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Contents

THE RULES OF CHAOS
  From London to Dover
  A Murder
  The Game of Detection

RULE NUMBER ONE: THE FUTURE IS A BLINDING MIRAGE

RULE NUMBER TWO: POWER WEAKENS AS IT GROWS
  If Throughout His Reign Napoleon...

RULE NUMBER THREE: IF NOTHING IS CERTAIN, NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE
  The Greatness of Eugene McCarthy

RULE NUMBER FOUR: DELUSIONS KILL
  LITERARY DETOUR
    Anatomy of Serious Rubbish or The Bay of Pigs of the American Literary Establishment
    One of the Very Few

RULE NUMBER FIVE: ONLY THE DEFEATED SURVIVE
  Death Is a Good Start

RULE NUMBER SIX: YOU'RE FREE AND NOBODY BELONGS TO YOU
  Postscript to an Erotic Novel
  A Place Where You Don't Feel Lonely (Excerpts From a Diary)

THANKS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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Blurb

"Nearly all our miseries in life come from our false notions of what is actually happening to us," wrote Stendhal, "thus to judge events sanely is a great step toward happiness." This observation is the key to Stephen Vizinczey's new book, which confronts disasters as diverse as sexual confusions, wars, and the destruction of our environment ("both private neurosis and public horror") and traces them to the dominant presumption that men can determine the results of their actions. From an incisive account of how chance works and why we fail to grant chance its due, the author is able to explain, among other things, how a big country can be defeated by a small country. His profound analysis of the myth and the real nature of power culminates in the discovery of its growth pattern: Power weakens as it grows.

The Rules of Chaos is the most significant recent contribution to an understanding of history and individual destiny, especially relevant for Americans today. It has been written by a brilliant novelist, whose style is characterized, as Northrop Frye said, by "great lucidity and charm" and "an astonishing number of overtones," and who manages to be irreverent and serious, penetrating and amusing at the same time. Originally published in England last year, The Rules of Chaos prompted The Guardian to describe Vizinczey as "a natural entertainer - a man who has the gift of holding his reader's deepest attention."

His premise that "the decisive cause of every event is pure chance" is the basis of a compelling new argument for individual morality and freedom. "This brilliant and challenging book," said The Times of London, "begins with the statement that what happens in the next moment is never as certain as it appears before or after - and the freedom which this realization brings is the glory celebrated so magnificently in the pages which follow. ... There are so many things that can go awry in any expected sequence, and the multiplicity of events or the bewildering promiscuity of chance elevates 'uncertainty' into a rather more certain status than most of the so-called certainties with which we imprison our beings or cripple our hopes."

As there is no way for a man to foresee or determine the results of his actions, he has no reason to deny his own being or commit vile acts for the sake of some future good which may or may not materialize. Vizinczey draws on the example of Eugene McCarthy's campaign to argue that while we cannot secure any victory, we are free to choose what meaning to give to our lives.

Vizinczey pursues his argument about chance, power, freedom, their realities and our rationalizations, through quickly changing scenes of everyday life, history, literature, sex, and politics (including a recent interview with Napoleon); and he maintains a pace and excitement that are more characteristic of novels than nonfiction works. The novelist's hand is most discernible in his ability to infuse ideas with emotion, with the tension between our desire to understand and our desire to be reassured. His remark about Stendhal can also be applied to Vizinczey himself: "Freeing life from its lies, he also communicates its force."

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