Limitless

Alan Glynn’s Limitless, originally published in 2001 as The Dark Fields, is probably best known in the 2011 film version starring Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro. The book has substantial differences from the film but both present the same fantasy of the self as potentially without limits.By chance the main character, Eddie Spinola, a dope-smoking, divorced slacker with a dull job in publishing, comes across a designer drug, MDT-48, “a kind of steroid for the intellect” (278), that transforms him into a dynamo of energy and intelligence, a man who can write and talk well and effortlessly, can make money on the stock market and become the linchpin of a multi-billion-dollar merger deal. But the drug also has side effects and “is really, really dangerous” (166), as Eddie discovers. The story, then, is one of transformation and the difficulties and perils of that.Such stories have a long history and comprise a wide range. Folklore offers many myths about magical changes in a person, such as vampires and werewolves. Gothic literature develops these stories, with Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde (1886) an obvious parallel and precursor to Limitless, both fictions of a man transformed by a drug. Yet the fiction that is probably closest to Glynn’s is Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925), another story of transformation of the self, mostly by wealth and the potential for consumption that brings, all in pursuit of a lost love. It is also a story that, like Glynn’s version of Limitless, ends in the failure of the dream. It is no coincidence that the epigraph and original title of Glynn’s book are from Gatsby. As Eddie asks, proposing the quintessence of the American Dream, “If you don’t choose your future, who the hell’s going to do it for you?” (154).Obviously, Limitless has elements of the fantastic, both in the drug itself, the text’s object of desire or “MacGuffin,” to use Hitchcock’s term, and in the extremity of Eddie’s achievements on the drug. Glynn makes the fantasy credible by anchoring it in a detailed reality that we know, if only at second-hand. There are multiple specific references to the geography of New York City, where most of the action takes place, lots of detailed information about Eddie’s day-trading on the stock market and lengthy descriptions of the merger in which he is involved, with references to real-world, contemporary events and people. Glynn worked in publishing in New York and the detail carries the conviction of experience.The language in which he tells the story is full of vivid descriptions which often convey the novel’s world and themes. Eddie describes “the shopping-mall artwork” (3) of the motel room in which he keys in on a computer the story of his misadventures. The oxymoronic phrase, “shopping-mall artwork” concisely evokes the ghastly, commodity décor repeated like some giant Andy-Warhol print across the whole country. When he meets his former brother-in-law, Vernon Gant, Eddie describes them as “two molecules—on a direct collision course” (7), a metaphor that foreshadows drugs, chemistry and an inescapably connected world with its consequent paranoia as key thematic elements. A realtor’s spiel is described in a striking phrase (pun intended) as “urgent lexical hammer blows—high-end, liquid, snapped-up, close, close, close” (177), an example of the list structure common throughout the text and carrying the theme of events rushing out of control in an environment dense with people and commodities, where “the controlling dynamic” in Eddie’s life is “immediacy, acceleration, speed” (262). At one point, Eddie has a vision from high “above the vast microchip of the city” (186), a brilliant metaphor not only visually accurate but one that equates the city with the overarching theme of connectedness, from the synapses of the human brain to global networks of computers and commerce. Limitless is very much a text of the late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, of the technological society and the wired brain. Some popular fictions develop creeping gangrene in their prose and themes, even in just a couple of decades, and become unreadable. But, after twenty years already, Limitless feels contemporary, its language vivid, its themes relevant, its culture shared more than ever.In its written version, Limitless does have some differences from the film adaptation. In the novel, Eddie falls in love with Ginny Van Loon, daughter of the billionaire financier for whom he consults, because she reminds him of his ex-wife and lost love, Melissa. In the film, Ginny is replaced with a girlfriend with whom he is actually involved, which works better. In the novel, the victim of Eddie’s murderous attack while out of his skull on MDT is different. The incident is referred to several times throughout the text but is never really developed, unlike the film version where Eddie is identified as a suspect and brought in for an ID parade, so that there is more tension, with new events and a resolution. Also, the American-Mexican political background seems extraneous to the plot and, understandably, is cut in the film.The major difference is that the film adaptation revises the story to a happy ending calculated to sell to the American movie-going public. Even to this non-American reader, the partially open ending of the written text is less satisfying, perhaps because it’s more believable. Limitless is a clever popular fiction that uses a clutch of contemporary themes to produce a compelling narrative that is a version of the American Dream gone wrong. The film’s revision of the story reasserts the possibility of that dream, which seems necessary to the human imagination.

I bought this after I saw it in the bargain books section, and thought it looked interesting. I haven't seen the film so had no preconceptions.Initial impressions were good: the prose is well written and pacy; the dialogue is believable; the characters are interesting; the story is compelling; the scenery is well drawn and vivid, and from the start I couldn't put it down. There's no doubt that, in many ways, this is a fantastic book.However, this is a 3 star review so there are clearly some failings, too. Chief among these, for me, is the ending: without wishing to give anything away the deus ex machina unraveling of the hero's story left a sour taste in my mouth. Eddie, the narrator and protagonist of the tale, is at the mercy of his circumstances throughout the story, yet he constantly struggles and fights to find a way through everything. He is a driven man, and there are plenty of little hints throughout the telling which point to the way in which the story should have ended. He makes various enemies throughout the story, and one in particular (a Russian - still trying not to give much away!) could easily have become the key character in the story's ending. However, the ending is actually driven by a faceless character who we haven't met before, and is thoroughly disappointing given the driven nature of the story until that point. It reads as though Alan Glynn reached the point where he thought "I've got to finish this now" and he does so rapidly and without buildup. As I've pointed out, there is plenty of drama and buildup in the tale, but the ending doesn't really fit and leaves the hero without option or ability to act.There are some other issues, too, notably with threads that are left open - did Eddie really commit the crime in the hotel room? - but these are forgivable because of the first-person perspective (if the narrator doesn't know, how can he tell the reader?) and the semi-hallucinatory nature of much of the story. There's also the fact that the story is heavily influenced by Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hyde, and if you know that tale you'll recognise much of this one despite the thoroughly modern fixtures and fittings.Having said all that, the story is certainly well written and kept me reading happily right up until the denouement. If it weren't for the ending this would easily have merited four stars: as it is, it's a flawed gem of a story.

I have to go along with the majority of other reviewers and heap praise on Alan Glynn's excellent book. The concept of the story, an illicit drug which enhances the mental capacity of the person who takes it is intriguing. That Eddie Spinola a guy who is sadly underperforming in his job and his life comes across the opportunity to get hold of a substantial quantity of this drug and how he handles this situation make for an excellent read.The first half of the book deserves six or more stars, the pace of the story and the description of how Eddie felt as he took the drug was excellent and had me reading long past my bedtime. The story then enters a phase which I can only describe as flat lining as Eddie explains how he obtained money from "Working the Stock Market". Having got past that part of the book the story picked up once more as it headed to its inevitable end.All in all a good four star story which despite seeing the movie beforehand I still enjoyed and on balance I would say that the book is better than the film.