A Perfect Vacuum [Paperback]

Stanislaw Lem (Author), Michael Kandel (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 20, 1983

This is a collection of perfect yet imaginary reviews of nonexistent books. With insidious wit, the author beguiles us with a parade of delightful, disarmingly familiar inventions. "Lem is Harpo Marx and Franz Kafka and Isaac Asimov rolled up into one and down the white rabbit's hole" (Detroit News). A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Editorial Reviews

Review

"I suspect," intones one of Lem's supposed reviewers, "that there was an idea that burst upon the author - and from which he shrank." So what we have here, first appearances to the contrary, is not a jolly collection of parodies but 16 assorted fictional notions presented as summaries of books under "review." True, several do take the form of parodies twitting the neo-Joycean epic and its exegetes, the nouveau roman, the excesses of structuralist criticism, and so forth. But most of the book is in fact taken up with ideas "from which the author shrank." In some of these pieces, the gimmick of the review recedes to an enigmatic framing distance; in others, it dwindles to irrelevancy. Typical of the first category is a brilliant sketch for a novel about a former SS squad leader who assumes the identity of "Gruppenfuhrer Louis XVI" in a grandiose court in the Brazilian jungle, and another about an aging couple's resort to desperate stratagems of faith in order to cope with an idiot child. The second and lesser group consists mostly of convoluted examinations of apparently absurd logical, moral, and scientific propositions: computer-generated minds argue the existence of a Creator, a probability-theoretician weighs the likelihood of his own existence, etc. These notions are pursued with a sort of dazzling doggedness characteristic of Leto at his most energetic. He may be one of the most annoying writers alive, but had he not existed it would probably have been necessary to invent him. (Kirkus Reviews )

Language Notes

Text: English, Polish (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 238 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; First Edition edition (April 20, 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156716860
• ISBN-13: 978-0156716864
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,385,725 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stanislaw Lem is the most widely translated and best known science fiction author writing outside of the English language. Winner of the Kafka Prize, he is a contributor to many magazines, including the New Yorker, and he is the author of numerous works, including Solaris.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars one of my favorite satirical works ever, March 13, 2001

By 

Bruce_in_LA "reader_in_LA" (los angeles, ca United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: A Perfect Vacuum (Paperback)

I forget when I discovered Lem - in college? -- but A PERFECT VACUUM remains one of my favorite works and I'm delighted it's still in print (it may have been out of print once). Lem packages a collections of fake book reviews of nonexistent books, written in a delightful broad array of styles and voices. His wry humor lights every page. He includes a scathing review of his own book !! Highly recommended to anyone who enjoys satires and highbrow whimsy. (If you like this, try Julian barnes: Foucault's Parrot, or,History of the world in 10.5 chapters.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A most interesting vacuum, October 1, 2008

By 

Lamberto García del Cid (Zaragoza, Spain) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Perfect Vacuum (Paperback)

A Perfect Vacuum is a reference for books on imaginary books. I love comments on imaginary books, an in this field Stanislaw Lem is a master. The difference with Borges reviews on imaginary books (read Fictions, by the Argentinian author) is that Stanislaw Lem recurs to science and locate most of his visionary plots into the future, where humankind is often not human and sometimes not kind. In line of other Lem's works: Imaginary Magnitude, One Human Minute, this "perfect vacuum" is a reference, the best of them all. I eagerly recommend this book.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Metareview, February 25, 2008

By 

doomsdayer520 (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: A Perfect Vacuum (Paperback)

Here Stanislaw Lem embarks on a pretty unique method of satire - reviews of nonexistent books. Most interestingly, Lem takes the opportunity to advance his own ideas on technology, ethics, and logic while satirizing both writers and the literary criticism establishment. Getting a grip on these multiple levels of satire is the key to understanding Lem's purpose in this book. In several "reviews" here, he skewers literary criticism by pretending to be an exaggerated version of an academic critic, first by criticizing his own nonexistent longwinded introduction to this book, then by over-analyzing his fictitious books to the point of solipsism. Examples include critiques of a book that is apparently about nothing and another book in a language spoken by neither the writer nor the critic. All the while, Lem satirizes the ridiculousness of such endeavors with ironically overblown professor-isms like "The self-novel is a partial striptease; the antinovel, ipso facto, is (alas) a form of autocastration." Just like you would find in any literary critique written by a professor wishing to impress no one but another professor - a phenomenon that deserves to be satirized.

Lem also "reviews" several fictitious books that adapt the themes and plotlines of old classics to modern settings, which in the real world is the type of literary reinvention that is often slavishly over-praised by academic analysts - making Lem's satire necessary in bringing all these eggheads back down to Earth. In other "reviews" here, Lem provides commentary on the fictitious scientific and philosophical theories of his fake writers, providing him with a very sneaky method of advancing his always interesting thoughts on those same topics. Meanwhile, some brutal social satire (an underappreciated strength of many of Lem's proper novels) pops up in his "reviews" of fictitious fictional works. This book often seems to be the work of boring over-analytical ivory-tower scientists and snobs, but that's exactly who Lem is satirizing, in a sly fashion that would probably go right over their lofty heads. [~doomsdayer520~]