The Invention of Morel By Adolfo Bioy Casares
To classify it as perfect is neither an imprecision nor a hyperbole.
That is how Jorge Luis Borges chooses to praise the story in the prologue he wrote for The Invention of Morel. It is difficult to argue the truth of this opinion on this seminal work of fantastic fiction. However, one thing is for certain: Morel is a masterpiece of modernist fiction. Adolfo Bioy Casares' plot and aesthetic appears to be strongly influenced by Borges, which isn't a surprise considering the mentor-pupil friendship of the two authors.
The book explores the life of a fugitive who is hiding on a deserted island. His narration shows a constant fear of being turned over to the law. It is this fear that has driven him to travelling in terse conditions and battling harsh weather to reach this island. The island is remote and barren, except for four fantastical structures: a chapel, a museum, a swimming pool and a mill. Unfortunately his stay is interrupted by the arrival of a group of tourists on the island, forcing him to retreat to the dense forestry to avoid being found out. Yet, who are these mysterious characters? What do they want? Why do they behave in the way they do? What is with the repetitive score of Tea for Two and Valencia played repeatedly in the background?
The book is entirely based on one man's quest towards understanding these visitors and their phenomenons.
“I do not believe that a dream should necessarily be taken for reality, or reality for madness.”
Some noteworthy facts: The first sound film The Jazz Singer was released in the year 1927. Moving pictures (both silent and talking) had a central influence on the themes of the novel. The book was partially inspired by the movement from silent films to talking films and resulting career-deaths of some celebrated icons of the silent film industry. (See: Louise Brooks).
H.G. Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau is also an inspiration behind the novel.
Science Fiction Fantasy, Short Stories, Literature Fiction A veces, conviene soñar Fiodor Dostoievski, Noches Blancas
Cómo hacer para elaborar una reseña sin despertar sospechas de su trama ni anticipar lo que realmente sucede en La invención de Morel.
Tal vez, hacer lo que hacen todos: simplemente explicar que esa pequeña y maravillosa novela del gran Adolfo Bioy Casares, la otra cara de la moneda de Jorge Luis Borges (cara buena también) trata acerca de un fugitivo de la justicia que recala en una isla desierta en donde cree que no está solo.
Es acompañado por un grupo de personas y al cruzarse con una hermosa mujer, Faustine, se enamorará genuinamente, pero con la imposibilidad de un acercamiento real que él no termina de comprender.
Además de Faustine, el narrrador se encontrará con otros personajes, incluido el misterioso inventor Morel, cuyo nombre se asemeja al de otro famoso inventor isleño, el doctor Moreau de H.G. Wells.
Pocos saben que Bioy se insipiró fuertemente para escribir esta novela en otra de Julio Verne, llamada El castillo de los Cárpatos. Con solo leer de qué trata el argumento del libro del gran escritor francés, el lector que no haya surcado las páginas de este libros sabrá hacia dónde se desarrolla esta historia, tan bella, cautivante y leída por tanta gente alrededor del mundo. Tanta que más de un argentino se sorprendería.
Bioy Casares tiene un extraño y cautivante efecto en los lectores de otros países como sucede con Roberto Arlt, Ernesto Sábato y Leopoldo Marechal sólo por nombrar a algunos de los mejores exponentes de argentina, además de Borges y Cortázar.
Volviendo a la historia, creo que lo que aquí se narra es un desgarrador diario sobre la soledad y la búsqueda del contacto humano, complementado con ciertas dosis de naturaleza fantástica al principio del libro y connotaciones de ciencia ficción sobre el final.
La inaccesibilidad que el narrador sufre es condicionante para él, puesto que no entiende por qué Faustine no lo ve, mientras que por otro lado se esconde de los otros intrusos, como él llama a los demás, participando sin querer de un juego de apariencias.
De todos modos, sólo necesitamos avanzar para saber el por qué de todo este misterio, pero antes de llegar a ello, Bioy nos regalará una soberbia muestra de su narrativa impecable y sin fisuras, con vuelos poéticos y reminiscencias románticas.
En tan sólo ciento cincuenta páginas, nos encontraremos con una historia bella, sólida, acuciante por momentos, debido a los sufrimientos del narrador, con un final que desatará una sincera empatía del lector hacia quien narra esta historia, que no logra comprender el por qué de su insólita situación.
Como sé que muchos lectores aún no descubrieron de qué trata realmente La invención de Morel, sólo doy algunas pistas.
No es mi intención quebrar la magia latente que se percibe detrás de las líneas de esta novela, que sigue siendo una de las mejores de la literatura argentina y que afortunadamente Bioy Casares transformó en una de las preferidas de muchos lectores alrededor del planeta. Science Fiction Fantasy, Short Stories, Literature Fiction Coming Clean About LOST
Several years ago I was induced by my grandchildren to watch seven seasons’ worth of the television series LOST during summer holidays. Filmed in Hawaii from 2004 to 2010, the series recounted the increasingly strange existence of the survivors of a trans-Pacific flight on an apparently uncharted, and possibly uncharitable, island. Often tedious, always unexpected, the tale, I decided, was either an invention beyond my abilities to appreciate, or it was utter nonsense, with no overall plot or plan for an ending. Turns out it was a bit of both.
Although I have read nothing to confirm this conclusion, it is entirely clear to me that LOST is merely a derivative version of Bioy Casares novella, The Invention of Morel. At least three versions of the 1949 the book had been made into films during the 1960's and 70's. These were explicitly credited to Bioy Casares. But as far as I am aware there is no mention of him as the inspiration for the LOST series. Yet the substance of his book is identical to that of the series, with a few twists thrown into the series reflecting more modern tastes and technologies. Here are my main points of comparison:
1. Both the series and the book take place on a remote island which is inaccessible by normal means. This is explained in the book as due to a reef and an illness, but not in the series which relies on unexplained physical phenomena. The precise means of entry and exit from the island remains a mystery in both.
2. Bioy has a single protagonist who arrives on the island as a fugitive from justice for some indeterminate crime for which he feels both guilt and shame. In LOST this transforms into a plane-load of survivors most of whom are also fugitives, either from the law or from intolerable social conditions. All the main characters feel guilt and shame and demonstrate the same sort of paranoia as Bioy's.
3. There is architectural evidence on the islands in both the book and the series of a previous habitation, modern buildings of unknown purpose, which have been abandoned but left in serviceable condition.
4. Within these structures are found various sophisticated technologies of indeterminate function that are powered by a natural but novel source of tremendous energy. In the series this source is an intense magnetic field, in the book it is tidal forces.
5. These technologies, it is eventually revealed, both allow time travel within the island and provide immortality to its inhabitants. There are relatively minor differences in the series and the book having mainly to do with the level of contemporary technological development reached in each case.
6. The characters in the series mirror those in the book. LOSTS's Ben Linus is the same Californian-esque cult leader as Morel. Bioy's protagonist and his 'female lead', Faustine are the series Jack Shepherd and his sometime enamorata Juliet, this latter being the focus of rivalry by the male characters in both.
7. Several other tropes and devices from Bioy are used repeatedly in the series: half-heard conversations, dream-like sequences, and so on. Others are scarcely concealed variants. For example, in Bioy, trees on the island die before maturity; in the series, it is infants who die.
The parts of the television series which were comprehensible to me were precisely those written by Bioy. I appreciated them as creative and innovative even 60 years later. The rest was indeed junk. And yet not a mention of the real source by the tv producers. Shameful Science Fiction Fantasy, Short Stories, Literature Fiction Insane. Insane. Again. Insane. Then I resumed my efforts, moving to other parts of the wall. Chips fell, and, when large pieces of the wall began to come down, I kept on pounding, bleary-eyed, with an urgency that was far greater than the size of the iron bar, until the resistance of the wall (which seemed unaffected by the force of my repeated pounding) pushed me to the floor, frantic and exhausted. First I saw, then I touched, the pieces of masonry— they were smooth on one side, harsh, earthy on the other: then, in a vision so lucid it seemed ephemeral and supernatural, my eyes saw the blue continuity of the tile, the undamaged and whole wall, the closed room.
‘Reasoned Imagination’ – That is how Borges describes this mindboggling attempt of Adolfo Bioy Casares, in what, that my humble mind can ascertain, is a superlative member of post-modernist, abstract fiction canon. Why does the mind battle its familiar boundaries in the thirst of alien waters? What rewards lie at the other end that compel acceptance of a torturous sentence, bordering on pragmatism and surrealism, pushing the soil beneath the feet to an unknown abyss? What does one achieve by undertaking a journey that robs him off his sanity and instead, plants a foreign temperament that forges alliance with none, not even with its owner? Oh no one really knows all the answers but the temptation to venture into such a world is one that has not spared a single, active mind.
A convict, fleeing from authorities, lands into an unfamiliar island, which appears to him, as time passes by, as uninhabited too. With no vessel to transport him back in sight, he toils with his survival instinct and somehow, is managing his days in waiting. But his unusual utopia is thrown out of gear when one day, he spots a young beauty at a cliff adjacent to a building, ludicrously named as museum, staring at the setting sun. He is, at once, jolted off his senses and his intuition pokes him with a warning that this could be a police trap. His initial tentativeness is however, weakened gradually, as the sight appears almost every day and with time, more of her friends begin filling his vision. Overpowered by curiosity, he inches towards the museum and in time, eavesdrops on conversations. Faustine, the woman.
As our narrator dwells deep into the mysterious appearance of Faustine, her appeal, her gang (especially Morel) and their purpose on the island, Casares begins tightening the grip, one knot at a time, around an outstanding plot, resting on magic, science and immortality. The fecundity of Casares’ vision not only lies in the masterly excavation of what can be a perennial memory (or truth?), but also why it should be. While the how is clearly debatable, it does enough damage to a normal brain to banish the usual attire and deep dive into the questionable with a restless but freelancer spirit. And literature, I feel, must always achieve this objective. And for this ambitious dilemma alone, I am glad I quarantined my sanity for a while. More ABC! Science Fiction Fantasy, Short Stories, Literature Fiction ‘I do not believe that a dream should necessarily be taken for reality, or reality for madness.’
How often we feel like an island, alone in a world and beleaguered by the crashing waves of change, responsibility and heartache eroding our soil. Adolfo Bioy Casares presents us a chilling and empathetic tale of love and loneliness, molding the ‘diary of a man stranded on an island’ literary trope into a fantastical and exciting exploration into the human heart. While the sci-fi elements are engaging and intriguing, it is the beat of the human heart drumming out a rhythm of angst and anxiety that takes center stage and pulls the fantasy elements along while making them still feel fresh decades later. The sting of unrequited love and the human desire to cheat death form a beautiful landscape for discussions of immortality and escape through Bioy Casares deft churning of plot and revelation.
The diary writer of The Invention of Morel is both literally, emotionally and psychologically stranded on an island. Escaping a lifetime sentence for an unmentioned crime, he seeks refuge on an island feared for its legends of death and disease amongst what seems like an abandoned vacation resort. The shadowy life sentence hangs over his every move, and when strangers suddenly populate the island, he fears it is an elaborate plot to bring him to justice. The refusal to even hint at his crimes is one of the many mysteries of the novella that Bioy Casares employs to keep the screw of tension turned tight and add a veil of unreliability to the story—for which is benefits and adds color to an otherwise drab plot¹.
‘It is useless to try to keep the whole body alive.’
The story of the Invention is fascinating, but it is not the invention but the morality within it’s creation that is most satisfying. This is a story of love, of being denied love and of desiring to capture the feeling of love for all eternity. Death is the great fear of mortality, and Bioy Casares offers a wild window into attempts to prove the notion that love conquers all, even death in this case. Inspired by a fixation with actress Louise Brooks, Invention explores the depths and depravity of unrequited love, focusing in on the infatuation one can feel for a character in a film or novel. In fits of infatuation, one may act in ways that seems irrational or uncharacteristic from the outside, and the narrator here is a perfect demonstration of the frustration and desperation of a one-sided love affair, even if one is in love with the idea of a person rather than the actual person. This calls to mind the assassination attempt on US President Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley Jr. in an attempt to get the attention of and impress actress Jodie Foster. The technique of the diary is engaging as it allows the reader to occupy the writer’s headspace, leading towards an empathetic validation of his actions instead of a more cold and removed perspective.
The slow unveiling of the plot under intense tones of stress is one of Inventions greatest strengths. This book is difficult to set down as the intensity of the mystery rages at a slow boil. Events take shape like the silhouettes of strangers sauntering out of a mist, and much is left unseen to trouble the reader like icebergs on a dark night at sea. While we are never told of the crime, there is an illuminating passage during the climactic final pages that chronicles the political struggles of the narrators homeland, slyly incorporating a message of feeling isolated by your own country during times of political strife. This seems in keeping with the political undertones of Latin American literature and adds an anchor to history for an otherwise weightless novella.
Jorge Luis Borges championed Invention of Morel as a ‘perfect’ novel, a claim sure to raise a few critical eyebrows. Undeniably, the story could have easily been expanded upon and encompassed the reader in a vaster field of themes and insights into the moral implications of the novel; luckily we have the early seasons of LOST to build a world on the thin strands of ideas in this novel. Morel manages to be nearly perfect for what it is as a novella—to have cut it to a short story would cheapen it and I suspect expanding on it would give a bloated feel—and strikes a sharp blow of singular emotive power by focusing on the pains of impossible love and letting the vast possibilities of the fantastic sci-fi backdrop serve mostly as a conduit for the discussions of solitude in life and love. There is a wider story and plot that could easily be taken to extraordinary places by authors intent more on the impressiveness of plot, but caressing the human heart behind this tale seems a more valuable experience. There is a high price for immortality, and what better to live on for eternity than the feelings of love. For all intensive purposes, Bioy Casares The Invention of Morel lives up to the challenge of immortality and has earned its keep among reissues and Latin American canonization.
4/5
‘To be on an island inhabited by artificial ghosts was the most unbearable of nightmares—to be in love with one of those images was worse than being in love with a ghost (perhaps we always want the person we love to have the existence of a ghost).’
¹ Octavio Paz praised the novella as a world where ‘not only do we traverse a realm of shadows, we ourselves are shadows’. Everything is shadowy and unsure in the anxious tension that drives Invention. The Editor character that appears in the footnotes adds a further layer to toy with the ideas of authenticity though their role is primarily to highlight inconsistencies and mistakes. Another interesting aspect of the Editor character is that it assumes the document has been found and that there is a whole further story of discovery to be had out of sight from the reader; there is another chapter to the Invention that we will never know and this heightens the joy. Science Fiction Fantasy, Short Stories, Literature Fiction
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«Πιστεύω πως χάνουμε την αθανασία γιατί δεν έχει εξελιχθεί η αντίστασή μας στο θάνατο· οι τελειοποιήσεις της επιμένουν στην πρωταρχική, τη στοιχειώδη ιδέα: να διατηρήσουμε ζωντανό ολόκληρο το σώμα. Θα 'πρεπε να επιζητούμε τη διατήρηση αυτού που ενδιαφέρει τη συνείδηση».
Η μπαλάντα των αισθήσεων και των παραισθήσεων.
Ένα αριστούργημα. Ένας προφητικός εφιάλτης για την ανθρώπινη υπόσταση. Επιστημονικό θρίλερ,μαύρο,φρικιαστικό,ανατριχιαστικό και μακάβριο όνειρο μέσα στην ονειρική πραγματικότητα. Παράδοξο με όλη τη σημασία της υπόνοιας και της παράνοιας,αλλα και με όλο το μεγαλείο της τελειότητας μιας παντοδύναμης εικόνας που συμμετέχεις ετσι κι αλλιώς.
Συμμετέχουν όλοι όσοι ζουν...
Ο ήρωας μας,ένας κυνηγημένος δραπέτης αποφασίζει να παει σε ένα έρημο καταραμένο νησί όπου παραμονεύει μια φριχτή αρρώστια. Το ανθρώπινο σώμα καταρρέει απο εξω προς τα μέσα. Χάνεις μαλλιά,δέρμα,όραση και εχεις προσδόκιμο ζωής δυο εβδομάδες.
Παρόλα αυτα αποφασίζει να παει για να γλιτώσει απο την απελπισία της καταδίκης σε θάνατο.
Φτάνοντας και μετά απο πολλές δυσκολίες και κακουχίες αντιλαμβάνεται ότι στο νησί που επέλεξε να ζήσει- σε αυτόν τον καταραμένο τόπο υπάρχουν ένα μουσείο, ενα παρε κκλήσι και μια πισίνα- βρίσκονται και άλλοι άνθρωποι, ανάμεσα τους και μια γυναίκα,η Φοστίν,την οποία και ερωτεύεται παράφορα.
Κανείς τους δεν μπορεί να δει τον κατάκοπο και απελπισμένο ήρωα μας, ούτε η γυναίκα που σχεδόν αξιοθρήνητα γονατίζει μπροστά της και της εξομολογείται τον έρωτα του.
Όλα αυτά μέσα στο θολωμένο του μυαλό παίρνουν ακραίες διαστάσεις και προσπαθώντας να τα εξηγήσει θεωρεί πως έχει παραισθήσεις απο κάποια σπάνια αρρώστια ή πως όλοι ειναι πλάσματα εξωγήινα και ανήκουν σε άλλον χωροχρόνο.
Η αλήθεια αποκαλύπτεται αργά και βασανιστικά. Λατρεύει την Φοστίν,όμως δεν υπάρχει τρόπος να την προσεγγίσει.
Ο μόνος τρόπος ειναι η εφεύρεση του Μορέλ. Και κάπου εδω το αριστούργημα αυτό γίνεται κραυγαλέα συναισθηματικό και εξασφαλίζει την αγάπη στην αιωνιότητα.
Υποβάλλω μια παράκληση: Ας μας αναζητήσει, την Φοστίν κι εμένα,ας μ' αφησει να μπω στους ουρανούς της συνείδησης της. Θα 'ναι μια πράξη ευσπλαχνική.
Καλή ανάγνωση!
Πολλούς ασπασμούς!
Απο τα καλύτερα βιβλία που γράφτηκαν ποτέ!
ΔΙΑΒΑΣΤΕ ΤΟ!!
Επιβάλλεται!!💯💯🛑⭕️🛑💯💯 Science Fiction Fantasy, Short Stories, Literature Fiction
Review in English (Spanish below)
Read both in English and Spanish. Translated from Spanish by Ruth Simms.
It is hard to write about this short novel without spoiling anything but I will try. The narrator, a nameless convict, hides in a secluded and uninhabited island. On the island there is an abandoned manor where he sleeps. One day he is no longer alone, a group of visitors banish him to the marshes. Due to the many privations he has to suffer, he becomes ill, and begins to question his sanity and reality. He also become desperately infatuated by one of the mysterious visitors, a woman who likes to watch the sunset every day from the same spot. A large part of the novel attraction comes from mystery surrounding the island and its visitors so I do not recommend to try to find out too much about the plot.
Borges considered the novel as perfectly plotted. I would not go that far but I agree it was carefully constructed. The writing was quite atmospheric and claustrophobic, as it should have been. My only problem was with the translation. I could not check the whole book, but I observed some differences in meaning between the Spanish and English version, like the translator din not understand very well what the author was trying to say. If the discordance was on purpose, I still think it sounded better in the original language.
Reseña en español
Leido tanto en inglés como en español. Traducido del español por Ruth Simms.
Es difícil escribir sobre esta novela corta sin divulgar nada, pero lo intentaré. El narrador, un preso sin nombre, se esconde en una isla deshabitada. En la isla hay una mansión abandonada donde duerme. Un día ya no está solo, un grupo de visitantes lo destierra a las marismas. Debido a las muchas privaciones que tiene que sufrir, se enferma y comienza a cuestionar su cordura y su realidad. También se enamora desesperadamente de uno de los misteriosos visitantes, una mujer a la que le gusta ver la puesta de sol todos los días desde el mismo lugar. Gran parte del atraction de la novela proviene del misterio que rodea a la isla y a sus visitantes por lo que no recomiendo intentar averiguar demasiado sobre la trama.
Borges consideró la novela perfectamente tramada. No iría tan lejos, pero estoy de acuerdo en que fue cuidadosamente construida. La escritura era bastante atmosférica y claustrofóbica, como debería haber sido. Mi único problema fue con la traducción. No pude revisar todo el libro, pero observé algunas diferencias de significado entre la versión en español y en inglés, como que el traductor no entendió muy bien lo que el autor estaba tratando de decir. Si la discordancia fue a propósito, sigo pensando que sonaba mejor en el idioma original.
Science Fiction Fantasy, Short Stories, Literature Fiction
The Invention of Morel is a romantic classic in which passion triumphs over convention, a surrealist classic in which imagination triumphs over reality, a science fiction classic in which technology triumphs over time, and a mystery story whose fantastic resolution always plays fair with the reader.
Is corporeality necessary for human personality? Is community possible even in isolation? Can love survive death and--perhaps what is worse--complete indifference? Bioy Casares novel addresses all of these questions.
Not bad for a little book not quite one hundred pages long. Science Fiction Fantasy, Short Stories, Literature Fiction The Invention of Morel is a very specific tale on the nature of time and our perception of it.
An outcast is beached on a small island where he finds some deserted edifices, tortured by solitude he is in despair… But suddenly everything changes…
When I was finally able to sleep, it was very late. The music and the shouting woke me up a few hours later. I have not slept soundly since my escape; I am sure that if a ship, a plane, or any other form of transportation had arrived, I would have heard it. And yet suddenly, unaccountably, on this oppressive summerlike night, the grassy hillside has become crowded with people who dance, stroll up and down, and swim in the pool, as if this were a summer resort…
He hides and starts tracking these people daily and slowly he becomes obsessed with a beautiful woman…
She watches the sunset every afternoon; from my hiding place I watch her. Yesterday, and again today, I discovered that my nights and days wait for this hour. The woman, with a gypsy’s sensuality and a large, bright-colored scarf on her head, is a ridiculous figure.
He attempts to contact her but she doesn’t see him, for her he simply doesn’t exist… He tries to resolve the mystery and gradually he learns that all those he observes are captives of the past… The talented inventor managed to catch a voluminous span of time so that the happy days of his love could repeat endlessly, again and again.
Time is caught but it takes its toll…
The two suns and the two moons: Since the week is repeated all through the year, some suns and moons do not coincide (and people complain of the cold when the weather on the island is warm, and swim in fetid water and dance in a thicket or during a storm). And if the whole island were submerged – except for the machines and projectors – the images, the museum, and the island itself would still be visible.
Neither beginning nor end – time is an eternal enigma. Science Fiction Fantasy, Short Stories, Literature Fiction
The Invention of Morel was adjudged a perfect work by Jorge Luis Borges, the author’s mentor/friend/frequent collaborator. Anybody familiar with the essays and short fiction of Borges can appreciate what it means for one of the great masters of world literature to make such a pronouncement. Perhaps Borges’ appraisal reflects, in part, how Adolfo Bioy Casares shares much of his own aesthetic and literary sensibilities since, after all, they collaborated on twelve books.
More specifically, here are some obvious similarities between the writing of the two authors:
• The Invention of Morel is only one hundred pages, not too much longer than a number of Borges’s longer tales.
• Similar to stories like The Circular Ruin, The Aleph and many other Borges tales, The Invention of Morel deals with multiple levels of so called reality.
• The language and writing is elegant. Bloy Casares' short novel is akin to Borges' writing in Doctor Brodie’s Report and The Book of Sand, where Borges let go of his more ornate, baroque style.
SPOILER WARNING - This is a short novel. You might want to read my review AFTER you've read the book.
Anyway, for the purpose of this review, I will take a specific focus: the relationship between the novel and the author’s and our own experience of film and television.
The 1920s were the heyday of silent films. The first commercially successful sound film, The Jazz Singer, was released in 1929. Black and White 1940s TV was as raw as raw can be – just look at those 1949 TV shows on You Tube. In 1940, the year of publication for The Invention of Morel, ideas about what would become TV where in the air; what really had a grip on people’s imagination in the 1920s and 1930s was film, first silent film then film with sound.
So, one can imagine a sensitive, imaginative literary artist like Adolfo Bioy Casares (born 1914) experiencing silent film in the 1920s as a boy and then sound films as a teenager and young man. One thing that makes The Invention of Morel so compelling is just how much of what the narrator and others in the novel experience is parallel to a world saturated with films and TV.
Below are a number of quotes from the novel coupled with my reflections:
“They are at the top of the hill, while I am far below. From here they look like a race of giants .” (page 12) ---------- Darn, if this wasn’t my exact experience when I went to my first movie. I was so overwhelmed by the race of giants ‘up there’ on the screen, I fled from the theater minutes after the movie started.
“I saw the same room duplicated eight times in eight directions as if it were reflected in mirror.” (page 18) ---------- Again, darn. I recall my almost disbelief when, as a kid, I saw the same image repeated a dozen times when I first saw all those TVs turned to the same station in a department store. There was something freaky about the exact movement and image repeated on all those sets.
“I went back to see her the next afternoon, and the next. She was there, and her presence began to take on the quality of a miracle.” (page 25) ---------- How many teenagers, young men and women and even older adults have fallen in love with a movie star and go back to the movies to see their loved one the next night and the next?
“Words and movements of Faustine and the bearded man coincided with those of a week ago. The atrocious eternal return.” (page 41) ---------- In a way, isn’t that the world of movies – the same exact people doing exactly the same thing night after night up there on the screen. Live theater doesn't even come close to the movie’s eternal return.
“Horrified by Faustine, who was so close to me, actually might be on another planet.” (page 53) ---------- How many men and women who have fallen in love with a star in a film or a TV show where they are so close they can press their hands against the star’s face (the TV screen) come to realize their emotions and feelings are for a being a universe away, far beyond their actual touch?
““Tea for Two” and “Valencia” persisted until after dawn.” (page 62) ---------- Most appropriate! Films and TV thrive on easy-to-remember songs and jingles.
“I began to search for waves and vibrations that had previously been unattainable, to devise instruments to receive and transmit them.” (page 69). ---------- It is as if the author tuned into the collective unconscious desire in 1940 to expand film in different ways, one way being what would become TV.
“ I was certain that my images of persons would lack consciousness of themselves (like the characters in a motion picture).” (page 70) ---------- This is part of a nearly four pages of Morel's internal dialogue. There is a lot here. One reflection: how many people have sacrificed their flesh-and-blood existential reality to make it as a star up there on the silver screen? What happens to the soul of the people in a city like Los Angeles, for example, when the city is taken over by an entire industry dedicated to producing films and shows populated by stars?
I recall a quote from the main character in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance when he goes into a roadside diner and can’t get the waitress’s attention because she is watching TV. He says, “I don’t exist since I’m not on TV.”
Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914-1999) Science Fiction Fantasy, Short Stories, Literature Fiction
Adolfo Bioy Casares ë 7 Read & Download
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 at Marienbad, it also changed the history of film. The Invention of Morel