The Particularities of Political Action Disappear in an Opalescent Wash

August 13, 2023 12:28 PM

There are two ways of reading the central Maríasian lesson that we are nothing more nor less than the stories we tell about ourselves. In its negative form, it admonishes us that life is a brittle, insubstantial thing, a story that goes on falsifying itself day after day. In its positive form, it posits that we are constantly inventing ourselves afresh—indeed, that there is something fundamentally life-affirming in the phantasmal nature of the self. from Empty Suits by Bailey Trela
posted by chavenet (1 comment total)

Reading All Souls and My Heart So White, two novels Marías wrote before his turn to spy fiction, was one of my favorite readerly experiences, each page an unexpected joy. I was so excited when I began one of his later books, probably the first book in Your Face Tomorrow. It felt so disjointed to me, a collection of observations strung up on a generic plotline. I didn’t get far before I put it down.

This review by Bailey Trela does a very good job of explaining what it was that Marías set out to do, and why it is that I’m probably never going to read it. That extended passage about the sword sounds excruciating to me, but I get now what another reader might get out of it.
posted by Kattullus at 2:12 PM on August 14, 2023 [1 favorite]