Customer Reviews

The Prisoner: I am Not a Number!

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

 

 

I thoroughly enjoyed Thomas M. Disch's book, "The Prisoner." Like some of the other reviewers, I watched many "The Prisoner" episodes on television several decades ago. As a youngster, I never understood the television series and I won't claim to understand this book, but I liked the show because it was a change from the "norm."

In a nutshell (pun intended), I enjoyed this book soley for its entertainment merit. I wasn't looking for something "new" that was not revealed in the television episodes. I was looking for a "story" and found one.

Do you want to buy this book? I would say "yes" if you are looking for a change of entertainment pace--regardless of the story itself and Note: you don't need to be familiar with the TV series to understand the story.

Puzzling over their differing memories of their lives before arriving in the Village, Lorna (or is her name Liora?) asks: "What is real? Who am I? Do I wake or dream?" Those questions are at the heart of The Prisoner: both the original television series and Thomas Disch's novelization of the cult classic.

The television series can be viewed as anti-authoritarian, as a tribute to individuality and free thought, as an existential exercise in futility, as a statement about the nature of liberty and as a condemnation of secrecy and bureaucracy. It can be seen as a fable or an allegory. The great and maddening beauty of The Prisoner is that the audience was never given definitive answers: the location of the Village, the identities of the Village masters, the information the prisoner possessed and the reason for his resignation as a clandestine agent, whether the prisoner finally escaped ... we'll never know, and that's exactly what Patrick McGoohan wanted. (You don't have to believe me about this; you can read McGoohan's interview in The Prisoner: A Televisionary Masterpiece, a coffee table book that also includes a detailed episode guide.) Thomas Disch's novel captures the spirit of the television series, if not its scope.

That the book is a novelization of the show seems to have escaped some of the reviewers who gripe that the novel is too much like the show. What did they expect from a novelization? To be fair, the novel is not a scene by scene replay of the television series: it begins differently; the location of the prisoner's capture is altered; the prisoner's escape attempts in the first and second episodes are carried out more ingeniously in the novel; the woman who (supposedly) escapes in the second episode is replaced by an entirely new character in the book, a love interest who appears early in the novel. There are enough differences to make the novel fresh and appealing to the show's fans while remaining true to McGoohan's vision. And of course, with only 242 pages, the novel cannot cover all 17 episodes of the show; it wisely makes no attempt to do so.

Some reviewers complain that that the book doesn't answer the questions left unanswered by the series. Why would it? This is, again, a novelization of the series (it says so on the back cover). Why would the novel destroy the careful ambiguity of the original?

As for the reviewer who recommends the novel to "those who want a break from reading the dictionary," Disch always aspired to write literature, not the pulp fiction that characterized science fiction in the 1960's, when this novel was written. Instead of following the journalistic tradition of using words that are accessible to eighth graders, Disch makes use of the richness of the English language. The novel is beautifully written. Enlarging one's vocabulary by consulting a dictionary or the internet when encountering an unfamiliar word while reading a novel isn't really a bad thing.

My only complaint is that a 242 page novel can't do justice to the television series. As I said, Disch captured the spirit but not the scope of the original work. The novel is nonetheless well worth reading, for fans of the show and for those who have never seen it. I would give The Prisoner 4 1/2 stars if Amazon made that option available.

I bought a used copy of Disch's Prisoner novel because I greatly enjoyed Disch's nonfiction book on sf, The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of, had never read his fiction, and also hungered for a new story about No. 6. This novel was a great disappointment. It seems to combine elements from several Prisoner TV episodes (like the dream visualization technique and the female doctor from A,B&C) to no great advantage. Apart from those elements, the story has no great premise or narrative drive, and even the conclusion was confusing. Disch may be a great prose stylist, but if he is elsewhere, he isn't here.

First of all, the editorial review listed above is completely wrong: "Editorial Reviews - From Library Journal - Disch's 1967 sf novel was the basis for the cult favorite TV show of the same name". Just the opposite is true, the book was written from the series, along with two others by different authors -- all of which were enjoyable.

For those disappointed that this book didn't answering any lingering questions, it is good to remember that "Questions are a burden to others. Answers are a prison for oneself." BE SEEING YOU!

Admittedly I haven't watched the original series in a few years but from this read I could almost picture some of the episodes. This is like the series yet it takes a few aspects in different routes. The ending on this was different from both the original series and the newer remade mini-series. While they changed that aspect it was done well and just as believable as if Patrick McGoohan had written it himself. Some episodes were omitted and some chapters didn't refer to the series at all.

I enjoyed this short read and will probably re-watch the series and then read again. I think it is a nice supplement for any fan of the original show but shouldn't be held as an exact replica. This one borrows just enough to be enjoyable without being tedious and yes it does include Rover.

Its dejavu all over again as our friend #6 finds himself prisoner in a surrealistic village. Has he been here before?

This book appears to take place after the TV series thus answering the age old question stemmed from the last episode...did #6 really escape?

The book starts out strong, and has lots of elements that remain true to the series, however it started to lose me at the end. I can't give it five stars, but still recommend it to die-hard fans of the series.

Be seeing you.

Let me start off by saying I've never seen the TV show.

I've also never heard of Thomas Disch before. I stumbled across his name in a book review for a Margaret Atwood novel. I liked his writing style, and this book sounded interesting so I picked it up.

It's trash. The best thing I can say about it is it's not long, so the pain is over quickly.

Disch beats (and beats and beats) you over the head with his not-so-clever connection between No. 6's prison and the everyday lives we live in the modern age. Most of the time this is pointed at the not-so-original target of suburbia, but during an escape to London the novel turns its dull wit towards the almost as un-original urban business climate.

The author's writing style, which appealed to me in his review, is garbage in this story. An otherwise dull narrative section will be interrupted by abrupt and overdone imagery. The characters lack any sort of depth and don't seem at all real; No. 6 has decided to retire because it's what the character needs to start the story. The plot has what you could call twists, but it goes between them directly and orderly, as if the writer himself wanted to get rid of each one in turn to relieve the burden of having to write any further complications. The ending (revealing the uninteresting mystery of No. 1's identity) as noted in other reviews, is bizarre and seems completely out of place.

Leave it. I recommend this book to sadists and those who want a break from reading the dictionary.

There was no need for this book. It doesn't answer any questions, the story goes nowhere new.
Why write a story that takes place after the ending of the Prisoner series when in the last episode you find out the whole series was allegory rather than simply just a story about a secret agent?
A story that could have been considered a "missing episode" of the series would have good. A story that could have told us more about Number 6 before he became The Prisoner would have been even better.

There was no need for this book. It doesn't answer any questions, the story goes nowhere new.

classic prisoner novel by the sf genius tom disch