Freud's Alphabet

Sigmund Freud never wanted to leave his homeland of Austria. Finally, surrounded by Nazis, he was left with no choice and allowed himself to taken to London to die. This book in a way chronicles his last days in a foreign land he couldn't stand (or understand), tormented by cancer and a painful prosthetic palate.But this isn't your Irving Stone historical fiction. The book is a collection of 26 short stories or episodes, each with an alphabetical Freud-appropriate theme per letter (Id for I, Sleep for S, etc.). The stories themselves are dreamlike; there is little dialogue or action, but hazy descriptions of Freud's internal and external environment. Moods and settings are painted well, but in short and choppy Celine-ish sentences, giving off a feeling of what must've been a zoned-out time for the heavily drugged and dying doctor, perceiving a bleak and unknown London days leading up to WWII. Freud's Alphabet doesn't offer too much historical insight into Freud's last days, but you do get a powerful sense of that disorienting stranger-in-a-strange-land feeling, compounded by his pain, a zombified morphine state, and the lurking shadows of war. If you were wondering about Freud's attitudes toward his work or place in history, you won't find it here. But then again, perhaps these stories do more accurately reflect what must've been a very dreamlike mind-state. It's a short book and not worth the hefty $24 cover price, but you may want to take out of the library or pick it up on sale. It may not be for Freud fanatics, as it is less of a book on Freud, than a refreshing look at pre-war London. But more than that, it's a lovely showcase of Jonathan Tel's imaginative style.

Be aware that this is not a novel in the strict sense. It is a series of short vignettes, not unlike Hemingway's story frgaments in "in our time". (This is not to compare Tel's & Hemingway's styles in any way.) Though "Freud's Alphabet" does chronicle Freud's last days in London somewhat, it is more a collection of meditations on life in England circa 1939 as seen through a very perceptive foreigner who is slowly dying, painfully, of cancer. Is "Freud's Alphabet" an homage? A pastiche? Is it meant ironically? Whatever the author's intentions, he succeeds wonderfully. He brilliantly evokes a man, a time, and a culture that is long gone. A well written work of short length (I read it in a quiet evening) but much depth.