Ariel Dorfman. Blake's Therapy.

Hernandez, Ana Maria

New York. Seven Stories. 2002. 175 pages. $12.95. ISBN 1-58322-479-3

ARIEL DORFMAN is not only a master of fiction but a master of timing as well. Written in English and copyrighted in 200l, the completion of Blake's Therapy synchronistically paralleled--and anticipated--the Enron/Cisco/ Worldcom debacles and prefigures the ethical questions raised in their wake. Kafkaesque in tone, flawless in structure, seamless in narrative technique, the novel presents a nightmarish world where the virtual, the real, and the imaginary morph and blend into one another.

Plagued with insomnia, impotence, and a bad conscience after contemplating the closing of one of his Clean Earth products factories, Graham Blake checks into the Corporate Life Therapy Institute, apparently run by the suave and devious Dr. Carl Tolgate, who has prepared a most unusual form of therapy. Blake is given a family--the family of one of his employees, with whom he instantly falls in love--to control or destroy as he wishes. Spying on them twenty-four hours a day by means of video cameras and one-way mirrors, he makes decisions about their lives and futures through his peculiar "staff," placed at his service to execute his whims instantly. After a month, the $3 million-dollar therapy completed, Blake goes back to his former life, still obsessed with Roxanna, the actress hired by the Therapy Institute to play his employee and aid in his recovery. Gradually, he begins to realize that the fictional family, with whose destinies he allegedly played for a month, is based on the real family of a real employee named Rose, to whom he transfers his amatory obsession. Setting up cameras and one-way mirrors once again, this time on his own, he begins to doubt whether these might be actors as well, whether Tolgate is the real director of the institute or a screen for a more sinister character, and whether the purportedly palliative effect of the therapy might not have more sinister goals.

The novel is structured in three parts with three chapters each and an epilogue. The chapters In each section alternate points of view: Blake's, Tolgate's, direct dialogue with no narrative commentary, and the mysterious "sir," who appears to be the real boss behind the Corporate Life Therapy Institute. Blake believes that the boss is his rival, Hank, and that his real goal is to destroy his enemies so he can take over control of the corporate world. The entire nightmarish world so recently glimpsed in the media about the inner workings of corporate machinations and the omnipotence of big money is here portrayed with a vengeance with no need for suspension of disbelief--not after 2001. Who is real? Who is playing a part? What is the real agenda of a friend who apparently wants to help you? Who is acting on his own? Who has been paid to act in a certain way? Are we being monitored and taped? The novel gives no straight answer to these questions, since the reader gets the same multiplicity of viewpoints as Blake and is thus equally incapable of deciding on one version of events over another.

Dorman's best work--both fiction and essays--has always had political and social relevance. The novel's open ending leaves us with the image of Blake entering his corporate headquarters in Houston and defying the board in order to save the antiquated, deficit-producing factory he inherited from his father so he can preserve the jobs of Rose, her father, and other members of her immigrant community. By having Blake fight a battle he couldn't possibly win, Dorfman implies that even in the media- and technology-manipulated third millennium, there are still ethical choices to be made.

Ana Maria Hernandez

LaGuardia Community College, CUNY