The hunt for immortality is the stuff of legend. Almost everything about Walt Disney-his creative genius, his struggle to put genius and art ahead of business concerns-is also mired in legend. Combining these two is not such a reach. When a man has spent his life successfully defeating what others consider insurmountable objects and objections, why should he view the supposed inevitability of his own death differently? In this imaginative story he doesn't. Walt Disney lived with emerging technologies, and Larry Pontius postulates that perhaps he might have turned to them to postpone death until medical technology could find a cure for his cancer.
Waking Walt pivots on an intriguing "what if" science fiction premise, but technology is not the issue here. Pontius wisely doesn't let the book limp along in an academic exploration of the problems and blessings that derive from medical advances. Instead, he skillfully constructs mystery thriller where those legal, medical, economic and ethical issues escalate into a suspenseful struggle for life and death.
Pontius,
who has worked for the Disney company, portrays a very vivid and human Walt Disney
who must grapple with today's quite different business world, the changes in American
life, and his own unfulfilled ambitions. That alone might make an interesting,
if somewhat pastoral, book. But Waking Walt doesn't settle for being a novel about
the possibilities of Walt Disney reanimated. Instead it takes a look at the darker
implications, for the re-emergence of a famous person affects the lives of others,
not least those who bring him back to consciousness. For those not involved in
bringing Walt back, his return represents more than an inconvenience. Pontius
introduces a diverse collection of characters who view Disney's return in very
personal
terms of profit or loss, and act accordingly. This cauldron cooks
up a story filled with twists and turns, suspicions and doubts that holds up until
the end of the book. Or is it the end?
© copyright 2002 wakingwalt.com