On Harvey Randall, Narrative and Letting Go

Placing the production of a documentary – run by a well-connected news director and observant filmmaker, no less – at the center of an end-of-the-world novel is a smart move. The plotlines surrounding Harvey Randall’s documentary are intimately connected with the approach of the comet (I know, no kidding! Bear with me!). Follow Harvey, follow the comet. Momentum builds around the spectacle of production (the “myriad [TV] paraphernalia” and Randall’s relentless gathering of interviews and comet status reports), not unlike the mass clamor for shovels and freeze-dried food. Because of Randall’s profession, I am effortlessly connected to the lives of political powerhouses (Jellison and friends) and given an ear to sources of scientific knowledge (Sharps and friends). And if you’re Eileen, Fred or another out of a handful of people outside Randall’s immediate network, Lucifer’s Hammer folds you into the story through the consumption of media. OK, so we don’t see you screening Randall’s documentary with your family like Hamner? We presume you’re listening to the radio or the nightly news above the barkeep. Sometimes this information is given to us directly; we see Fred pick up a copy of Astronomy in addition to the chance street interview between him and Randall. Decidedly diverse lives (compare Alim Nassor to Senator Jellison or Fred Lauren to everyone else) are bound together in Lucifer’s Hammer. News of the comet is the connective narrative tissue between them.

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As we work our way through the Disaster syllabus, how do the authors’ choices of protagonist effect the story? How expansive can their projects be if their character is less empowered, less visible than, say, Harvey Randall?  In Lucifer’s Hammer, there is an attempt to encapsulate all of American society and to observe how every cross-section goes down (or not) with the comet. I’d argue that Randall’s connection to media has a lot to do with how successful the novel’s transitions between characters has been so far. The simple idea of Randall watching the world and the world watching his documentary is enough to convince me that a narrative jump from Fred to Gordie to Maureen to John to Barry to Henry isn’t completely off the wall. Is there a subconscious “media knows all” idea at work here? If Niven and Pournelle placed the spotlight on Eileen, what would result? I imagine less of an opportunity to build the same, believable bridges.

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According to bitter researcher Sharps, in pre-Hammer time (P.H.) the influence of a mass media man like Randall is significant. “Your network tells NASA you want to do a documentary on space, and NASA sends up red rockets,” he says. Early in the novel, an epigraph credited to an alternative newsmagazine reads “Be the First in Your Block to Help Blow Out the Electric Power Network of the Northeast.” I viewed this grassroots call for action laughable when compared with the power and influence of a major broadcast network or newspaper. In no way is it capable of causing chaos. Randall’s documentary, on the other hand? High stakes. Objectivity is Randall’s job. It’s a big deal and he finds the work meaningful. We get the impression that he’d much rather die chasing after the comet than squatting with Loretta in his basement.

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But when the Hammer hits, the media will black out (I don’t know the ins-and-outs … electricity will fail? broadcast stations will be abandoned?). What does this mean for Randall? When media is obsolete, are there other ways for Randall to bear witness? Is his drive to observe and record history inescapable? An early description reads: “They stuck in his mind, these bits and pieces of story. For Harvey Randall it was an occupational hazard of the TV documentary business; he couldn’t help listening. He didn’t want to, really. People fascinated him. He would have liked to follow up some of these glimpses into other minds.” As Lucifer’s Hammer progresses, Randall seems to be shedding his learned behaviors for more natural, primitive (or “savage” as we’ve said in class) impulses. The most climactic evidence of this is his tryst with Maureen. Can we say that the pastoral landscape got under his skin? Randall’s (or the narrator’s) set-off statement, “There is no harmless subject” is public, interview rhetoric reworked for a highly private moment. In addition to his sudden membership to Hammer Fever, this evening, however reckless, is an instance of Randall as participant rather than observer. Afterwards during street interviews Randall thinks, “There were times when he wanted to take his reportorial objectivity, roll it tightly and stuff it in an anatomically uncomfortable place about the person of a pompous professor of journalism.” He lets her have it and “behind him [he] could hear Mabe Bishop spluttering. It gave [him] great satisfaction.”