The Moment Of Avoidance

Faber and Faber, 1970. Click for a better jpeg.

"Beautiful women with corrupt natures -- they have always been my life's target. There must be bleakness as well as loveliness in their gaze: only then can I expect the mingled moment."

-- Brian W. Aldiss, "The Moment of Eclipse." (1969)

Aldiss: the frustrator of expectation. Some of his work I respect, but some of it makes me want to bash my head against the kitchen sink. This mingled moment comes through most clearly in the story at hand.

Here we have a marvelous control of tone, melody and rhythm, imagery and symbol, but a narrative that collapses with a ffffffffffwuffffffff like a neglected balloon.

Any story makes a promise, and a good one keeps it. Aldiss implies a tale of perversion and danger, but as the story goes on, he avoids both. The narrator's "corrupt woman" is neither especially corrupt nor threatening, and he somehow manages to veer away from her at every possible encounter:

"It may appear as anti-climax if I admit that I now forgot about Christiania, the whole reason for my being in that place and on that continent. Nevertheless, I did forget her; our de­sires, particularly the desires of creative artists, are peripatetic: they submerge themselves sometimes unexpectedly and we never know where they may appear again. My imp of the perverse descended. For me the demolished bridge was never rebuilt."

Okay. Sure.

Instead of the story promised, Aldiss has another tale in mind. He supports it with recurring symbols (eyes and eclipses), then brings it to a crisis well-described and eerie. But once that mood has been established, the ending goes fffffffwuffffffff.

In effect, he does this:

"I'm crushed by a terrible spiritual burden!"

"Here, let me solve it for you."

"Okay. Sure."

The End.

What we have, then, is "The Moment of Avoidance," and this refusal to confront its own initial set-up is the most perverse thing about it. None of its fine prose, none of its otherwise firm technique, can salvage the story that Aldiss failed to write.