Disappearance

by Michael Joyce

Disappearance enmeshes us in nested networks from which it is impossible to escape unchanged. The novel spins up an elegant series of labyrinthine, mirror-rimmed puzzles that seem intended not so much for solution as habitation – propositions that bring into alarming clarity the strangeness of domains we so casually memory, imagination, time. Arriving in a restless tidal flow of casually virtuosic language, the novel’s many mysteries twirl, invert, and disgorge more mysteries. As in other Joyce stories we could mention, we may have seen someone die this morning, or in the not too distant future, or at some point as yet unfixed in the viscous fore-and-backwardness of disappearing time. The narrator may be the victim, or perhaps a cybernetic detective who assumes the dead man’s memories, a version of everyone’s maze-trapped prisoner. Wayfarer, philosoph, this man may lie in the grip of dementia, or dystopian oppression, or a video game from the future – names, no doubt, for a common disorder. This is a seriously playful book, hip to all the slippery ontologies of protean path-work, evocative both of old-school games (Mindwheel, Myst) and more recent philosophical entertainments (Passage, Dear Esther, The Stanley Parable). Fans of far-sighted fiction will find parallels with Borges, Robbe-Grillet, Burroughs, Hawkes, and the newer world-games of Mark Danielewski, Steve Erickson, and Jeff Noon. Followers of the graphic novel may find sublimely paranoid resonance with visions like Warren Ellis’s Planetary or Grant Morrison’s Filth. In life as not in fiction, however, there is only ever one Michael Joyce, and Disappearance demonstrates that he is not simply a master of fictional craft, but of fiction itself, in its most vital and changing form. Joyce is a genuinely transformational artist capable not simply of imagining other worlds, but of extending the range of imagination itself. This is a book that may change not just the way you see fiction, but indeed the way you see. – Stuart Moulthrop

Genres: Fiction

268 pages, Paperback

First published October 17, 2012

Reviews

[Mark William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Painful. Stunning assessment of grief and its obliteration of time, location and identity.

A review

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/c...

And reading around about Michael Joyce I encountered this

http://electronicbookreview.com/threa...

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I may be a bit biased, but here goes: This is one of my favorite books of the year.

It starts out slow. The preface, by Stuart Moulthrop, was a bit overwrought, and you'd be okay skipping it. The slow start, the boredom, you suspect, may be intentional. But it almost lost me, who is an admittedly patient reader, especially for Michael, willing to give him a lot of rope with which to hang himself and neighboring parties. About 40 pages in I was on the cusp of leaving it for another read, but soldiered through, and it was at about that mark where the story took off. Unraveled, to a degree, and picked up the pace. The awkward entrance into the hot tub was complete: the tentative sensitive portions of your body had been burned sufficiently with little enough lasting damage that it now felt comfortable, right. Or perhaps, more in line with a theme from the book, you, the reader, had learned the controls of this new video game, and now were fully immersed in the experience.

If you've read any Joyce before it covers common themes from his other works. I still think I rank The War Outside of Ireland as one of my favorite books of all time, but the more time I've spent thinking about how this book unraveled and came together in the end I find myself appreciating it more and more. It feels very hyper textual, and I can imagine Michael writing the bulk of the work, with all its intertwining strands, in Storyspace, which is where his more famous hyperfictions have been created, of course.

And, like his other works, this one is beautiful, elegiac, and lyrical. In addition to disappearance there is the other side of the coin; loss, that figures heavily. It may not be for everybody, but if you can slog through the opening scene setting and give yourself over, you'll find a brilliant read.

[Ariel Braverman]

full discloser, I designed the cover. :)

[April]

Unlike anything I've ever read before. A man wanders through lives in search of something in ever changing worlds that stay the same just enough to make sense.