Customer Reviews

The Invention of Morel

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I've never read anything like this. This little book is on another level, in its own league - its own universe, really - of literary beauty and ingenuity. Picture a science fiction-meets-fantasy-meets-love story, written by Bioy Casares, in 1940. Jorge Luis Borges - himself one of the most imaginative writers known today - felt it could, without exaggeration, be called 'the perfect novel'. Written in the first person from the perspective of an anonymous fugitive having escaped to a deserted island, the story depicts his strange sights and experiences there, and his journey in ascertaining their cause.

The emphasis on Louise Brooks is, I think, overstated (the NYRB edition of this work also portrays Brooks on the cover - I think this is a somewhat misleading representation of this strange but boldly evocative book, its setting, its literary style - in a word, everything). While Casares' admiration of Brooks did purportedly serve as the inspiration for the relationship between the protagonist and the central female character of the story, that is where the association ends - there is no resemblance whatsoever between Brooks and the enigmatic, empty female character in the novel, who can really be seen as an extension of the bizarre, dream-like and singular world that Casares has masterfully created. Obsessions and intrigues with hollywood actors have become trite in our culture, and dwelling too much on an author's infatuation with an actress has in this case detracted from Bioy-Casares' awe-inspiring talent in penning a story fearlessly imaginative and truly original, communicated through the stark and near-painful self-awareness of its protagonist.

There are a lot of books out there that are bizarre, but this one is heart-breakingly beautiful in its bizarrity, and therein lies its merit as a work of true literary genius. It's one of the most mystifying and memorable books I've ever read. It left a permanent and haunting imprint on my brain where dozens of other books - classics and not - have faded into obscurity. It therefore has to be called one of the best.

I picked up this book because of the rather extravagant praise from Borges and Paz. Apparently it was inspired by the silent film star Louise Brooks, which makes sense: the entire book is about our capacity to love phantoms. All of us probably remember early infatuations with celebrities who never existed for us as anything but reproductions: on paper, televisions, the movie screen.

Essentially, this book imagines what happens when the reproductions become faithful enough to be indistinguishable from the real thing. It is narrated by a man hiding from the police on a deserted island for an undisclosed crime. One day people appear, and the man quickly falls in love with one of the women; strangely enough, they often disappear for short stretches of time, and seem to repeat the same conversations and actions again and again.

All of this is well-written, but when the explanation is given, all that preceded seems to have been time spent waiting for the a-ha twist: it's only after this point that the book becomes really interesting. I won't give away the story, because the plot is worth getting through yourself: let me mention something that it reminded me of, though.

When Apocalypse Now: Redux came out, they restored scenes of Martin Sheen's brief love affair with a French woman on the river, a storyline completely left out of the original cut. The actress, now an old woman, went to the theatres and saw herself young and beautiful again. And something about her youth is now eternal, or at least as eternal as film proves to be.

I find it completely plausible, for example, that one could find a bundle of old home videos and be so charmed by a woman in them (since I'm a man) that you fall in (some sort of) love with her, even though she is probably either dead now or a completely different woman. But in some way the image of her is real, in the sense that it exists on the tapes and in your own head.

These are some of the ideas that this book plays with and, I must say, it is more fascinating for the ideas it provokes than the narrative itself. In many ways, it feels like second-rate Borges: The Circular Ruins (or a few other stories) stretched to novella length. What Casares should have accomplished with this length is given Faustine (the woman) some sort of character that seemed worthy of the reader's love, and not just the narrator's. At the moment she's a non-entity.

So this story isn't heartbreaking, as the other reviewer (whose flimsy review, frankly, shows no evidence that he actually read the book) tries to say. The Invention of Morel is the work of a talented but not brilliant writer. Perhaps another flaw of this book is that the ideal medium for the story seems to be film; I can see why this was, supposedly, the inspiration for Last Year at Marienbad.

In any case, if these ideas strike you as interesting, I recommend this book. It's really very short, and perhaps not worth paying this much for, since I wouldn't care to have it as part of my permanent collection; I read it first in the library, where it had several short stories from Bioy (NYRB might have included those) as well as several lovely woodcut illustrations.

Bioy's masterpiece really is a wonderful "unknown masterpiece" (albeit unknown only in the USA) reissued by the NYRB editors. Inspired by Bioy's obsession with the silent movie actress Louise Brooks, THE INVENTION OF MOREL is a tour de force and exceptionally prescient study of the nature of reality and how it is impinged upon by the virtual realities engendered by time, fantasy, and love. And it is genuinely heartbreaking.