Edward St. Aubyn: 'Double Blind'

Edward St. Aubyn says that his new novel, “Double Blind,” questions various kinds of scientific methodologies, and various kinds of materialistic assertions, and other philosophical assertions, and he wanted them all to be left in doubt, but in a kind of informed doubt. This book is a vast comedy, with everyone in a schizoid state, and in a schizoid culture. With a large cast of characters and a troubled/truest main character, this book suspends knowledge about the right direction. St. Aubyn discusses writing about the problems with consciousness that have long fascinated his consciousness.

Excerpt from “Double BLind” by Edward St. Aubyn

Francis ducked into the sallow copse that had sprung up on the land next to his cottage, pushing aside the pliant branches when he needed to and weaving through them when he could. As the slippery mud of the lane gave way to firmer ground among the trees, his tread relaxed and his attention expanded to take in the October air, already cool but still soft; the scent of growing fungus and sodden moss; the red defiance and yellow lethargy of decaying leaves, and the crows rasping in a nearby field. He felt the life around him and the life inside him flowing into each other, some of it in a tangle of sensation – when he touched the branch it also touched him – some of it in similes and resemblances and some, on the outer edge of his awareness, like a network of underground streams, or the pale mesh of roots under his feet, known without being seen. He felt this confluence of mutual life, although it was hard to hold in mind, was the fundamental background to all the sharp particularities that tried to monopolise his attention, like the robin that had just landed briefly in front of him, making him mirror the tiny, abrupt movements of its neck and then inviting him to follow the loops of its descending flight through the trees, to the rustle of its arrival among the leaves. Each form of life was bringing its own experience into the world; sometimes tightly overlapping with others, like the Purple Emperor cocoon he had seen stitched to one of these sallow branches last May; sometimes briefly interpenetrating, like the robin that had paused on a similar branch only a moment ago, and at other times radically isolated, like a streak of bacteria hidden in an Antarctic rock, but still embedded in its niche of whistling wind and perpetual frost.