Dying Inside

I'm not sure what Robert Silverberg thought this novel was about. His writing carried me through this, yet he chose to portray his character, a man born with the gift of reading minds, who is slowly losing that power in his 40's, as a complete jerk. It was apparent early on that David Selig was all about David Selig and no-one else. The novel was episodic in format. Silverberg would jump scenes throughout David's life, as a child and as an adult. The only constant was the pity party that David Selig had going.

If you think that surely the character would find some closure and learn to handle himself and his attitude towards others, better you'd be mistaken. Robert Silverberg is a writer of talent but why he chose to tell this story and not one of an infinity of choices the plot would suggest, is beyond me. Except that the time when this novel was written, the early to mid 70's, there was a period of the anti-hero, that was prevalent. It still is a decent read, only because of Silverberg's mastery of writing. But for me it was a long pity party inside David Selig's mind.