Infinite Cage

by Keith Laumer

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0425025829
• ISBN13: 9780425025826
• Release Date: July 1974
• Publisher: Berkley Books
• Length: 191 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.

Customer Reviews

one of my favorite books

i first read this book about 15 years ago when i was 16 years old. i had found it at a kiwanis thrift store back in lehigh acres florida along with the book "venus on the half-shell" by "kilgore trout". i could tell these books were going to be something special. they are both pretty short but really great books. these books have nothing to do with eachother besides that fact that i found them at the same time but i feel like they pair together so perfectly. hope you enjoy the book as much as i do !

Laumer's profound expression of alienation.

You could forgive someone whose first impression of Laumer was that of a macho meathead on par, as a writer, with Mickey Spiilane. But beneath his aggressively masculine posturing lies a mind as deep, open, and teaming with diverse creations as the ocean. Though I've always believed excessive identification with one's gender role to be intellectually limiting, Laumer, more than any other writer, has proven to me that masculine does not mean stupid. In "A Plague of Demons" he actually made me (a lifelong pacifist) teary-eyed in his portrayal of the fellowship and sacrifice of all the soldiers who have taken up arms down the long corridor of human history. But that's another book. "The Infinite Cage" is his treatise on alienation in a cruel venal world and a testament to the rebellious, iconoclastic, and even subversive lines of thought his fearless mind has followed. It is the story of a naked intelligence, awakening without memories and trying to learn how to survive in our cesspool of a social order. Though possessed of an intellect beyond mere genius, the nameless protagonist of "The Infinite Cage" has no conception of the spite, perversity, duplicity, and corruption that dominate human intercourse. He approaches problems with straightforward intelligence, only to be thwarted again and again by the crookedness of a world twisted beyond all reason. In a way, this is the story of every thinking being that has ever emerged into our world: Born idealistic by nature (idealistic by the nature of thought itself) they're repeatedly confronted by the--seemingly almost institutionalized--senseless evil (or evil senselessness) that governs the human condition, until they're left with no choice but despair or an empty, mechanical cynicism. For me, this ranks with "Notes from the Underground" as an indictment of civilization--as an anguished crying out of the fact that something is simply not right with the world.