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Title: Screen

Author: Barry N. Malzberg

Narrator: Stefan Rudnicki

Format: Unabridged

Length: 4 hrs and 48 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-13-15

Publisher: Skyboat Media, Inc.

Genres: Romance, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

Screen is Barry N. Malzberg's daring and controversial debut novel about a man who can only obtain sexual satisfaction by projecting himself into fantasies evoked by the cinema.

In the tradition of Vladimir Nabokov, Malzberg draws his listeners over the precipice of rationality into a realm where dreams are real - a realm in which the hero, a humble investigator for the New York City Welfare Department, finds himself married to Sophia Loren, seducing Elizabeth Taylor, and seduced by Brigitte Bardot - all in one tortured weekend.

Members Reviews:

Early Malzberg

Barry N. Malzbergâs use of the language of erotic literature to craft nihilistic black comedies matured in his later SF works. Screen, written for the controversial publisher of avant-garde literary fiction and erotica Olympia Press (first print of Nabokovâs Lolita, Burroughsâ Naked Lunch, etc.), demonstrates Malzbergâs non-genre desires. One of numerous novels he wrote for Olympia, some under pseudonyms, Screen was pitched to Malzberg by Maurice Girodas as it was an idea for a âbook he could not get his other writers to tackleâ (see this article for more on the press and Malzbergâs discussion of the book). According to Malzberg, it was written in two weeks (!!) but never generated either lawsuits or the scandal Girodas wantedâ.

The premise: Depressed man, who works for the Department of Welfare, obsesses over movies. He is able to âprojectâ himself into the film and âmake passionate love to Elizabeth Taylor, Doris Day, Brigitte Bardot, Sophiaâ and others (from Malzbergâs article âRepentance, Desire, and Natalie Woodâ). Sounds like a plot straight from the worst erotic fiction?

Malzbergâs creation: The tone establishes itself with the first line of the book: âFriday, it was YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW. It was playing at the Jewel, a battered, faintly odorous theatre somewhere near the slaughterhouses [â]â (1). We are flooded with malaise and despair, the protagonistâs projections into movies slowly take over his life, the act of âenteringâ a film is an ecstatic moment: âNow, in the blackness, all things were truly possibleâ (7). But also ultimately, an empty oneâ

The metafiction commentary on film are the highlights of the novel: for example, while projected into some post-war melodrama with Sophia Loren, our antihero laments, âWhat Sophia does not undestand; that she has never understood, is that this particular kind of plot imposes certain exigencies which, while they make the actors unhappy, cannot be helpedâ (16).

Rather than solely a pornographic adventure with famous actresses, Malzbergâs uncomfortable eroticism transpires in a theater filled with âa feeling of blasted hopeâ where âdim spaces [are] penetrated only by the ticking of the projectorâ (70). Hopelessly addicted to cinematic worlds, our antihero âwanted to be only in a small theatre somewhere, a gnome huddle in darkness spinning my life awayâ (55).

Beautiful moments abound interspersed with cringeworthy sex scenes.