
'The Invention of Morel' by Adolfo Bioy Casares is a novella set on an imaginary, nameless island where a criminal fugitive hides from its inhabitants. The story unfolds as the narrator falls in love with a mysterious woman named Faustine and uncovers the eternal secret that binds all to the island. The book delves into themes of love, immortality, and the blurred lines between reality and unreality, all while maintaining a sense of mystery and suspense. The writing style is described as clever, eerie, and reminiscent of early science fiction, with flashes of inspiration that keep the reader engaged throughout the tale.
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Has Romance?
Romance is a central theme, focusing on the protagonist's unrequited affection for Faustine, which drives much of the narrative.
From The Publisher:
Jorge Luis Borges declared The Invention of Morel a masterpiece of plotting, comparable to The Turn of the Screw and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Set on a mysterious island, Bioy's novella is a story of suspense and exploration, as well as a wonderfully unlikely romance, in which every detail is at once crystal clear and deeply mysterious.
Inspired by Bioy Casares's fascination with the movie star Louise Brooks, The Invention of Morel has gone on to live a secret life of its own. Greatly admired by Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, and Octavio Paz, the novella helped to usher in Latin American fiction's now famous postwar boom. As the model for Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet's Last Year in Marienbad, it also changed the history of film.
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I have the uncomfortable sensation that this paper is changing into a will. If I must resign myself to that, I shall try to make statements that can be verified so that no one, knowing that I was accused of duplicity, will doubt that I was condemned unjustly. I shall adopt the motto of Leonardo—Ostinato rigore
—as my own, and endeavor to live up to it.
The Invention of Morel (which, by the way, does not mean “how morel was invented,” but “Morel’s invention”) reminds me of a conglomeration of Jeff VanderMeer’s
Annihilation and Susanna Clarke’s
Piranesi and NBC’s
LOST (all of which I love), but much less elegant. I like the premise, but the execution leaves something to be desired.
The setup is intriguing, and in the beginning of the story there is some very nice atmospheric writing and slightly surreal imagery. The mystery of what is happening on the island is intriguing and keeps the pages turning. Unfortunately, as the story unfolds, the narrator’s growing obsession with a mysterious woman and his increasing paranoia about the motivations of the rest of the people on the island begin to take over…and it is just not that interesting, nor does any of it make much sense. He just seems unhinged (and not in a Shirley Jackson,
I-feel-like-I’m-going-crazy way but in an
oh-look-I-guess-that-guy-has-a-colander-on-his-head-for-some-reason way).
It’s a shame, because the setup and framing device have such potential. VanderMeer and Clarke also unraveled surreal mysteries through the journal entries of narrators experiencing varying degrees of sanity—but unlike those novels, the narrator of
The Invention of Morel has no voice. Maybe this is the fault of the translator; who can say. I love this sort of “found footage” take on the epistolary novel, but the most Bioy brings to it is interjections by an unnamed editor, which are intriguing but never come to anything. (There is a bizarre moment late in the novel where our narrator quotes a paragraph he purportedly wrote earlier, and the editor states that it does not appear earlier in the manuscript. The editor is wrong; the paragraph is there, I checked. No idea what the point of this might be.)
The ultimate reveal is certainly intriguing, and the idea is unique and could be thought-provoking, but I am not a reader who gets so swept up in an idea that the execution is incidental. The implications of Morel’s invention
could be profound and affecting, but as it stands it feels undeveloped.
Also, superficially, the cover choice by NYRB is bizarre. I understand how it ties into the story, but it’s a very poor representation of the tone and themes of the book.
Some favorite passages:
The island vegetation is abundant. Spring, summer, autumn, and winter plants, grasses, and flowers overtake each other with urgency, with more urgency to be born than to die, each one invading the time and the place of the others in a tangled mass. But the trees seem to be diseased; although their trunks have vigorous new shoots, their upper branches are dry. I find two explanations for this: either the grass is sapping the strength from the soil or else the roots of the trees have reached stone (the fact that the young trees are in good condition seems to confirm the second theory). The trees on the hill have grown so hard that it is impossible to cut them,- nor can anything be done with those on the bank: the slightest pressure destroys them, and all that is left is a sticky sawdust, some spongy splinters.
The island has four grassy ravines; there are large boulders in the ravine on the western side. The museum, the chapel, and the swimming pool are up on the hill. The buildings are modern, angular, unadorned, built of unpolished stone, which is somewhat incongruous with the architectural style.
The swimming pool appears to be well built, but as it is at ground level it is always filled with snakes, frogs, and aquatic insects.
I examined the shelves in vain, hoping to find some books that would be useful for a research project I began before the trial. (I believe we lose immortality because we have not conquered our opposition to death; we keep insisting on the primary, rudimentary idea: that the whole body should be kept alive. We should seek to preserve only the part that has to do with consciousness.)
The floor of the circular room is an aquarium. Invisible glass boxes in the water incase the electric lights that provide the only illumination for that windowless room. I recall the place with disgust. Hundreds of dead fish were floating on the water when I arrived, and removing them was an obnoxious task. Now, after letting the water run for days and days, I can still smell the odor of dead fish when I am in the room (it reminds me of the beaches in my country, where huge quantities of fish, dead and alive, emerge from the water to contaminate the air, and receive a hasty burial at the hands of the outraged populace). The lighted floor and the black- lacquer columns around it give one the impression of walking magically on top of a pool in the midst of a forest. This room adjoins the large room, or assembly hall, and a small green room with a piano, a phonograph, and a screen of mirrors, which has twenty panels or more.
My first reaction was not disappointment at finding no food, or relief at recognizing a water pump and a generator, but ecstatic, prolonged amazement: the walls, the ceiling, the floor were of blue tile and even the air itself (in that room where the only contact with the outside world was a high skylight obscured by the branches of a tree) had the deep azure transparency of a waterfall's foam.
I went to gather the flowers, which are most abundant down in the ravines. I picked the ones that were least ugly. (Even the palest flowers have an almost animal vitality!) When I had picked all I could carry and started to arrange them, I saw that they were dead.
Here is some evidence that can help my readers establish the date of the intruders' second appearance here: the following day two moons and two suns were visible, possibly only a local phenomenon,- but probably they are a kind of mirage, caused by the moon or the sun, the sea and the air, and are surely visible from Rabaul and throughout this whole area.
I could imagine how disillusioned they would be when they saw the pool. Since I have stopped changing the water it has become impenetrable (at least for a normal person): green, opaque, slimy, with large clusters of leaves that have grown monstrously, dead birds, and—of course—live snakes and frogs.
The habits of our lives make us presume that things will happen in a certain foreseeable way, that there will be a vague coherence in the world. Now reality appears to be changed, unreal. When a man awakens, or dies, he is slow to free himself from the terrors of the dream, from the worries and manias of life. Now it will be hard for me to break the habit of being afraid of these people.
"I could have told you when we arrived: 'We shall live for eternity.' Perhaps then we would have forced ourselves to maintain a constant gaiety, and that would have ruined everything.
About the Author:
Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914-1999) was born in Buenos Aires, the child of wealthy parents. He began to write in the early thirties, and his stories appeared in the influential magazine Sur, through which he met his wife, the painter and writer Silvina Ocampo, as well Jorge Luis Borges, who was to become his mentor, friend, and collaborator. In 1940, after writing several novice works, Bioy published the novella The Invention of Morel, the first of his books to satisfy him, and the first in which he hit his characteristic note of uncanny and unexpectedly harrowing humor. Later publications include stories and novels, among them A Plan for Escape, A Dream of Heroes, and Asleep in the Sun. Bioy also collaborated with Borges on an Anthology of Fantastic Literature and a series of satirical sketches written under the pseudonym of H. Bustos Domecq.
Suzanne Jill Levine is the author of numerous studies in Latin American literature and the translator of works by Adolfo Bioy Casares, Jorge Luis Borges, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, and Manuel Puig, among other distinguished writers. Levine's most recent book is Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman: His Life and Fictions. She is a professor in the Spanish Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Ruth L. C. Simms translated books by Adolfo Bioy Casares and Jorge Luis Borges.
Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), a giant in Latin American letters, wrote numerous books of poetry, fiction, and essays, and was a prodigious translator of authors such as Kipling, Woolf, Faulkner, and Poe. He was a regular contributor to Victoria Ocampo's journal Sur, and a frequent dinner guest of Silvina Ocampo and Bioy Casares. Over one of their legendary conversations, the three friends came upon the idea of editing the Antología de la Literatura Fantástica, which was published in 1940.
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