The Dreamed Part

August 15, 2019
Following on his novel The Invented Part (2017), avant-garde Argentinian writer Frésan looks into the world of dreams and finds a rich trove for interpretation. Early on, Frésan introduces us to a writer who hasn't written for so long that he's no longer really a writer at all, and "to be an exwriter isn't just to not be a writer anymore, it is, in a way, to never have been one." The books remain, sure, but now all he has to sell are his dreams. The dream world is a place of "experiments gone awry," a place where Bono can dream up a Roy Orbison song that never existed and have Orbison show up at his door to claim it, a place visited by shape-shifters such as one Stella D'Or, who might be "an intellectual rocker," or a street fighter who destroys the neon lights that get in the way of a good night's sleep, or a monster who troubles one's dreams. Themes appear, disappear, reappear; one is insomnia, which is not the subject of a book interpreting it "because there are no two insomniacs alike or systematizable." Yet it is in lack of dreams that reason produces its true monsters. The mysterious character from The Invented Part named IKEA returns to take part in the proceedings, as do Frésan-ian touchstones like Sigmund Freud and Vladimir Nabokov, the latter of whom "had a more than interesting relationship with the insomnia that pursued him and caught him and made him suffer throughout his entire life." And, of course, John Lennon, Emily Brontë, Bob Dylan, and countless other figures from cultural history roam in and out of the oneiric night along with fictional characters such as the aptly named Penelope, who does write, weaving stories about ascending Mount Karma, Alfred Hitchcock, and the Talking Heads, waking up in a start to do so, "because for Penelope, to write is the only thing left for her to write." A splendid though demanding entertainment, playful and pensive at once and beautifully written throughout.

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September 9, 2019
The sequel to The Invented Part continues the adventures of Fresán’s unnamed writer but cannot match its predecessor’s brilliance. After failing to throw himself into the Large Hadron Collider (the plot of The Invented Part), the 50-something protagonist, a critic of social media, writes a book on reading and language, and after his star fades, he battles a severe case of insomnia and writer’s block. Wide awake, he concocts scenarios that place him in a world where a phenomenon called the White Plague has robbed the world of dreams and an organization known as Onirium works to preserve the few remaining dreams by extracting them from users’ memories. The writer also remembers and reimagines his own history, including his parents’ disappearance, the strange tales of his Beatles-loving uncle, and the loss of his sister, Penelope, also a writer, who obsessed over Wuthering Heights as a child and went on to pen a series of popular books placing versions of the Brontë sisters on the moon. Less interested in traditional story lines than the way thought patterns can steer narrative, Fresán has plenty to say, yet segments drag, and some tangents fail to deliver. Some fans of The Invented Part will perhaps find enough here to find it worthwhile, but most will be disappointed.