The Gradual Shows Us What Happens When Dreams and Reality Collide
In psychology, “Paris Syndrome” describes when a person spends so much time romanticizing a place and its culture that, when confronted with it in reality, their fantasy shatters, leaving them in shock. In his new novel The Gradual, Christopher Priest returns to the Dream Archipelago, the setting for many of his earlier novels and stories, to explore the way an artist—and, by extension, all of us—can impose personal ideas and emotions upon a real place, and the fallout that can result. Along the way, he shows how artists work changes as they grow older and life loses its idealistic sheen—a circumstance we will all gradually begin to experience, in our own way, as our lives tick away.
Alesandro Susskin is a native of Glaund, a terrifying industrial dictatorship where Josef K would feel right at home. Off the coast of Glaund lies the Dream Archipelago, strange lands populated by artists and musicians, closed to the Glaundians due their war with an equally warmongering counterpart. From an early age, Susskin is inspired by the three islands he can see from the coast, islands that cause him to hear music in his head. As the war continues and Susskin’s brother Jacj is drafted, he finds himself drawn further into the music in his head, eventually composing masterpiece symphonies adored by Glaundians and Islanders alike. They receive enough acclaim that an orchestral tour of the islands is arranged so he can perform his magnum opus around the Archipelago—but the islands have their own rules to follow, and Susskin soon finds himself adrift in ways he can scarcely comprehend.
Through Susskin, Priest is questioning how fantasy and reality affect art. Susskin spends so much time dreaming about the islands that when he finally visits them, he finds them alien and confusing; he is unable to give up the fantasy and engage in the reality. Yet, though he is susceptible to ignorance and a little too carried away by his own imaginings, Susskind is not unsympathetic. At first, he’s discovering a new world and new inspiration, and the depiction of his work is heady enough that it’s hard not to get caught up in the excitement. When his illusions are inevitably shattered, it’s hard not to feel bad for him, even if he kind of had it coming for failing to accept the reality of the culture around him.
When Susskin later flees to the Archipelago, shaken of his confidence and idealism, he finds a bureaucracy as restrictive as Glaund’s, with its own complex rules, currencies, and even physical laws that vary from island to island. As he digs past the surface of the islands’ culture, Priest forces his hero to actually experience a way of life he’s romanticized for so long, and forced, painfully, to adjust to things as they are rather than how he dreams them to be.
In return for expanding his mind, Susskin receives a measure of peace—his artistic inspiration returns only when he fully embraces the islands and their subconscious effects on his mind, even gaining the ability to guide others through the confusing culture of the Gradual, a discipline centered around the bizarre relative time currents between islands. It’s difficult not to conclude that , like Susskin, we would all benefit immensely from discarding our preconceived notions of how the would around us should be and listening to the truth of what it is.
This is a brilliant, mediative fantasy, if sometimes deliberately opaque (due to the mind-altering nature of the Gradual), celebrating the artist from a unique perspective. Priest deepens the lore of his recurring setting while reminding us why he is among our most celebrated fantasists. His message is one we all could stand to hear.
The Gradual is available September 27.