey, it was a 30 minute free reading period. I learned of Kafka's influences on this book ,and their shared heritage, years later. Searching for knowledge can be a treachorous endeavor. The authorities and experts can't always be trusted - especially when they no longer have paperwork to bolster their position.

Lem's writes a great story. But more than that, he is different, I think, because of...well, because of something else. Something occuring below the surface of the narrative. Something hidden...something coded? I don't know. It is some thought-provoking something that gets you to put the book down to consider something new, or perhaps reconsider, anew, something you thought you knew.

Writers ought to attempt entertainment, I think. Of course, not every writer succeeds. But Lem does. Brilliantly, I should say. Moreso, though, Lem's work is made more thorough-going, more profound in effect, perhaps more three-dimensional, because of something powerfully nonverbal....some undiscovered, secret goings-on behind the words and phrases. Something at once present and indiscernable. Something, at times, even terrifying.

I can't explain it. I can't talk about Lem's technique or his uniqueness in plain language. His achievement itself aspires to the nonverbal. Just read "Memoirs", or "The Futurological Congress", or the "Cyberiad", and see for yourself how, the story, or what it becomes, manages to linger long after the book has been closed. Lem has been lingering in my mind for years.

Whatever that curious something is, though, a rarest of things, the thing you feel when you read Lem, but can't quite locate, I'm sure is something Lem the artist has somehow fashioned deliberatley. For this reason, I think, I can't say you should read Lem...but that you must.

Fascinatingly complex, confusing, stimulating, and challenging. I just finished the novel and will undoubtedly reread it again, and again, and again. I picked up memoirs found in a bathtub (ironically?) on a whim at the goodwill for 50 cents!

Lem is on a very short list of authors who are beyond anything else you've probably read. But who knows, I certainly don't (hah!)

Paradox, the seat of being, a satirical symphony of chaos

Theres not enough stars in the sky to score this amazing novel