themselves but rather in their organization against an acceptable, apparently logical reality.
And of course, this is but one convenient manner to turn reality into another dimension.
Matheson’s Fantastic Dimensions
A recurrent theme of fantastic literature explored by Matheson in The Twilight Zone is
that of the other dimension. Besides “Little Girl Lost,” “A World of Difference” and “A World of
His Own,” both narrations which fit the parameters of the fantastic mode for they oppose the
believable and the impossible, Matheson introduces a logical rupture within a realistic universe
which little by little causes the transformation of our reality into another dimension. Passed the
first narrative twist, “A World of Difference” could be seen and works as an uncanny narration,
for the events it relates are disturbing but quite plausible: an executive about to go on an
outing for the weekend with his wife suddenly discovers that he is in reality a washed-up actor
involved in a bitter divorce playing the part of an executive for a small budget film. The
protagonist insists on denying reality throughout the narration, wanting desperately to believe
that the life he is acting is actually his own and not the other way around, and we are hence led
to believe that he is delusional, suffering from an acute case of split personality. However, at
the conclusion of the narrative syntagm, the protagonist returns to its fictitious life, literally
merging with his non-existent character, becoming the script that bares his new name and that
his agent, perplexed by his client’s sudden disappearance, pushes distractedly to one side of a
table as the set is being taken down. The possible uncanny turns then irremediably into the
fantastic, for the escape of the protagonist through the pages of a script is, of course, rationally
unacceptable.
Albeit through different narrative motifs, “A World of His Own” presents a similar theme,
for it as well tells of the victory of a parallel, imaginary dimension over our reality. A middleaged, mild-mannered writer is caught by his wife while entertaining a charming blonde young
lady, who mysteriously disappears when the writer cuts off a bit of magnetic tape from the
recorder in which he dictates his ideas and throws it into the fireplace. As the story progresses,
we find out that not only the protagonist can create whatever he dictates into his tape recorder,
but that his wife and even Rod Serling himself, who makes a brief appearance at the end of
the episode, are nothing by bits of tape, which the protagonist will gladly throw into the fire at
the end of the story before creating again the pleasant young lady from the beginning by
dictating her description into his tape recorder.
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