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Loading... The Invention of Morel (New York Review Books Classics) (original 1940; edition 2003)by Adolfo Bioy Casares
Work InformationThe Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares (1940)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. I did not like this book. The central concept is interesting and I could imagine a good book around it, but in general it feels stretched out for far too long (even though it's only about 90 pages anyway). I fully admit that I'm likely missing a lot - especially the ending made me think I'd missed some important implications that'd make it more interesting - but personally it didn't really do anything for me, at least not in the mood I'm in. The narrator is both unlikeable and unrelatable. I get writing a character that's a major creep (in a strange way) but his inner monologue is totally alien and he's also very dense And I guess the key thing is that as a story of unrequited love, it made no sense to me. (big spoilers for the main concept of the story) Although this novel is very short, it feels increasingly slow and frustrating toward the midpoint. Rather than a fault, this mood shows its success at getting the reader to identify with its stranded fugitive speaker, who is significantly the aspiring author of two books other than the journal which forms the principal text of The Invention of Morel. The later part of the book involves a crucial anagnorisis and the working out of its consequences. I was more than a little reminded of The Island of the Day Before, and I feel certain Eco must have read Morel. Although in praising it Borges called this book an "adventure story," I am compelled to view it as a parable. The moral of Morel: This is an interesting book and the writing has some compelling turns. The plot is oblique and the narrator is cryptic about both his past and his perceptions. It is a thin volume but needs a close reading---perhaps close that I gave it. I read it in about four sittings. Perhaps it will be best appreciated by plowing a single reading. Bioy Casares fu amico e collaboratore di Borges, dalla cui fama è per lo più oscurato. Sapeva, parole sue, di libri, di donne, di tennis. Questo romanzo breve del 1940 è la principale opera per cui è ricordato e può essere considerata (come diceva lo stesso Borges) un racconto perfetto, che sviluppa sotto forma di distopia fantascientifica una delle più potenti descrizioni del solipsismo e della solitudine in letteratura. Michele Mari, grazie alle cui pagine cui l'ho scoperto, lo paragona a La nube Purpurea di Shiel e a Dissipatio H.G. di Morelli. Direi che i paragoni sono calzanti e vi aggiungerei Io sono leggenda di Matheson, per lo meno nelle parti più concentrate sui pensieri del protagonista. A ogni modo, non è "solo" un libro di fantascienza o di introspezione psicologica. Bioy Casares si confronta con topoi potentissimi (l'isola, la tecnica) e sviluppa - di nuovo, siamo nel '40 - riflessioni profonde sulla "società dell'immagine", fornendo potenti metafore a chi si occupa di cinema e fotografia - o di sociologia. no reviews | add a review
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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. No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)863.62Literature Spanish and Portuguese Spanish fiction 20th Century 1900-1945LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Early in the novella the protagonist writes in his diary, "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."
This avenue of chasing immortality is still traveled today, usually with the idea of uploading a person's consciousness into some kind of computer device, leaving the physical body behind. Casares here invents a different attempt at traveling this path.
This then serves as the philosophical backbone of the novella, which adopts the trappings of an adventure story, much to the pleasure of Borges, who in his prologue praises such adventure stories as Kafka's "The Trial" and Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw" in addition to "The Invention of Morel" for their admirable plots, contrasting them favorably with the "chaotic" and "formless" psychological novel so much in vogue, drearily and tediously aiming to be realistic. Borges will have no truck with realistic tedium, and recommends this story to us as its perfect opposite. ( )