This Perfect Day

Published in 1970, Ira Levin's This Perfect Day reads like a good pulp serial from an earlier era, a departure from the two lightly postmodern, almost-tongue-in-cheek works that bookended it. Written just after Rosemary's Baby which was turned into a very successful cult film by erratic genius Roman Polanski, and just before The Stepford Wives, which also went on to cult cinematic triumph, This Perfect Day was never filmed. 

With obvious inspiration from Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World, Levin spins for us a vision of a dystopian, technocratic, socialist society in which everyone is, according to official dogma, perfectly equal. This equality extends to all aspects of the population, physical characteristics have been "normalized" through genetic manipulation and behavior is controlled through chemotherapy. All of this is governed and run by UniComp, a supercomputer buried deep inside a mountain in what was once Switzerland but is now known as EUR00001. 

The four founding fathers of this society are Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei, the last two being fictional characters. The society has fully embraced the economic teachings of Marx and the pacifist teachings of early Christianity to the extent that words like "fight" are used as expletives. Violence and aggression are practically unheard of (thanks not only to policy but to large doses of behavior controlling drugs.) This quartet of heroes is given the same sort of status as a Lenin or Mao, it is very common to see framed prints such as Marx Writing or Wei Addressing the Chemotherapists on apartment walls. Levin seems to have drawn heavily from Maoist China for his model of a socialist society. There is a sense of Cultural Revolution style conformity, albeit more subtle: dissidents aren't punished but are "helped" through chemotherapy. There is no room for individuality, even down to the tiniest details. All of this is monitored and controlled by UniComp. But if rumors are true, somewhere out in the world there are areas which are not controlled by UniComp, these are the homes of The Incurables.

Despite the totalitarian cookie cutter aspect of this society there are many benefits. There is no crime, no murder, no racism or classism, no alcoholism or drug addiction (notwithstanding the monthly "treatments" all citizens receive), and no violence of any sort. Everyone is housed, clothed, and fed. Disease has for the most part been conquered. There are no haves and have nots. Overpopulation is controlled. Everyone is assigned a career suitable to their talents and skills as decided by UniComp, education is of course free. Sex is considered normal and healthy and not at all taboo or dirty, as is nudity. In short, most all the ills of society have been "solved". The only Horseman of the Apocalypse the society still has to contend with is Death, which happens predictably around age 62. The trade offs to these leaps in progress are a loss of most personal freedom and of the glorious emotional highs (and, yes, sometimes devastating lows) that normal unmedicated living can offer.

SPOILER ALERT: Though I'll not give away the whole plot if you read from here down there is a chance of spoilers if you plan to read the book.

Enter our hero, Li RM, also known as Chip. Chip is a free thinker. We watch his development from a child who simply questions some of the more basic ideas of the society he lives in ("Why can't I choose my own career?") into a full blown revolutionary as an adult. After meeting a group of like-minded individuals he and his girlfriend finally make it to an island which is not controlled by UniComp but by humans, The Incurables.

This is where the novel falls apart for me and is possibly why it was never filmed. Levin is thought to have been influenced by Ayn Rand's brand of libertartianism and is thought to have met her, at least briefly, on more than one occasion. It also seems that in recent years this novel has been championed by radical Libertarians as a "great work of Libertarian thought".

The new society in which Chip finds himself is one that would be very familiar to any citizen of the late 20th or early 21st cenury. The island of Majorca, now called Liberty, is run by the natives (also known as "lunkies"), a population which were never conquered or controlled by UniComp. There is also a population of refugees from the UniComp controlled areas, known as "steelies". The steelies are decidedly an underclass, akin to the Irish in mid-19th century America. Chip finds lodging in a shared tenement filled with shrieking alcoholics and screaming children. He finds work as a laborer in an iron mine and his girlfriend in a factory, both incomes are needed to make ends meet. He hears stories that some steelies have actually become successful and escaped the cycle of soul-crushing work for litte return. He later runs across a friend from his early days who has also escaped and subsequently became successful as an artist.

Overall this newly discovered society is one of squalor, poverty, misery, and backbreaking toil. Even the successful artist friend from Chip's past only maintains his position by kow-towing to the natives and doing commercial work that caters to their tastes instead of his own. But the society does offer freedom in the sense that one's choices are not controlled by a government or a computer, but by economic reality. Despite all the horror and misery of this society Chip prefers it to his past life. The failure here from a narrative point of view is that this is presented as common sense, as if 100% of the reading audience would consider this far superior to life controlled by UniComp. There is a sense of trade off here but it's not a no-brainer choice, if anything it's a dilemma: "Do I simply give in and take the easy route (the old life) with its perfectly functioning peaceful society, at the expense of personal liberty? Or do I suffer hostility, hard labor, and poverty, with only a slight chance of escape in exchange for what may very well end up being only an illusion of personal freedom?" A successful novel would've played on this dilemma, perhaps pointing out that there were no easy answers. By not doing so the novel becomes almost dogmatic.

This apparent dogmatism becomes all too apparent when compared with Levin's other works from the same era mentioned earlier: Rosemary's Baby and The Stepford Wives. In the original novel versions of these stories there's a sense that you're pretty sure of what seems to be happening but you're never certain. There's enough mystery left over to give the stories some universality and even depth. Still, This Perfect Day is a worthwhile entertaining read if you're a fan of dystopian fiction. It's not terribly original but does have some interesting approaches that don't appear in other works of the subgenre, particularly the use of chemotherapy as a societal panacaea. 

Given Ira Levin's track record of success when his novels are turned into movies (The Boys from Brazil was another of his novels) it's a bit of a surprise that this one has not made it to the big screen. Hollywood is very good at editing out unwanted political messages so the Libertarian angle shouldn't be much of a hinderance. It would be a brilliant opportunity for a composer to create a score that musically opposed the two societies (a la The Residents' The Tunes of Two Cities), the sounds of a sterile technophilic society colliding jarringly with those of a more earthy one that smells of whiskey and fish.