The protagonist-narrator of The Invented Part and The Dreamed Part
returns to find an answer the question: how does a writer remember? In
particular, how does a he--a writer who no longer writes but can't stop
reading and rereading himself--remember.
The Writer takes us hurtling through the refracted funhouse of his
recursive and referential-maniac mind with a host of debut performances
and redux appearances: the howling ghost of electricity and the
defective Mr. Trip; the wuthering and heightened Penelope and her lost
son; 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner; the absent Pertusato,
Nicolasito and the omnipresent IKEA; the dead Colma, the deceased ZZYZX,
the departed Nothing, and the immortal Sad Songs; the irrealist Vladimir
Nabokov and the surrealist Karmas; Wish You Were Here playing on
(im)mobil(izing) phones and Dracula being invited in; the disturbed
Uncle Hey Walrus and parents who are models but not at all model
parents; The Beatles and The Beatles; a nonexistent country of origin
and a city in flames; an unforgettable night that wants nothing more
than to be rewritten; and so many more accelerated particles and
freewheeling fragments and interlinked cells searching for a storyline
to give them some structure, some meaning.
With mordant wit, capacious intelligence, and vertiginous prose, The
Remembered Part closes Rodrigo Fresán's sprawling tryptic novel. A
novel that has at its heart the three component parts of literary
creation, the engines that drive the writing of fictional lives and the
narration of real works of art: invention, dream, and memory. It is a
masterpiece by one of contemporary literature's most daring and
innovative writers.
