Space Part Ten

John Hersey is probably best remembered for Hiroshima, a harrowing oral retelling of that city's atomic bombing, which famously took up an entire issue of the New Yorker in 1945. Ever the consumate craftsman, Hersey's sharp eye and razor-precise writing style won him a considerable amount of recognition over the course of his 50 year career. His brillance was not confined to one style or genre; not only did he reinvent journalism with Hiroshima, he also won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his World War II tale A Bell for Adano and helped introduce modern true-crime reporting with the Algiers Hotel Incident.

In 1974, Hersey tried his hand at speculative fiction, the results of which became My Petition for More Space. A taut distopian tale, the novel imagines a future world ground to a near standstill by the twin forces of overpopulation and beuracracy. Each citizen is alloted a mere 8X12 foot area of personal space, and the last remnant of open space can only be viewed through a window after hours in line. Although politically a true product of its time (why don't we pay attention to overpopulation anymore?) the novel's unconventional narrative (the entire book takes place while the main character waits in line) remains compelling.

My Petition for More Space

John Hersey