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The Sovereignties of Invention
Matthew Battles does not write stories that move, develop or unfold. He creates worlds that hiss, snap, and rattle, and decorates them with objects that brood in black, glassine silence, or crumble into dusty revelation. Characters are left to grab at scraps of reality sent whipping about them at hurricane force. Ideas "run faster than memory can sieve them from the flow," leaving vaporous reverie to fill the vacuum - dogs populate trees, demolition men bear holy forgeries, and a slick dark box siphons off synaptic vibrations.
In "The Dogs in the Trees," man's best friends deliver an enigmatic rebuke. The protagonist of "The Sovereignties of Invention" is enthralled by a gadget that plumbs the depths of the stream of consciousness. In "The Manuscript of Belz," a librarian ponders the glamor of the book and the bloody limits of cultural experience. And "The Gnomon" seeks in Internet culture the same dark energies limned by Poe. Each story within waits, still, dark and deep, to yield its unique shock of uncanny truth.
In "The Dogs in the Trees," man's best friends deliver an enigmatic rebuke. The protagonist of "The Sovereignties of Invention" is enthralled by a gadget that plumbs the depths of the stream of consciousness. In "The Manuscript of Belz," a librarian ponders the glamor of the book and the bloody limits of cultural experience. And "The Gnomon" seeks in Internet culture the same dark energies limned by Poe. Each story within waits, still, dark and deep, to yield its unique shock of uncanny truth.
- GenresFictionShort Stories
109 pages, Paperback
First published November 28, 2009
About the author
Matthew Battles
10 books39 followersMatthew Battles is a Curatorial Fellow with metaLAB, a project of Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. He lives in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 21, 2012
from publisher
Read 4/12/12 - 4/17/12
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended to readers who dig the odd and uncanny
Pgs: 109 (pdf)
Publisher: Red Lemonade (Releases May 2012)
Matthew Battles may be a new author to me, but he is not new to authordom. Back in 2003 he channeled his love of rare books and libraries and published Library: an Unquiet History (which has seen mixed reviews on Goodreads), a book that tours libraries from all over the world throughout all of time.
His latest, The Sovereignties of Invention, is a collection of short stories that seem to be suspended just beyond the reach of time and place. Steeped in the uncanny and impossible, Battles stretches our imagination with stories like Time Capsule in which two men attempt to best each other in a never ending game of chess aided by pills that, when swallowed, move you back through time in one minute increments. Or the title story, The Sovereignties of Invention, which tells the tale of the man who purchased a machine that, once inserted into your auditory canals, can record your every subconscious thought.
It's like Battles is stirring up a war between man, animal, and machine...gathering all of the elements, giving them a good wind-up, and releasing them into the arena to duke it out. Who will come out on top? How will it all end? Does man overcome the machine? Does animal outlast man? Does it even matter..?
Within this collection of eleven stories, The Dogs in the Trees, Camera Lucida, and The Unicorn were particular favorites of mine, evoking much stronger emotional connections than any of the others. For reasons unknown to the townspeople, dogs take to the trees until their eventual deaths. A family vacationing in a hand-me-down summer home discover an old Polaroid camera that shoots photos of people they've never met and places they've never been. A man stumbles across an ugly, deformed, and incredibly sad unicorn in his local cemetery and the two quickly become inseparable. These are the sort of stories that I wish I could experience from the inside... by burrowing within their pages.
Other stories, like The Gnomon and The World and the Tree, contain incredibly strong, dreamlike qualities. Sometimes so strong that you want to shake its characters awake, certain that the things they are describing cannot possibly be happening.
If you're looking for a collection of stories that will challenge your mind while changing the way you view the world, I'm pretty sure you've just found it!
And you'd be in luck, too, because TNBBC is proud to host Matthew Battles in a discussion of this very collection towards the end of next month. Why not grab a copy (or read it here) and prepare to join us?! The discussion will go live on May 15th here -
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/8...
Read 4/12/12 - 4/17/12
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended to readers who dig the odd and uncanny
Pgs: 109 (pdf)
Publisher: Red Lemonade (Releases May 2012)
Matthew Battles may be a new author to me, but he is not new to authordom. Back in 2003 he channeled his love of rare books and libraries and published Library: an Unquiet History (which has seen mixed reviews on Goodreads), a book that tours libraries from all over the world throughout all of time.
His latest, The Sovereignties of Invention, is a collection of short stories that seem to be suspended just beyond the reach of time and place. Steeped in the uncanny and impossible, Battles stretches our imagination with stories like Time Capsule in which two men attempt to best each other in a never ending game of chess aided by pills that, when swallowed, move you back through time in one minute increments. Or the title story, The Sovereignties of Invention, which tells the tale of the man who purchased a machine that, once inserted into your auditory canals, can record your every subconscious thought.
It's like Battles is stirring up a war between man, animal, and machine...gathering all of the elements, giving them a good wind-up, and releasing them into the arena to duke it out. Who will come out on top? How will it all end? Does man overcome the machine? Does animal outlast man? Does it even matter..?
Within this collection of eleven stories, The Dogs in the Trees, Camera Lucida, and The Unicorn were particular favorites of mine, evoking much stronger emotional connections than any of the others. For reasons unknown to the townspeople, dogs take to the trees until their eventual deaths. A family vacationing in a hand-me-down summer home discover an old Polaroid camera that shoots photos of people they've never met and places they've never been. A man stumbles across an ugly, deformed, and incredibly sad unicorn in his local cemetery and the two quickly become inseparable. These are the sort of stories that I wish I could experience from the inside... by burrowing within their pages.
Other stories, like The Gnomon and The World and the Tree, contain incredibly strong, dreamlike qualities. Sometimes so strong that you want to shake its characters awake, certain that the things they are describing cannot possibly be happening.
If you're looking for a collection of stories that will challenge your mind while changing the way you view the world, I'm pretty sure you've just found it!
And you'd be in luck, too, because TNBBC is proud to host Matthew Battles in a discussion of this very collection towards the end of next month. Why not grab a copy (or read it here) and prepare to join us?! The discussion will go live on May 15th here -
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/8...
April 10, 2012
R.John Xerxes I felt that the major theme of the stories had to do with the unalterable ambiguity that accompanies all technology. More than anything else, these stories seem to deal with the imposition and extension of new modes of seeing (Camera Lucide), thinking (sovereignties), experiencing art (manuscript of belz), and most damningly the slavish attraction of the next gadget fad (the gnomon).
The fact that so many of the stories are fated and exist in a sort of disappointed space, seems inevitable, doesn't it, given the expectation promised by most innovation. What is lost by each potential gain.
While these stories are entertaining, they owe a great debt to Borges, and any such debt, ultimately, implodes among the narrative structures. A very quick read, which occasionally was slowed by awkward prose or clunky storytelling - but the ideas are at the core of each story.
The fact that so many of the stories are fated and exist in a sort of disappointed space, seems inevitable, doesn't it, given the expectation promised by most innovation. What is lost by each potential gain.
While these stories are entertaining, they owe a great debt to Borges, and any such debt, ultimately, implodes among the narrative structures. A very quick read, which occasionally was slowed by awkward prose or clunky storytelling - but the ideas are at the core of each story.
November 22, 2012
Battles draws comparisons to Borges, but it seems to be because of his subject matter, not his linguistic dexterity. A more fruitful comparison might be to Steven Millhauser. Although there is some beautiful writing here, and some interesting ideas and allegories, centered mainly around the impact of technology, the collection as a whole isn't as thrilling or as horrifying as the single Bradbury story, "The Veldt".
February 4, 2013
A collection of short stories that range from the striking and clever (Sovereignties of Invention, Camera Lucida, Unicorn) to absurd (Provisional Description...). Sometimes the author takes our recent technological advances a little too seriously in his stories. Camera Lucida is by far the strongest in the collection because it subtly hints at the broken relationships surrounding the story. The few gems in the collection are certainly worth it.
January 2, 2013
I enjoyed these stories. There were a couple clunkers but the first three especially were right up my alley. Gloomy science fiction stories that are wordy and a little bit dense, but they paid off in ways that hit my sweet spot.
May 12, 2012
This is a wonderful collection of short stories that will entice you and make you think.
March 27, 2013
Curious, curious book. Very surprising short stories not too far off the path of events that may come to pass, or have. I gave this to my short-story-writer friend.
August 29, 2014
loved the language used. master vocabulist.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews