ABSTRACT
Iain Pears's extraordinary novel The Dream of Scipio begins with an appropriately extraordinary risk: it describes in meticulous scientific detail the sequence of events by which a man dies in a burning building. After eight minutes he is unconscious from the smoke; three minutes later his clothes start to smoke and his skin begins to “bubble.” But it takes twenty-three minutes in all before “his heart gave out, his breath stopped” (3). Assuming Pears has done his research, that makes fifteen minutes of life beyond the end of consciousness, fifteen minutes in which we, who are conscious while reading, imagine sensations that the dying man is, we hope, not having. Or we may find ourselves wondering whether the end of consciousness really means the end of pain: a medical question whose answer seems self-evident but—since we are still conscious—creates an uncomfortable uncertainty, at least it does for me. I imagine the pain that I hope Julien Barneuve is not experiencing; I hope that if I were him I would not be feeling it.
