334/Everyday Life in the Later Roman Empire

"Everyday Life in the Later Roman Empire" is the third section of 334. It first appeared separately in Bad Moon Rising, 1973.

Summary

Alexa Miller, a welfare caseworker employed by MODICUM, is facing an upper-middle-class dilemma: whether to place her son in an artsy private school, or a high-end public school where he'll learn more marketable technical skills. Her sister tells her that the latter option would not be "a human life"; Alexa feels similarly, but she's come to believe that 21st-century America is so irredeemably decadent that maybe children shouldn't aspire to anything. This belief is tied to Alexa's participation in a drug-assisted mind-game where her alter ego is a Roman matron born in the year 334.

Alexa's correspondence with her sister places this chapter in the spring of 2025.

Related characters

Alexa is the caseworker for Lottie Hanson, a major character in the 334 novella. She also meets several of the children from "Angouleme".

Notes

the Military Fair at Highland Falls

Highland Falls is a small town about 60 miles from New York City. The West Point military academy is nearby.

Stuyvesant

Stuyvesant High School is a NYC public school known for its high academic standards, extremely competitive admission process, and focus on math and science. It is now in Battery Park City, but at the time of Disch's writing it was at 345 E. 15th St., a short distance from the main setting of the novel.

thermal salvage

There's no description of this process; the term is sometimes used in the real world to mean simply burning waste, but from context it seems to mean a future technology for reusing excess heat energy. Later in the chapter, G. says of his job: "I fight entropy for a living." The dissipation of heat is one example of entropy, but metaphorically another example is the increasing disorder of life in a declining city.

you just wanted me out of the bathtub so you could do the dishes

Although Alexa seems to be in a higher social class than most other characters in 334, and behaves much like an upper-middle-class resident of modern Manhattan, her living conditions aren't particularly comfortable: she really does have to wash the dishes in the bathtub, and other background details throughout this chapter make it clear that the apartment is very small and the building is in disrepair.

the god-bearer and the cista-bearer

A cista was a casket containing sacred objects.

the Met

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, on Central Park East.

the Lowen School

Alexander Lowen was the founder of "bioenergetic analysis", a psychotherapeutic practice influenced by Wilhelm Reich. Disch once described his own experience with a Lowen-inspired therapist who "had me doing isometric exercises to channel my cosmic energies from my overenergized head to the southern, underdeveloped regions of my body. At the same time I was encouraged to go out and fuck more."

The Lowen School is fictional, but seems reminiscent of Waldorf schools.

a frantic Mickey Mouse

In earlier editions, this was spelled "mickeymouse", as if Mickey had become a generic term.

the best-selling book of 1919

The quote is from Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West. Spengler's fatalistic view of Europe's future mirrors the attitude of Alexa and her privileged friends toward 21st century America.

Could it be Don Hershey?

Hershey is later described as a popular movie actor, currently playing Walt Whitman.

the last astronaut

This suggests that space exploration has been totally abandoned by the time of 334, although there is an earlier reference to a moon base.

Morbehanine

One of the few examples of a traditional science-fictional "infodump" in 334, this passage describes the origin of the fictional drug Morbehanine and its various uses. Appropriately given the themes of the novel, Morbehanine is the by-product of a living creature (oysters) responding to an intolerable environment. Unlike other famous fictional drugs such as "soma" in Brave New World, Morbehanine in its various consumer guises (Oraline, Koffiest) seems to be only mildly pleasant and mildly habit-forming, without any dramatic effects, while the pure form produces an effect that only a few people are interested in.

Historical Analysis

A second infodump passage describes the nature of the history-based psychological game Alexa takes part in. Apart from the use of a hallucinogen, it somewhat resembles modern live-action roleplaying.

her mother's place at the corner with the broom and the can

Mrs. Levin's job is to sweep the street on this particular block. These sweepers are licensed but not paid by the city; instead they work for tips, and expect to receive presents from local residents on holidays. Lottie Hanson at one point hoped to get this job, but the license went to Mrs. Levin instead (334 Part III (19)).

either waiting or walking up to the seventeenth floor

The elevators at 334 E. 11th are consistently broken. Shrimp Hanson will start a campaign to fix them in 2026 (334 Part II (13)).

Mrs. Levin might lose her apartment (Blake had been known to do worse)

Blake is the malicious bureaucrat that Shrimp encounters in her elevator campaign (334 Part II (13)).

Although Alexa resolves to walk up to the Levins' apartment and fill out the necessary paperwork to protect them from Blake, it isn't clear from the rest of this chapter whether she actually does so, since she is almost immediately distracted by Lottie's news about the bombing and runs up to the roof to look.

stopped in at Mr. Anderson's

This "poor tedious old man" may be the "Anderson" who is later mentioned as one of the welfare cases under Alexa's indirect supervision.

The radicals, I suppose

This fruitless attack on New York in a stolen historic airplane, by an unnamed young man, is the closest thing to a political act of any kind that takes place in 334. The only political group we see, January's circle of friends in the 334 novella, doesn't do anything.

No one was killed but a couple of electricians

Lottie's and Alexa's relief at this news makes sense given the higher death toll one might expect from a plane crash, but it may also reflect a dismissive attitude toward people with technical jobs. Alexa in this chapter, speaking about her fear of condemning her son to a technical education instead of an arts-oriented one, says she considers them equivalent to soldiers— people who do unpleasant, dangerous things to keep society intact— implying that the technology that sustains their world is really a form of violence. Lottie in 334 Part V (31) says she's never met any such people and doesn't understand them.