The
Morels
by Christopher Hacker (SoHo Press, 368 Pages, $29.95) is a sometimes
difficult, often brilliant, and disturbing novel which examines the
role of art and the artist within the context of a confused and
difficult family during the period from the counter culture days of
the 1960's to the near present. Narrated by an unnamed
observer/friend of the Morel family, it follows the central character
Arthur Morel as he publishes a second novel he calls the "The
Morels" creating a constant confusion and strain between the
real writer Arthur Morel and the Arthur Morel character who becomes
mired in almost unspeakable behavior which rips his family life to
shreds.
While
in the process of assembling an independent film, the narrator meets
a person in the hallway of his building who greets him as a long lost
friend and gives him a copy of his new book. As the narrator looks at
the name of the book, the name and his experience with the author,
Arthur Morel, comes flooding back for him. He had attended the
Manhattan Conservatory of Music with Arthur, where Arthur was a
musician of unparalleled brilliance, creativity, and artistic
courage. As their graduation recital arrives, Arthur expresses his
creativity in such a way it leads to his expulsion from conservatory
and the two lose contact. With the publication of Arthur's second
novel and its catostrophic outcomes, the film team decides to create
a documentary film about Arthur, who sends them to meet his parents
in their once Hippy home carriage house on the lower east side if
Manhattan. The revelations garnered there help build a portrait of
the dysfunctional family that created what becomes Arthur Morell.
This
rather complex novel functions on several different levels, time
frames, and perspectives. At one level it draws the reader into the
complex, confused, and brilliant mind of Arthur Morel working out his
life and understandings through first his music and then his writing
while seeking to create a home and family for himself to find a sense
of normalcy. At another level the novel explores the nature of art
and the artist in contemporary society. Morel sees the role of the
artist to be taking risks, stepping out and risking failure in front
of everyone. He asks whether every performance deserves an ovation
and seeks to create performances that provokes in the same fashion
Stravinsky's ballet music for Rite of Spring did at the Paris
Opera House in 1913, causing riots and fist fights. Similarly, his
search for “truth” in novel writing risks hurting others, which
Art sees as the source of his fiction. “I'm looking for good, for
true, for dangerous,” he says. He risks, at the core of this novel,
having readers mistake his underlying truths for factual occurances,
increasing that risk by naming the characters of his second novel
after himself and his family and calling it “The Morels.” It's
also as easy to confuse his family name with the word “morals” as
it is to confuse his given name “Art” with art.
The
book begins to emerge as a meditation on art in its many forms –
music, novel, film. The novel is a solitary art that only emerges as
it is consumed. Art may also be seen as the Arthur of the round
table, seeking to save society, while his wife Penelope as Odysseus
noble wife remaining true while he goes off to wage war. The writer
examines the reactions of the people he knows, loves, and hurts as
well as the way that imagination, satisfied by writing as well as
reading no longer needs to behave in the anti-social ways the id can
lead us. Ideas can hurt, do damage, or destroy relationships. Writing
fiction is designed to build a believable world where the
unbelievable, the fantastic, the evil can take place in a fashion
that can be experienced seemingly without danger. But what happens
when the reader understands the revelations as literal truth? “Music,
once written down, was merely a description of itself, its true
purpose a set of instructions.” Books are merely stage directions,
not actions, placing writing, too, as a form of performance. So art
fails, whether in writing, painting, or music because as soon as it's
rendered it can only hint at what the artist imagined. Performance
becomes a description of a description. These are the sorts of
questions Hacker raises throughout this novel. But readers should not
allow the thoughts and rationalizations of a tortured artist to
distract from the power of the story being told. This is a gripping
novel.
Christopher Hacker
The
Morels is a novel not for the faint of heart, the weak of stomach,or
those who prefer to stay comfortable in their own smug self
righteousness. It deals with difficult ideas in explicit language,
challenging our conceptions of truth vs. fiction, the nature of
facts, the influence of those around us for good or evil, and the
nature of art in a variety of media. Christopher Hacker has written a
haunting, thought provoking, and often difficult to read story.
Christopher Hacker received a BA in Music Composition
from the University of Michigan and an MFA from Columbia University.
His stories have appeared in Quarterly West and The Rake,
and he was a finalist for a Pushcart Prize in 2009. He currently
lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife. This is his first novel.
The Morels by Christopher Hacker (Soho
Press, 368 pages, $25.95 list price) is available from the publisher
or all the usual sources. It was provided to me by the publisher
through Edelweiss.
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