In Time's Arrow, British novelist Martin Amis begins with the death of Dr. Tod Friendly and then traces his life--backwards--into his sinister past. Though the outlandish premise of time running backwards wears thin at times, the story Amis tells is compelling enough to keep the reader interested until the very end...or beginning.
¶Make no mistake, this book is weird. Amis maintains the backwards motif scrupulously, with dialogues printed in reverse order (Amis' one concession to the reader is to render the individual sentences forward) and every event described backwards. For instance: to eat,
"You select a soiled dish, collect some scraps from the garbage, and settle down for a short wait. Various items get gulped up into my mouth, and after skillful massage with tongue and teeth I transfer them to the plate for additional sculpture with knife and fork and spoon."
¶The narrator is not Tod himself, exactly, but a sort of secondary consciousness, a spectator who is independent from Tod's thoughts but hostage inside his body. Amis never explains the peculiar identity of his narrator, who views the reverse unfolding of Tod's life as a forward-moving story.
¶Amis uses the backwards perspective to showcase his powers of description. The narrator's ingenious explanations of everyday processes reversed, like eating, are pearls of smart, funny writing. His adept usage of the gleefully oblivious narrator results in delicious irony, as in this exposition on taxis:
"This business with the yellow cabs, it sure looks like an unimprovable deal. They're always there when you need one, even in the rain or when the theaters are closing. They pay you up front, no questions asked. They always know where you're going. They're great. No wonder we stand there, for hours on end, waving goodbye, or saluting--saluting this fine service. The streets are full of people with their arms raised, drenched and weary, thanking the yellow cabs."
By looking at the world backwards, Amis offers uncommon but resonant observations on the way it functions. Following a story told backwards is a formidable challenge for the reader, though; it makes the head spin at first. Only after much reading do the rhythms of this world of reverse causation start to make sense.
¶It becomes clear early in the book that something is seriously wrong with Tod's life. Ominous signs are everywhere; Tod's many relationships with women, dysfunctional backwards or forwards, suggest he has serious emotional problems. Shortly before (after?) his death, one girlfriend harasses him about "his secret." The readers move onward, conscious that they are getting ever closer to the answers in Tod's past. Amis' structuring of the story to provide suspense through foreshadowing (or after-shadowing?) is masterful. By reversing causality, he turns all principles of literary development on their head. We see the endings first and anticipate the beginnings; we seek the causes of events, not their results.
¶Why tell a story backwards? The text suggests a few answers early on. Recounting a life backwards invites the reader to ask where the life is going. At times, it seems that Amis' message is that the life does not make any progress. The end of Friendly's life is decidedly inauspicious; did he accomplish anything? Through the ultimate futility of all Friendly's personal relations, Amis hints that run either way, life lacks real direction:
"I have noticed in the past, of course, that most conversations would make much better sense if you ran them backward. But with this man-woman stuff, you could run them anyway you liked--and still get no further forward."
¶The more positive side of the reversal is that it highlights the good parts of life people are apt to miss going forward. Like the dead in Our Town, who recognize how precious and fleeting life is, the narrator rebukes Friendly for not enjoying his "improvement" in health as he gets younger. For better or worse, the reversal offers a new perspective on life and a new way of evaluating it.
¶The narrator moves with Tod through a series of identity changes, over into Europe, and ultimately to the darkness which haunts all that proceeds it: Tod (really named Odilo) works as a "doctor" at Auschwitz. The narrator describes the obscene murder and brutality which Tod oversees, but in the same cheerfully uncomprehending manner as before. For the narrator, the laws of reverse causation are in effect: the officers at the camp are creating a people, using fire and gas--dead men are taken from the pile outside, Tod extracts poisons from them with a syringe, and they come back to life. Suddenly, the accustomed irony of the narrator's descriptions has become unbearably bitter; for instance: "I saw the old Jew struggle to the surface of the deep latrine, how he splashed and struggled into life, and was hoisted out by the jubilant guards, his clothes cleansed by the mire." Amis achieves the desired effect: by describing the atrocities obliquely, through the upbeat, backwards narrator, the impact on the reader is more painful than it could be with a direct description.
¶Now we understand the primary significance of the book's backwardness. The Holocaust was the ultimate repudiation and reversal of human morality. Its world of gas chambers and crematoriums was obscenely wrong, still inconceivable to most people even today. For the narrator, of course, it was the only world which made sense--a happy world, dedicated to feeding the Jews, joining their families together, giving them property, rights, and even life. Only in a backwards world where taking is giving, where destruction is creation can the Holocaust make sense.
¶Now the puzzle of Tod's later life all fits together; even his assumed name acquires a new significance, if one knows that "Tod" is German for death. "Tod Friendly" represents the two phases of his life: the German years occupied with death, followed by the desperate friendliness he offered as atonement. But Amis makes clear that the "Friendly" years can never erase his sins; he is tied to them by the unbreakable line of time. And though following a story backwards can border on tedious at moments, Amis' sharp writing, intriguing story line, and disturbing study of the Holocaust keep the reader following the trail of the arrow.
