A Thermonuclear Fairy Tale (Part Two)
Topic: Must Read
As I mentioned in my first post about Level 7, Mordecai Roshwald’s novel of nuclear apocalypse somehow holds up despite the implausibility of its premise, its moral posturing and its stilted writing. How is that possible?
Perhaps it’s not quite fair to criticize Roshwald’s writing qua writing; a Polish Jew born in 1921, he learned English as a second language and, in fact, enlisted the help of a friend to smooth out his original draft of Level 7. The result is perfectly grammatical English prose that could never be taken for the work of an American author. Occasionally it gave me the feeling that I was reading Kafka in translation. But this slightly alien style works to the book’s advantage, lending Level 7 the air of a parable.
So does the anonymity of the characters, whose names were left on the surface when they descended to the military facility housing PBX Command, located 4,000 feet underground, called Level 7. We know them only by their numerical designations: X-127 (the protagonist), E-647, N-527, etc. Indeed, Roshwald provides no clues as to the nationality of the denizens of Level 7. They could be Americans or Russians. In his preface to the novel the author explains that he deliberately chose to omit national or cultural markers, since Level 7 was intended as a warning to all humanity.
For these reasons, I believe, the implausibility of Level 7’s premise doesn’t matter as much as it would in a novel whose details are more realistic. For it is implausible. That any nation would automate its military machine to the point depicted in Roshwald’s novel strains credulity. As is well known, the actual procedures governing the use of nuclear weapons in both the United States and the Soviet Union were hedged round with multiple safeguards designed, not so much to prevent accidents or deter madmen, but to keep the power of decision in the hands of the political leadership.
But unlike Red Alert, Fail-Safe and other novels purporting to give a realistic picture of nuclear war, Level 7 is, as I suggested above, a parable. Whether Roshwald intended it as such is doubtful. It seems that he really believed in the nightmare vision of push-button nuclear warfare. But still, he definitely touches a nerve. Politically, technologically, and now historically, Level 7 misses the mark. Psychologically, though, it scores a target hit. For the process of dehumanization this novel depicts, whereby ordinary men are trained, conditioned and finally commanded to commit mass murder, has had its real-life counterparts in Russia, Germany, China, Cambodia, Rwanda and elsewhere. Level 7 is a resonant parable of the bloody and tragic twentieth century. For that reason, I rate it as a must read.
Posted by tmg110
at 2:50 PM EDT
Updated: Thursday, 11 April 2013 10:05 PM EDT
