REVIEW OF MORELIA (2019) RENEE GLADMAN
What is Morelia? Morelia is a dream. Morelia is a book. Morelia is a map. Morelia is a city. Morelia is a rat running across Renee Gladman's back as she slept after a strange trip. This review will have to be a little different as I've been completely baffled by this book. It's a puzzle. It's a mystery. It's a building. Reading Morelia made me feel as though I was looking at a painting or listening to a long piece of music. In fact, below I am providing a few pieces of art and a playlist that this novella reminded me of.
Morelia starts with a sentence written on a scrap of paper tucked inside a book.
"The sentence wasn't English but it was a language nonetheless. It used the Roman alphabet; it employed blank space to separate letters into various groups; and, most convincingly, the length of it ended with a period, that dot, that fleck of dust that ruins conversations."
"The sentence wasn't English but it was a language nonetheless. It used the Roman alphabet; it employed blank space to separate letters into various groups; and, most convincingly, the length of it ended with a period, that dot, that fleck of dust that ruins conversations."
One of the main points of this expansive novella is the unnamed protagonist's desire to understand and follow this sentence. We are made aware of the word "Bze." We do not know what it means but the protagonist feels that they have heard it before.
"Don't I have a cousin called Bzey? Didn't she used to say, "You could get a 'Bze' and go somewhere nice?" I can't remember anymore. I'm too tired from getting hit over the head and shipped around the continent."
The protagonist is constantly falling asleep and waking up in other places. They travel through dreams, often waking from one into the next, always in liminal spaces. The book has a noir element too. We are led to believe our protagonist is an assassin working for a shadowy underworld overlord named Mr. Otis. They seem to be fleeing Mr. Otis at all times, as they chase the sentence around these rooms and worlds.
Overall Morelia was entrancing. It put me, well, in a trance reading it. Flipping to the last page was like waking up from a dream, still sleep drunk and unsure of what had just happened to me as I followed the sentence myself through its pages. I'd refer this to anyone who needs something deep to chew on for a while. I assume I'll revisit it in the future.
"You go, but going is like staying where you are, just with your eyes facing downward and your body still. I went. I came back. It was reading. Yet it wasn't so much reading that I wanted to do. Or reading first, then something further, like walking. Could syntax become a city? It could, but I'd have to forget myself."
Overall Morelia was entrancing. It put me, well, in a trance reading it. Flipping to the last page was like waking up from a dream, still sleep drunk and unsure of what had just happened to me as I followed the sentence myself through its pages. I'd refer this to anyone who needs something deep to chew on for a while. I assume I'll revisit it in the future.
"You go, but going is like staying where you are, just with your eyes facing downward and your body still. I went. I came back. It was reading. Yet it wasn't so much reading that I wanted to do. Or reading first, then something further, like walking. Could syntax become a city? It could, but I'd have to forget myself."
Artwork:
Prose Architectures 206, Renee Gladman (2016)
Relativity, M.C. Escher (1953)
Playlist:
Rating: 💛💛💛💛💔
Links:
Prose Architectures 206 (DEC 2019) https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/91321/-582211e3e31cd
All quotes above are from Renee Gladman's Morelia (2019), published by SOLID OBJECTS NY. Copyright Renee Gladman 2019.
A-likes: (a-likes are something new I'm doing. My first instinct when something I've consumed has pleased me or interested me is to look into things that are like it.)
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
After Dark by Haruki Murakami
Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
How to be Both Ali Smith
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