The Invention of Morel, or you CAN judge a book by the cover, or a saturday afternoon
You can judge a book by the cover, and there are times when you should! Gold Medal covers are the perfect example of this! And sometimes something amazing and magical happens when the book turns out to be kinda great. Like The Invention of Morel.
That cover... Louise Brooks, and she is so achingly perfect. That hair, framing that face, the amazing dress, down to the books scattered around her. If there was a perfect woman in a perfect scene, it's this... But why is she on the cover, anyway? Well, Brooks is the muse. She is, in part, what the book is built around, in the form of the character Faustine.
And if the cover and Brooks as the muse were not enough reason to read, there's the story itself. (Thankfully.) Adolfo Bioy Casares, the author, was a friend and frequent collaborator with Jorge Luis Borges. Morel was Casares first major work. The book is paranoid, and scattershot, and surreal, and grasps at the mythical muse-Brooks character. It is a perfect book for me at the moment.
("Now, harassed by dirt and whiskers I cannot eradicate, feeling inordinately the weight of my years, I long for the benign presence of this woman, who is undoubtedly beautiful.")
So, I made a (few) Old Fashion.
I put some music on, Rachmaninov and, even better and perfect, Rachel's, and the sun came out, and the birds started chirping. I even stopped and drew a quick sketch of a view from my chair out the window to the back, to the tree there and the church it's next to.
Dinner has been ordered and the sun is setting next to me, out the window, to the left.