Weak in Comparison to DreamsHardcover, 19 September 2023

James Elkins' superbly strange novel is one that challenges readers to wonder, through a collision of literature and design, science and art, and psychology and humor, what it means for something to be true; and what meaning, ultimately, lies in truth.

Samuel Emmer, who monitors bacteria levels in drinking water for the small city of Guelph, has just been appointed to the city's Zoo Feasibility Committee. His big assignment: travel to zoos around the world and gather information on "problematic" animals (the more disturbed the better), so the future zoo in Guelph can avoid them.

But Samuel--with an unraveling marriage and an adult daughter who seems to have receded into his past--prefers the company of amoeba to fuzzy animals. Needless to say, he isn't thrilled about his new job. "I like microscopic animals because no one else does. No one cares if some kind of amoeba goes extinct, or even if they all do. No one even knows if any amoebas have ever become extinct," he tells his supervisor Catherine. "A little like employees of Water Management," an unsympathetic Catherine replies.

At a zoo in Tallinn, Estonia, the dreams start for Samuel. He is in a vast wooded landscape; there is a fire burning in the distance; and it is coming his way. In waking life, Samuel is emersed in the patterns of the obsessive, stereotypical behaviors of the animals he is observing: the heartbreaking pacing and self-plucking, the stomping and teeth-gnashing.

Meanwhile, back in Guelph, competitive interns Vipesh and Viperine send Samuel research packets, filled with articles with titles like "Box Elder Tree (Acer negundo) Intoxication and Poisoning in Fallow Deer (Dama dama)." The packets come with personal notes. Their cheerful but increasingly concerned voices accompany Samuel on his travels. In some ways, they are his only friends as the charts, graphs and photographs of animal "habitats" appear suddenly in the narrative, as Samuel finds himself confronting the well-intentioned zoo keepers who are also his hosts.

To a person they love their animals, and are doing their best. But something is happening to Samuel. As his travels continue from Helsinki to Knoxville, Salt Lake City to Basel, his behavior becomes more and more erratic; he begins lying to and provoking the zoo administrators about why he is there. As his grasp on reality weakens, Samuel's dreams become more intense. "Each new zoo," he observes, "had been putting me deeper to sleep."

Vipesh and Viperine grow more concerned for their boss. They send him esoteric warnings and advice as they compete for his approval. When things come to a head in Basel, and word of Samuel's misbehavior reaches his supervisor, Samuel has to confront the truth of his own suffering.

A second part of the novel meets Samuel in old age. He has found the book--the one we're reading, which he'd written decades before--and hardly remembers anything of the year recounted in the book. Instead, the stories and characters come through to him as music, on the piano he plays alone. His own stories remind him of the composers he has become obsessed with, and sheet music intersperses with text, forming a parallel narrative to the first part of the book. Ultimately, Samuel arrives at peace through melodies.

In this exceptional novel, an unaccountable and nearly inconceivable distance has opened within a single lifetime. Weak in Comparison to Dreams shows a way of thinking differently about the coherence of a life. Are unremembered dreams part of our lives? What if a single life continues so long that it becomes separate lives which no longer know one another? And what are the habits that we rely on to survive the enclosures and entrapments of our own life.