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472nd out of 2,974 books
—
12,601 voters
Memoirs Found in a Bathtub
The year is 3149, and a vast paper destroying blight-papyralysis-has obliterated much of the planet's written history. However, these rare memoirs, preserved for centuries in a volcanic rock, record the strange life of a man trapped in a hermetically sealed underground community. Translated by Michael Kandel and Christine Rose.
Paperback, 204 pages
Published
July 23rd 1986
by Mariner Books
(first published 1961)
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This book blew my mind. I had to scream after I put it down! It is the story of a man who doesn't know his mission, who is on the outside of an inside joke. Everything is in code, even the code is in code, and everybody is a double, triple, quadruple or more agent. Or maybe they just make up their jobs and go about doing them-there is no way to know.
This book is a tragedy in the sense that it is a comedy about someone who ultimately fails. In comedy, the hero always succeeds at the end, in greek...more
This book is a tragedy in the sense that it is a comedy about someone who ultimately fails. In comedy, the hero always succeeds at the end, in greek...more
May 17, 2012
Ania
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
mad people, gay stories,
Recommended to Ania by:
polish people who rated it as best Lem book
Madness... it's ALL madness.
I imagine all fans of this book to look something like this:
The question now becomes, am I a fan?
I really don't know how to rate this book. After finishing this book I wanted to chuck it out the window. "2 days wasted!" I thought. Nothing but madness and more madness.... Then today more of it made sense, by of course, not making sense. (you're picturing the crazy cat as my face now, aren't you?)
I do understand the book however, and I suppose this is why I am writing t...more
I imagine all fans of this book to look something like this:
The question now becomes, am I a fan?
I really don't know how to rate this book. After finishing this book I wanted to chuck it out the window. "2 days wasted!" I thought. Nothing but madness and more madness.... Then today more of it made sense, by of course, not making sense. (you're picturing the crazy cat as my face now, aren't you?)
I do understand the book however, and I suppose this is why I am writing t...more
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Агент приходит к себе на работу в военное министрество, чтобы получить новое Задание. Он знает, что на этот раз его ждет Секретное Задание Невероятной Важности. Все на его работе знают, что Агента ждет Секретное Задание Невероятной Важности, но никто не может сказать ему, в чем именно оно заключается. Каждый новый бюрократ, с которым сталкивается Агент, пытается это сделать, но каждый раз терпит фиаско. Один умирает от инфаркта, второй – кончает с собой, третий – посылает его в церковь, четверты...more
Kafka on Prozac
Memoirs Found in a Bathtub by Stanslaw Lem follows the adventures of an agent-in-training as he wanders in search of a mission through the vast bureaucracy of a purposeless intelligence agency.
The agent is anonymous. But we can call him K - because the story, the style, and the absurdist message are drawn directly from Kafka (esp. The castle]. K is an everyman, and his agency is an allegory for society. Ostensibly, the agency is the post-apocalyptic remnant of America, but it feel...more
Memoirs Found in a Bathtub by Stanslaw Lem follows the adventures of an agent-in-training as he wanders in search of a mission through the vast bureaucracy of a purposeless intelligence agency.
The agent is anonymous. But we can call him K - because the story, the style, and the absurdist message are drawn directly from Kafka (esp. The castle]. K is an everyman, and his agency is an allegory for society. Ostensibly, the agency is the post-apocalyptic remnant of America, but it feel...more
I actually think the prologue is the best part of the book. It built my expectations up so much that I was at a loss when the first chapter began.
There's earth, laid to waste by its people's dependence on paper... and there's people that came after and their futile attempts to preserve history, science, literature that became lost when the space bug came and ate up all the paper. Another Dark Age came, and it was a long time before mankind drew himself from his long sleep.
The premises: An third...more
There's earth, laid to waste by its people's dependence on paper... and there's people that came after and their futile attempts to preserve history, science, literature that became lost when the space bug came and ate up all the paper. Another Dark Age came, and it was a long time before mankind drew himself from his long sleep.
The premises: An third...more
Memoirs Found in a Bathtub combines biting satire with Carollian absurdity to brilliant effect.
Follow the confused and paranoia-driven encounters of a government agent as he navigates the exaggeratedly complex and ridiculous set of codes and regulations enforced by the other inhabitants of the edifice known simply as The Building. He is on a mission, but no one has told him what the mission actually is yet.
The introduction to the novel sets the context: Something brought back on a space flight...more
Follow the confused and paranoia-driven encounters of a government agent as he navigates the exaggeratedly complex and ridiculous set of codes and regulations enforced by the other inhabitants of the edifice known simply as The Building. He is on a mission, but no one has told him what the mission actually is yet.
The introduction to the novel sets the context: Something brought back on a space flight...more
This is a wonderful little book, though it is clearly not for everyone (Sword & Laser folk, you know what I'm talking about).
However, if you are a fan of Lem's other work, this will almost certainly delight you. It reminded me strongly of a short story out of The Cyberiad, and also of the TV series The Prisoner (original, please, not the AMC remake).
The framing device makes it science fiction (the title is literal, a far-future historian discovers the memoir in a bathtub in some ruins), but...more
However, if you are a fan of Lem's other work, this will almost certainly delight you. It reminded me strongly of a short story out of The Cyberiad, and also of the TV series The Prisoner (original, please, not the AMC remake).
The framing device makes it science fiction (the title is literal, a far-future historian discovers the memoir in a bathtub in some ruins), but...more
As a kid, I read and reread Lem's science fiction short story collection Tales of Pirx the Pilot. In fact, I'd say that book, along with Heinlein's Green Hills of Earth, really cemented my love for science fiction. To this day, I prefer that style - character and story-driven, with just enough tech babble to make it spacey. That was my only exposure to Lem, although I did know that he was a highly respected author in several genres.
Because of my love for Pirx, I really looked forward to picking...more
Because of my love for Pirx, I really looked forward to picking...more
Nov 23, 2008
Jenny
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommended to Jenny by:
Sword and Laser Book Club - Tom Merritt
I keep seeing comments various places that "Lem is like Kafka." I've never read Kafka. I felt I should make that clear before diving into any sort of opinion, but I'll add it to my list.
This book brings up many more questions than answers. My biggest one pertains to the narrator. Is he reliable? Throughout what we read, he is being taught that everything is code, and symbolic, and that everyone is a triple agent (or more, the wonders of illogical math). So is what we're reading anything close to...more
This book brings up many more questions than answers. My biggest one pertains to the narrator. Is he reliable? Throughout what we read, he is being taught that everything is code, and symbolic, and that everyone is a triple agent (or more, the wonders of illogical math). So is what we're reading anything close to...more
(written 5/01)
Alex told me to check out Lem so I picked this out randomly. At first it seemed to be wandering along with no point... but this is Life, right? Once I realized that the Building was Life (around p. 100) I got much more out of the book.
"Hey, he Building, hey!
What makes the Building stay?
The Antibuilding makes it stay!
Hey!"
Alex told me to check out Lem so I picked this out randomly. At first it seemed to be wandering along with no point... but this is Life, right? Once I realized that the Building was Life (around p. 100) I got much more out of the book.
"Hey, he Building, hey!
What makes the Building stay?
The Antibuilding makes it stay!
Hey!"
Stanislaw Lem wrote science fiction, but he wasn't really a "science fiction" writer in the commonly accepted sense of the term. Science fiction was the medium Lem chose to explore the ideas and themes which interested him. Memoirs Found in a Bathtub is supposedly a manuscript from sometime in our future, found even further in the future, which describes life in the Third Pentagon, known to the narrator only as "the Building." But it's obvious that the plot, such as it is, is not really what Lem...more
I think this would have been an awesome short story, but as a novel, I got a little overwhelmed by the protagonist's situation. I'm also pretty sure that a lot of the Wonderland madness going on in the Building as a clear parallel for the author's time and place that does not immediately translate to mine. I felt as frustrated as the protagonist trying to make sense of senseless bureaucracy, and I think it was an amazing concept. I just don't generally like to read to feel that frustrated. I fel...more
I work for a large organization going through a lot of difficult changes and I found the book fascinating. The atmosphere of confusion, political jockeying, and organized chaos that exists in any bureaucracy is perfectly described and yet well camouflaged within the framework the prologue establishes. Communication between two people, sharing a common thought or emotion, is a miracle and this novel is a wonderful examination of how that process is a near impossibility. The odds are incredibly st...more
1 like · like · see review
I adored this piece from start to finish. Lem (or his translators) have a grasp on prose that wows and flows. This absurdist satire had me laughing and cringing throughout as the nearly 40-year-old piece rings true as a bell to contemporary themes of espionage, privacy, and deception. The story attempts to detail the complex interworking of an institution so mired in secrecy and insecurity that trust, truth, and deception swirl together in a miasma of confusion and paranoia such that any occurre...more
oh my god...
is craziness what is written in this book...
some times i push my self to maintain a logical order to the story.
forthwith ..i identify a little bit so... i continue.
ιδιόρρυθμο βιβλίο πραγματικά...
παραθέτει άλλη μια από τις τόσες διαφορετικές μελλοντολογίες και εκδοχές για την διάβρωση της ιστορίας της ανθρωπότητας, εν συνεχεία του πολιτισμού της και εν τέλη της ολοκληρωτικής καταστροφής της.
συγχέει παρελθόν και μέλλον
και την ατομιστική παράνοια της εκάστοτε άρχουσας κυβέρνησης.
ωραί...more
is craziness what is written in this book...
some times i push my self to maintain a logical order to the story.
forthwith ..i identify a little bit so... i continue.
ιδιόρρυθμο βιβλίο πραγματικά...
παραθέτει άλλη μια από τις τόσες διαφορετικές μελλοντολογίες και εκδοχές για την διάβρωση της ιστορίας της ανθρωπότητας, εν συνεχεία του πολιτισμού της και εν τέλη της ολοκληρωτικής καταστροφής της.
συγχέει παρελθόν και μέλλον
και την ατομιστική παράνοια της εκάστοτε άρχουσας κυβέρνησης.
ωραί...more
Similar in some respects to PKD's The Zap Gun, what with the actual lack of "over there" enemy. Scary, in a sense, what with the paranoia, the endless corridors and white offices of the Building, the coded coded coded code and the sheer maniacal absurdity of the espionage that occurs for no reason whatsoever. Unforgivingly strange in some places. Yes, okay, there is a Kafka-esque nightmarishness to the whole thing.
What I find really interesting, thought, is where the memoirs (which we never see...more
What I find really interesting, thought, is where the memoirs (which we never see...more
I experienced part of the Cold War; I work for government, though not defense (my Dad did though); I am a social scientist. This book was written for me. I am not certain if Lem was the first to examine the present through an archaeologist's view, but it will likely not be done better. On par with Catch-22 but weighed down by being classified as science fiction and being originally written in Polish (not the largest literary market in the 70's).
I don't often give up on a book - I feel as though that's admitting defeat - but I couldn't continue with this after about 80 pages. I can see its brilliance. I'm particularly impressed by the way the author's intent comes through the translation. However, there's not really any plot (and I think that's the point). The main character endures all sorts of indignities but will never discover his Mission. I just lost patience. For one thing, I was having difficulty keeping track of the various epis...more
Monty Python's Flying Circus with Kafka as ring master. Lem, I'm pretty sure, has some hidden things to say, but I'm pretty dense when it comes to this kind of thing, so I'm pretty sure I missed something. The novel consists of an introduction to the memoirs and the memoirs themselves (both part of the work); and I had to re-read the introduction when I finished, which was a little help. Memoirs definitely warrants a re-read (maybe I should have rated it higher, but my frustration at not underst...more
Not my usual reading matter. Impressions on just finishing it: dystopian, nihilistic, paranoid, Beckett-esque in places, Dadaistic, coded critique of communism/bureaucracy/the Cold War, extremely vivid description of snoring, warts and hands. No wonder my dreams have been a bit weird recently. Definitely food for thought, but not actually sure if I liked the book or not.
It is difficult to write about pointlessness without making the tale itself feel a bit pointless. Here, it becomes clear from early on that the protagonist's mission is futile, and that diminishes our involvement in his travails. The reader can still enjoy all the amusingly demented speculation. And nobody can accuse Lem of failing to develop a premise to its ultimate extreme.
A strange thing about this book is that I will probably never read it again nor recommend it to anyone I know but I am glad I read it.
Memoirs Found in a Bathtub reminds me of Thomas Pynchon filtered through a very stiff translator. All of the political and cultural weight was there. The dissociative whirl of the main characters experiences left me feeling hyper buzzy and confused. The book succeed in satirizing cold war era bureaucracy and paranoia completely.
I found the book on the whole to be...more
Memoirs Found in a Bathtub reminds me of Thomas Pynchon filtered through a very stiff translator. All of the political and cultural weight was there. The dissociative whirl of the main characters experiences left me feeling hyper buzzy and confused. The book succeed in satirizing cold war era bureaucracy and paranoia completely.
I found the book on the whole to be...more
Don't be seduced by the introduction, obviously tacked on to sell the book in the US - it's a very intriguing premise, but is completely unrelated to the actual story. It has its moments, and some of the promising elements could be composed into a much better narrative, but it's ultimately pointless; a lot is probably lost in translation.
Never actually knew what was going on. That being said, I generally enjoyed it. It did take a little while to get through because I found myself rereading pages quite a bit. I always felt like I was missing something. I think if I reread it again I would really enjoy it, now that I know what to expect.
At first it seemed like this was going to be a re-tread of Kafka's "surreal bureaucratic nightmare" territory, given some sci-fi window-dressing. But Lem provides some original, absurd and sometimes hilarious takes on different forms of paranoia, and also some of the most vivid imagery I've ever read from him. Still too uneven to be a knock-out, but intriguing and holds some flashes of brilliance.
A humorously surreal and, at times, slightly unnerving tale, this lesson on absurdity is woven into a short, Kafkaesque tribulation of endless contortion and complication, confusion and near-hopeless manipulation. Almost every seemingly minor detail, accident, and quirk is relevant.
This is the most dreamlike book I ever remember reading. Or nightmare like. A study in bureaucracy and paranoia. Including coded camouflage and artificial body parts and much much more. My American paperback is from 1971 but apparently the original is from 1961.
1 like · like · see review
Made me think of the movie "Brazil".
Complete madness, but not getting anywhere... fun and strange... very strange... I have mixed feelings about this book, but for me it was too long, too much of the same. The writing style however drags you through the book.
Complete madness, but not getting anywhere... fun and strange... very strange... I have mixed feelings about this book, but for me it was too long, too much of the same. The writing style however drags you through the book.
oh, lem. trying too hard with this one. there is a point at which black, surreal, dystopian humor just becomes indecipherable nonsense. perhaps if i had more context/historical knowledge i would have liked this more - i certainly liked the concept.
Stanislaw Lem is my hero, but I haven't made it through this one yet. Some people swear by it, but I just haven't developed a taste for his satire. And beware his essays or interviews, the man is unforgivably arrogant!
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Stanisław Lem (staˈɲiswaf lɛm) was a Polish science fiction, philosophical and satirical writer. His books have been translated into 41 languages and have sold over 27 million copies. He is perhaps best known as the author of Solaris, which has twice been made into a feature film. In 1976, Theodore Sturgeon claimed that Lem was the most widely read science-fiction writer in the world.
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