Barefoot in the Head by Brian W. Aldiss

First published: 1969

Type of work: Science fiction

Time of work: A few years after World War III

Locale: Europe

Principal Characters:

• Colin Charteris, a Serbian messiah fascinated by England
• Phil Brasher, Charteris’ precursor and rival
• Angeline Brasher, his wife, later Charteris mistress
• Nicholas Boreas, a Belgian filmmaker

The Novel

When one first opens Brian W. Aldiss’ Barefoot in the Head, it is not hard to see why the work has always been more popular with critics than with audiences and more popular in Great Britain than in the United States. It is a dense, many-layered work, relying heavily on the punning, condensed, multilingual, and allusive style introduced to the twentieth century by James Joyce. Although many things happen, or appear to be happening, much of the “action” takes place within the disordered minds of the characters.

A few years before the beginning of the story, a third world war has occurred, but one unlike any that was imagined: It was begun not by Russians or Americans but by the Kuwaitis, and its weapons were not nuclear but chemical. Europe and America were drenched in hallucinatory sprays, leaving a residue of persistent chemicals, stronger in some areas, weaker in others, but a poison nevertheless, that throughout the story gradually brings Western civilization (Aldiss’ “wesciv”) to a halt.

The central character, Colin Charteris, is a young man, nineteen years old, who at first is working to repair the damage of the “Acid-Head War”; he has grown dissatisfied with his duties for the New United Nations Strategic Air Command, however, and a longtime fascination with England overcomes him. Born in Serbia, Charteris has assumed his present name in honor of the English mystery writer Leslie Charteris. With his new name and driving his new car, a blood-red Banshee, Charteris heads toward England. At first, his path lies through France, neutral in the war and therefore relatively free from psychedelic fogs. No part of Europe, however, has been completely unaffected: Automobile drivers are frequently seized with visions when behind the wheel, and, to lessen the possibility of accidents, highways have been widened and lanes multiplied. Still, the road builders are not entirely in control themselves. While parliaments pass measures requiring dogs to sing at night, the highway construction crews feverishly build, burying neighborhoods beneath concrete. As life loses its rationality for many, a speeding death appears attractive, and Charteris counts himself lucky to get to Metz alive. Even before he can reach an England heavily saturated with chemicals, however, Charteris almost immediately begins to lose control, hallucinating on the ferry crossing the English Channel.

Once in England, he meets Phil Brasher, one of a number of spaced-out victims who see themselves as the bringers of a new social order. Brasher’s quasi-religious message is preached by his rock group, the Escalation band. Brasher accepts Charteris as a disciple, but their positions are soon reversed, and antagonism develops between the two as Charteris proves to be the more popular with the Midland masses. In a scuffle, Charteris pushes Brasher to his death in traffic and almost immediately thereafter begins an affair with Brasher’s widow, Angeline. As he falls further and further into religious and chemical mania, Charteris conceives a vision of “Man the Driver” and leads his growing band of followers on a crusade to the Continent to a destination seen in visions.

The first movement of their autocade takes them to Belgium, where the bulk of the story takes place. As his concern for others slips away, Charteris watches indifferently as one of his early followers drowns himself, mistakenly thinking that Charteris will use divine powers to save him. Charteris acquires a second mistress in Marta Koninkrijk and thereby complicates Angeline’s life but not his own. A ferocious traffic accident in Belgium convinces even more people of Charteris’ messianic nature: The first car to crash was his Banshee, but still another follower—this time a member of the band—had begged Charteris to let him drive the car that day, sparing Charteris.

The accident brings another character into the story: Nicholas Boreas, a motion-picture producer of sorts, whose most acclaimed film depicts an actual murder. Boreas arranges to re-create and film the accident, and again real death occurs when one of his employees, in a hallucinogenic haze, volunteers to die in the crash. Boreas, however, never sees the finished film, which is at first lost and then presumably destroyed: Charteris’ followers, never much in control, head on, leaving Brussels in flames behind them.

His visions lead Charteris toward Frankfurt, a place of real danger, since it has been so heavily bombed in the war that its society is in a shambles. The rubble of civil control is demonstrated by a police raid on the autocade that accomplishes little but the further swelling of the number of Charteris’ disciples. He reaches Germany by walking across the waters of the Rhine, and Angeline fears that he will proceed to the next step in establishing his godhead—crucifixion. Charteris rejects all old forms, however, and chooses instead to “have it both ways,” to live to the age of ninety. His group breaks up, although his followers ask him only to lead them, because Charteris at this final stage seems to care only for himself. He abandons the notion of “Man the Driver” and, becoming man the pedestrian, drops out of human companionship, content with his own company.

The Characters

The years since its publication have dated the characters of Barefoot in the Head badly. Charteris himself is a curious blend of old philosophies: At one time, threads of the thought of the Russian mystic G. I. Gurdyieff and his popularizer P. D. Ouspensky run through his speech, and at another, he sounds more like the stereotypical flower child of the 1960’s. Another variety of unconventional behavior is suggested by Charteris’ fascination with the automobile and its motion as a means of liberation. The Beat Generation of the 1950’s and its leader Jack Kerouac are saluted in Aldiss’ wordplay: At one point during their journey through Belgium, Charteris’ crusaders are “kerouacking” rather than bivouacking. The hippies, the next decade’s successors to the beats, are a part of Charteris, too. From them comes the notion of the possibility of preaching a new gospel through rock music, an idea which, although taken seriously at the time, will strike many post-1960’s readers as an aberration. Charteris’ casual sex and constant consumption of drugs, his “tuning out” and “dropping out,” stand almost as an epitome of that strange time.

In the story, Angeline remains the reader’s very tenuous link to external reality and is, indeed, the one whom life’s realities keep disturbing. It is her husband who is killed by Charteris; it is her genuine love which Charteris rejects as part of a creed outworn; it is she who bears his child. Her motivations are clear and understandable, while those of Charteris remain mysterious as his desires are sloughed off like shed skins.

Minor characters often stand out in high relief simply because the reader can understand their needs and desires: Marta Koninkrijk, her mind crumbling before the drug fog while her house crumbles before the road-crews, is briefly rescued from a creeping catatonia by the appearance of Charteris. When she becomes one of his most fanatical followers, however, she appears no better off than she was before, and her death is soon forgotten.

Critical Context

Some of the experimentation in the science fiction of the 1960’s came not in its handling of theme but in its use of language. Aldiss’ puns and allusions demand of the reader both concentration and learning (often in very obscure corners). To the world of science fiction itself belong many references: the description of one of Angeline’s requests as “vonnegutsy,” for example (a clear reference to the American science-fiction writer Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and a clever suggestion of the courage she has to ask the question in an awkward situation) or the description of Charteris’ car, which at one point is called a “heinleiner,” alluding to the writer Robert A. Heinlein, though the significance of the term is not as immediately apparent.

Sometimes the multiplicity of references invites the reader to participate actively in the story, since one person’s understanding of the references will surely differ from that of another. Charteris finds Marta in the town of Aalter; the very name of the place reminds the reader that throughout the story Charteris preaches against a logic that divides reality into mutually exclusive alternatives; the nearness of the town to the German border suggests the German word alter, one of the forms of the adjective meaning “old,” and, as an island of relative sanity, the town in a way represents the old order. Marta, whom he finds there, is indeed a sexual alternative to Angeline for Charteris, and he is angry when Angeline demands an old kind of relationship and insists on a choice of alternatives from him: that he choose either Marta or her. This sort of chaining of meaning could be extended, but the example illustrates both the richness of the verbal soil and the variety of interpretations that may grow from it.

Barefoot in the Head marked the zenith of Aldiss’ use of wordplay in the novel. It followed and surpassed in complexity his Report on Probability A (1968), a much better known work. Although his later stories would continue to mark him as a writer of unconventional fiction, none demonstrates it to greater degree than Barefoot in the Head, which in years to come may seem to represent the essence of its time.

Bibliography

Greenland, Colin. “The Times Themselves Talk Nonsense: Language in Barefoot in the Head,” in Foundation, No. 17 (1979), pp. 32-41.

Griffin, Brian, and David Wingrove. Apertures: A Study of the Writings of Brian W. Aldiss, 1984.

Library Journal. Review. XCV (June 1, 1970), p. 2177.

Matthews, Richard. Aldiss Unbound: The Science Fiction of Brian W. Aldiss, 1977.

The Times Literary Supplement. Review. January 22, 1973, p. 73.

Wingrove, David. “Thinking in Fuzzy Sets: The Recent SF of Brian W. Aldiss,” in Pacific Quarterly Moana. IV (1979), pp. 288-294.