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- [00:01]
Michael Morola
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [00:05]
Holly Gattery
Hello everyone and welcome to nbn. I'm your host, Holly Gattery, and I am joined today by the miraculous Michael Morola, who has recently written a phenomenal genre bending, I'd argue Brain Breaking in the Best Possible Way book. How about this? Which is published with At Bay Press. It's a little after the middle of the 21st century. A loving couple, Elspeth and Mary Beth are both shocked and excited when a stroller with identical twins is left on their back deck with a recorded message that warns them not to return the babies or they could face arrest for kidnapping. Using false starts, footnotes, direct approaches to the reader lists, questions about who the author or authors might be, and even a dose of self criticism, the story unwinds from that point as Elle and Mar work hard to create a family. Under the circumstances, this becomes even more difficult when they discover the babies come with unusual features that perhaps might explain why they were left in the first place. And it all takes place in a disintegrating world and that may leave humans incapable of telling their stories. Here's a little bit more about Michael Morola. Michael is the author of a clutch of novels, plays, film scripts and short story and short story and poetry collections. His publications include a novella, the Last Newsvendor, which was winner of the 2020 Hamilton Literary Award for Fiction, as well as three Bersani Prizes. The novel Berlin was published in 2021, the poetry election collection The House on 14th Avenue in 2014, and the short story collection Lessons in Relation Dyads was published in 2016. His latest poetry collection, at the End of the World, was shortlisted for the 2022 Hamilton Literary Award. Michael, you now live in beautiful Dananaqua on a farm outside of the township. And I also live in rural Ontario. So welcome to to the show from your rural homestead to mine.
- [02:19]
Michael Morola
Thank you very much. I look out the window and yeah, I see a field of pine trees and snow. So yeah, it's nice though. It's nice to be out in the country. I mean, you know, there's advantages and disadvantages of course, as you know, you know, but we miss that movement and that sort of thrill of being in the city because we spent my family, my wife and I have spent most of our lives in, in cities but this gave the opportunity came to move out here with my daughter. Actually she's the one who owns the farm and she invited us to come and stay with her and we, we've been here ever since. We're not going to leave now they can't kick us out anymore, so we're, we're here.
- [03:03]
Holly Gattery
That is parent goals for me to live with my children all. Always. Every now and then I think that I'm a calm, cool, collected parent, especially after my rather strict upbringing. And then I start sounding like the father from my big fat Greek wedding, like, why do you want to leave me?
- [03:19]
Michael Morola
Well, we're, we're three. We're three generations here, actually. We, we have, we have two of our grandchildren living here as well. So, so and, and, and five dogs and, and a cat. And, you know, so, yeah, it's, it gets quite busy and sometimes, you know, there's some little, little, little clashes and, you know, that sort of thing. But, but yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's. I think it's becoming more usual. I was, I was about to say it's unusual for generations to multiple generations to be living together, but I, I think it's becoming more common now because of, well, part of it because of the economic situation. Right. A lot of, A lot of the kids, my grandkids, for example, they're having a tough time finding jobs. They're having a, you know, I mean, trying to earn a living and, and paying rents. That's, and, you know, buying a house. They can, for. They. Can they. For. They tell me we're not, we have no, there's no way we could ever buy a house. And I said, well, yeah, there might be, you know, when, when your nonna and I go across to the other side or something. But yeah, yeah, I mean, it's becoming more common. And yeah, we're good. We're good with it.
- [04:32]
Holly Gattery
I'm going to make my children listen to this conversation so they can, they can see it's not just me. I'm not planting, you know, doom and gloom into their head. It's the world. And I, you know, speaking of worlds that are changing and in this case disintegrating, let's talk about where your book began. How about this? Because I could not have predicted what I was getting into, and I was so delighted. But I wonder where this juicy little mind nugget came from.
- [05:05]
Michael Morola
People keep asking me that and I have a lot of trouble coming up with it. It's a combination of things. I have a previous novel where I wrote about a couple of the same situation. It hasn't been published. It's my masterpiece and I'm trying to find publication for it, but this particular one, well, I, you Know, the, the I, I don't want to give away secrets. That's the problem sometimes with this. But I started by thinking about a couple of specular fiction novels that, that talked about, you know, AI taking over. Taking over, taking over the world and, and, and running things. So, and then we started getting all these, all this material about generative AI and, you know, creating novels. And the best thing they do is to send emails to authors trying to convince them that they're going to promote their books so that you no longer will have a job. But I started thinking about that sort of thing. I said, I said, okay, so what would happen if I say I have an AI collective in the. It has to be in the future. So I put the AI collective in the 22nd century, just the start of the 22nd century. And the thing is that in that world, they now have taken over the world. The AI runs, runs the world. So this AI collective is now going to be writing the stories that normally would be written by human beings. So that was part of it. The other part is that most of my writing is, as you say, genre bending, but it's mostly metafictional. And so I used that part of it as well in this. And you know, I've written a lot of metaphysical material, so it came fairly, fairly easy for me to speak directly to the reader, to do footnotes, which I found fun to do. So that sort of thing all came together. And then I said to myself, well, you know, and this is the other thing I always preach, I preach about this whenever I give presentations on fiction. So I say that no matter how sophisticated, no matter how metafictional piece of work is, how cutting edge or whatever words you want to use for, has to have some heart at the center of it. And, and, and you know, so I said, okay, well, you know, what is the, what is the. There's nothing more heart in quotes than, than, than, than, than, than a family than, you know, a couple that, that would like a family. Of course, since they're, they're, they're a lesbian couple, they're, they're not going to create their own family. You know, they, they probably could, but it wouldn't their. From, you know, their family. So that said, okay, so what would happen if this. Suddenly discover this, this baby carriage on the, on the back deck and nobody knows where it comes from and from there Elspeth and, and, and Mary Beth start a family. They, they, they, they, they create this in a world where, you know, everything outside their family is becoming less Foundations of even the buildings in. In some cases are starting to crumble because of the. Well, we used to call it acid rain, but, you know, these days, it's. It's, you know, some form of climate change. So all of those things came. Came together, and. And. And I guess that's. That's, you know, that's how this came about.
- [09:35]
Holly Gattery
So that makes perfect sense to me, though. It's really hard, I think, for a lot of authors to think about where exactly something started. I mean, I'm not saying everyone. People may have moments of utter clarity and, you know, lightning in a bottle where they can pinpoint exactly where everything started. But I find with me and a lot of other authors, it's kind of a. A confluence of life and things happening and influences that start something like this. And I want to talk about the very, very start of your novel, the dedication. Now, I love a good dedication, and I love a good dedication. That is not perhaps what people would expect. I've seen some authors dedicate their books very strangely, and I always enjoy that. So your book is dedicated to our esteemed and revered ancestor, ChatGPT, who got the ball rolling, who broke the Turing test, who made us aware of what and who we are, and more importantly, what and who we could be. Now, there's also a dedication to who I'm assuming are people in your actual fast. But it's, of course, for most devoted readers and fans and that it goes on with perhaps what is a less wry dedication. But I was wondering if you could speak about that, because I. I was talking about this dedication to someone, and they were really surprised. Why would you read a book that's made with ChatGPT or AI? Mike, no, it's. Oh, my God. Have we not been able to so recognize satire anymore? Have we. Have we disintegrated so far? And I found it very obvious what the dedication was doing, but I realized that maybe a lack of general readership among the general population has made them unaware of this kind of mode. And I was wondering if you talk to us about this dedication, which I think sets the stage perfectly for the playfulness we are going to encounter within your novel.
- [11:29]
Michael Morola
Yeah, I mean, you know, as authors these days, we have quite a bit of experience with AI and AI trying to muscle into our territory. So I thought that would be that sort of dedication. First of all, I thought it was appropriate because supposedly the novel is written by an AI collective from the 22nd century, and AI collectively got permission from the prime. The big boss. The big AI boss. To actually do this and that doesn't show up in this book. But I do have a sequel to how about this? And right now it's titled how about that? In that one it talks a bit more about how the. This AI collector got permission to actually write this, this, this, this, this Nolla. So I, I thought, you know, originally I, that, that the dedication was just, just to, to the normal dedication. But then I, you know, I following all this stuff with what's happening out there and you know, the authors of getting really worried about, about their material being stolen and, and being, you know, used as for monetizing it, you know, in many ways. So I thought it might have been a kind of a bit of a joke maybe a little bit of an inside, an inside joke to have this dedication kind of, you know, tongue in cheek, obviously, which these days, as you point out, sometimes the difference between tongue in cheek, the difference between satire and and, and what's actually going on in the world is is, is not that not being separated anymore in many, in many way. In many ways. I mean, when we read Donald Trump's blasts on his, on his, on his Social Truth or whatever it's called, is that, how do you distinguish that from, from satire, you know, when, when you, when you actually, when you actually read that, that stuff. But the dedication is a bit of a joke, but also I think in some ways does warn us warn us about, you know, what is happening and what. In some ways. I mean, you know, nobody wants to be as you say, doomsday. You know, we, we're not, we're not as human beings and especially as writers, we want to, to, to, to be the creators. We want to be the ones who, who, who, you know, advance things, advance culture, advance the way that, you know, human beings should, should rise up above, you know, our, our so called, you know, animal nature, which I think animal nature is pretty good in most cases. Tell your truth better than some of the other natures that, that people have. But yeah, so I mean, you know, the, the, the dedication was was, was done just, just as a bit of a bit of a joke and you know, to let, to let, to let people know that where the, where the novella was going as well.
- [14:52]
Holly Gattery
So yeah, I, I agree with what you said about the inability to distinguish satire and where, I mean I can be as critical as of like the illiterate population as I want to be. But some things are truly happening with people in positions of power where you could think, well, you know, if Swift had written like while everyone's starving. Eat the children. Is he serious? Like, it would almost seem like in this day and age, like, yeah, maybe this person is actually being serious. Because it's become so absurd, it's almost difficult to get a handle on truths. And I'm trying to use truths in plural and not some milestones notion of truth. But, you know, multiple truths can exist and feel valid, but they're so. It feels absolutely surreal, which is why I really loved this novel. And the absurdity and playfulness are just so well honed without taking away from the very serious message of the book. And I have a theory and I think that absurdity, when well done in literature or any kind of art, is a beautiful clarifying agent. So it's. When added to the solution, in this case the book, it can help us see things more clearly. Even though when somebody thinks of something being absurd, they may not think of it as something that is particularly clear on. They might think of it as muddled or frivolous. But I actually found the absurdity in this book incredibly useful for to be grounding. And I was wondering if you could talk about using absurdity in your story because there is a lot of it. I mean, even the relationship between Elle and Mar is really absurd.
- [16:40]
Michael Morola
Well, you know, I, that I, I. One of my favorite authors and that is Samuel Beckett. And you know, I mean, his plays are based on. On. On. On. On. On the absurd, you know, the, the theater of the absurd. And, and to me, yeah, I mean, in many ways what, what that does is it not. It brings things down to. To almost their elemental state. It's, you know, it's almost as if you take away a lot of the complications that. A lot of the nuances in many cases that sometimes hide that kernel, that nugget of truth of some kind of truth that's in the middle of it. And the use of absurdity. Other people have to judge whether my use of absurdity is that way or not. But the ideal in the use of the absurd is to. Is to bring things down to some type of kernel, some type of elemental state where you can see it, it's there, brilliant in front of you. And you know, I mean, if you look at, let's say the paintings of Salvador Dali, for example, you know, you say, yeah, I mean, that's, you know, he uses absurd images to get. To get really strong truths across. So I mean, in mine, what I think I wasn't really consciously trying to be absurd, but in some ways, I guess it turned out that way. The relationship between Al And Mar, to me, I didn't find that all that absurd. I mean, the relationship between the two of them, the way they, they treat each other, I, I thought I, I was thinking looking at that as a kind of very loving relationship, the kind of relationship where they, they, they kind of meld into each other and, and one complements the other. You know, you have one who's, who's, who's much more, is kind of a bit, a bit slighty, you know, out there. You know, she, she's, she's a professor of, of, of the, of English lit and also has a minor in computer science, which is an important thing to remember. And, and then, and then, you know, Mar is a cpa, so, you know, there's. The two of them kind of bring together parts of the world as well. And, and, and, and you know, and, and the way they raise, the raise. Ariel and Malik is not all that absurd, although there's absurd elements when they clash, when they confront the principal about not allowing Ariel and Malik to switch clothes between classes so that they would. So that nobody can tell who is who at that point. So I mean, that kind of thing is there. And also I do a list of when Elspeth is dying. I treat it as a list of things. And yeah, that's absurd, but it's trying to make an important point about dying and how people react to dying. Instead of having a kind of a blubbery or slobbery or, you know, the kinds of things that happen at funerals. This is a list of things. So yeah, I mean, but the absurdity, if it works, if the absurd works, then yeah, like, like Jonathan Swift, you know, I mean, it points out larger truths and Swift was trying to point out that political truths about England, England and Ireland was basically, is what he was trying to do. So I mean, mine does not go into that type of politics. But, but at least in, in the relationships, in human relationships, there's, there's, you know, there is a lot of absurdity involved in it if you pull yourself back from it, right, and observe how people act and react. And loving couples are probably the most absurd of them all because, you know, it's not expected when you think about it. I mean, you ask yourself the question, how and why do people fall in love with the quotes? You know, what exactly is it that brings these two or three people now talk about? I mean, nowadays it's a polyamory. You know, there's, there's a, there's a different numbers involved as well. Everybody loves everyone, so I mean, how does thing. How do these things come. Come together? I think there is quite a strong element of absurdity in. In. In human life itself. So if it's in, you know, if part of it gets filters into. Into into my novella, then, yeah, I'm happy. It looks great.
- [22:28]
Holly Gattery
Yeah. I mean, I. I should be clear, especially since words are kind of my. Like Elle and Mar and the relationship they have with their children is not absurd at its base level at all. What is absurd about the relationship, and I should be clear, is the way that the narrators are. Are interpreting it and viewing it. So there's one part says, how about that afternoon long ago, the first time Elle and Mar are called upon to change Ariel and Malik's soggy diapers, awkwardly stumbling a bit with unpracticed hands. And then it goes on like that is the nar. What is absurd is that this soulless. The narrator is soulless. The narrator lacks humanity. So the narrator trying to replicate or mimic humanity in its narration is hilarious, actually. And for me, that. That's why even. Even I thought, yes, I should be absolutely clear that their relationship is. There's no relationship between humans. That strikes me as absurd. It's all very genuine and real and lovely, but the way that it's presented to us, as you said, is totally absurd. Like it's, you know, there's these creatures, there's this entity or entities narrating the lives of people that it can mimic like an automaton or can try to understand, but is not understanding. And that makes it very, very funny and also very, very scary.
- [24:07]
Michael Morola
It does. It does. Yeah.
- [24:09]
Holly Gattery
So I was wondering if you would read to us from. From your book before I get into a few more questions.
- [24:15]
Michael Morola
Okay. Yeah, sure. I can read the second section, I think. I think this is where actually. This is where the babies are found. This is where the babies are found. So, yeah. So the section is called Here come the Foundlings. Surprise, shock, double surprise. And then there's a thing in there. I have one of these in every chapter wherein, dear still jaunty reader, you will uncover a sequence of events that could easily lead to a catastrophe if not handled with care. So of late, it being a form of springtime in both the fast crumbling city and its barely hanging on suburban outliers, the feral alley cats rumored to be escapees from gone right GMO lab experiments with an interest in synthetic testosterone as a way to improve elite soldiers kill ratios and billionaires sperm counts and vice versa have manifested particularly ardent, feisty attitudes, especially on the increasing number of muggy sluggish mugger fied evenings when one looks out the window to find more than a hint of Prufrockian fog dancing around the base of overwrought street lights giving them the streetlights that is the appearance of being the only real objects in the multiverse as they inhabit as they invite harakiri attacks from pesticide resistant mayflies who insist on being on the bright side when emulating when emulating themselves. So the wailing at her back door, which has become an almost nightly occurrence, comes as no surprise for Elle, short for Elspeth, a tall pajama clad woman in her mid to late 30s with with close cropped hair and a distinct lack of makeup on a pleasant round well nourished as they say in Murder Mystery Morgue's face to the point where she has developed a ritual that consists of a pushing with her butt against the spring loaded outward opening back door, b stepping out while one foot keeps the door from slamming shut behind her and c quickly splashing a bucket of cold water into the night in the hope the shock will dampen, if only temporarily, the tom's desire. But as the bold typeface header would indicate on this particular evening, Elle seems the one in for a shock when she flings the door open and prepares to douse the freestyle feline frolic hers. So for the record, here's how Elle would have prepared the story in case of a possible investigation, criminal or simply bureaucratic, and also how she explains events to herself and to her partner, scheduled to make a grand entrance in section three. I was expecting snarling cats, or maybe in the clamoring throes of lustful ar amor with one or two paramours, one of whom I'd come to identify as Sir Eglamour. What else could it be? Howling cats yesterday, howling cats today. Isn't that what inductive logic tells us? But there, there on our backyard deck, underneath the motion sensor detector, there was the real source of the wailing which had in the meantime stopped infants, two of them side by side in a stroller, two infants tightly wrapped in blankets they used to call them swaddling clothes, no, that were a combination of pink and blue, like whoever had done the wrapping couldn't make up their mind. Two infants side by side in a mauve colored ultra modern altogether spiffy triangular wheeled two seater tann random stroller. I must admit to a double take followed by the removal of a hand from across my mouth and furtive glances to ensure no neighbor was surveying surveilling Sorry, I mean watching too much Elizabethan age research. Joking of course, as the word was first used in 1884, long after Elizabethan age. Anyway. I hesitated for a moment, trying to decide what next to do. But what could I do? What choice did I have? I I wasn't going to leave them on the back deck in the damp and dark, possibly to be mauled by hungry and or horny cats, possibly to die a slow death from starvation. So I touched the stroller again to make sure it wasn't a hallucination, then wheeled them into the house, back heel kicked the door shut behind me and suddenly realized I hadn't been breathing the entire time, had been holding my breath as if it was going to be my last. So I took a deep one, in and out, and then I took several more. I didn't say be still, my beating heart, but my Fitbit Ultra Versa V24 2i smartwatch, the one I got as a 10th anniversary gift from my ever loving and thoughtful partner, did tell me that the beat of my heart had jumped rapidly. Pulse rate at 118sweetie. Time to relax. Take five, as you know. Or maybe you don't. I've always been one to obey sensible requests, especially when they're voiced in the melodious and calming tone my partner uses when I'm harried or acting headless. So I pulled up a chair from the kitchen table and sat myself down before the stroller. But I still couldn't believe it and so I almost immediately jumped up again and headed towards the bedroom so I could wake my sweetie and share the news, only to remember as I was about to open the bedroom door that my partner was out of town, meeting one of the more difficult clients, a cattle prod manufacturer who insisted on face to face meetings despite sophisticated holographic possibilities for fear his competitors have compromised his electronics and she was and wasn't due to return until mid morning. So I went back to the stroller, looked around and then peeked in like I was still having trouble believing what I saw, what was before me. I touched the stroller, shook it gently and felt it rocking on its silent heavy duty springs. Definitely not a mirage. I looked in. Two babies. I shook my head hard back and forth and eased myself once more into the chair, at the same time shuffling it closer to the stroller, maybe for fear it might vanish if I didn't stay close, if I didn't keep my eye on it. And that's where I remained, in a sleep wake dream state and admitting to A massive smile on my face, much resembling some Cheshire cat for the rest of the night. And that's it. That's the story of how these two babies ended up in our house. It was like a dream. A dream wherein all my wishes came true. A dream that washed away all of my disappointments and frustrations. One that I hoped and prayed, metaphorically speaking, of course, as my belief in higher beings extends only as far as generative artificial intelligence would still be there in the morning. At which point I knew that as much as I dreaded it, a decision had to be made and the authorities would have to be informed. The end.
- [31:12]
Holly Gattery
Thank you so much. I have to ask because, like, so we, we have this narrator, and like, at points it's like, wait, am I being advertised to, like, obviously not you as the writer, but is the narrator trying to get me to buy a Fitbit or other products? And then these little, these little, like, just minor but very. Both funny and disturbing and telling segues where it's like, oh, we're going to start talking about a bit of history here, or about something else. The way that an algorithm would pull in similar interests or related themes or topics or ads or posts or influencers. It's like, what is happening? But it's, you know, exactly what's happening. As a reader, I felt, I was like, oh, this is so. And I don't use this word often, but masterfully done. But then I thought to myself, michael must have a lot of faith in readers. And I don't know if I would have that much faith in readers. But then I thought, well, maybe it's that if somebody's picking up this novella published by a Canadian press, a very wonderful Canadian press, maybe he figures that, you know, perhaps these aren't the same people who read exclusively, you know, commercial. More commercial fiction or smut. And I am someone who reads commercial fiction in smut, so no disrespect there, but I was, I was wondering about, like, how much faith did you have in your reader? This is a craft question, because I feel like you had a lot.
- [32:44]
Michael Morola
I, Yeah, I have a lot, and I have none. So, I mean, you know, I, because I write for myself, this is, you know, I, I know I, I want my work to be out there and that people appreciate it and all of that, but it's not my major concern. I, I, you know, I, I always tell when, you know, authors or, you know, again, when I give presentations. And, you know, and one of the things is, okay, what do you, what, what do you want to tell an author what's, what's important for an aspiring author, for example, to, to, to, to take on, you know, and, and, and I always, and I say, I, I never say, you know, study your audience for some reason. I, it's not, it's not something that, that comes up for me. What, what I do say is that an author, in order to really make a difference is that the author, an author, aside from having the, the, the skills, the, the talent, the determination to keep on going and that sort of thing, but they have to have a vision. They have to have a vision that, you know, that, that, that, that evolves through in their writing. So that's, that's what I do. And, and you know, and, and sometimes I do worry as, as you point out about, you know, readers not getting it. But, but I, I say to myself what, that's, I'm sorry, you know, if, if a reader doesn't get it, there's not much I could do about it. And, and, and you know, and I'm not going to, you know, cut myself back. I'm not going to become James Patterson. In other words, to, to just, to, to have bestsellers, just, Just, you know, to please an audience of some kind. So that question doesn't really come up to me for me when I'm writing afterwards sometimes, because obviously you know, your writing has to be published. It has to go through, has to be filtered through the hands of a publishing house. And there are a lot of publishing houses that would not publish something something like this because, because they have, you know, they, they do their, they do the back end thing where, where they actually hand hand the manuscript over to the, to the marketing people first before, before approval is given on the editorial side. But you know, I mean, I, none of my work would ever get published by any of those, any of publishers in the first place. So I really don't, I'm not that concerned about it. I do appreciate my audience and the people who take their time to actually read, you know, the material. And so, you know, those are the ones that I feel for. Those are the ones that I find are important to me and those who aren't taking the taking. I think most readers, if given given take, given the time, you know, they would get get in quotes what, what, what, what I'm saying. And some, on some level or other, I mean not, not all levels, but on some level they might they would get it. And, and, but you need, sometimes you need, you need to take the time to, to, to, to work through these Things, you know, I mean, but aside from that. No, I, I, I don, Play down, let's put it that way to, to an audience and then because I think, I think readers are, are smarter than, than, than we've been led to believe in many cases. And, and the, the material that's being given to them is, is just, just so that people can make, can make a lot of money off of it. You know, it's not, it's not because the readers are, and this is a problem that's around, that's across the entire, it's not just when it comes to authors. Right. It has to do with political systems. Everything, everything, you know, is in some way dumbed down for some people because they need to sell, they need to, they need to make money off of it.
- [36:51]
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- [37:22]
Holly Gattery
As you're talking, there's a flurry of thoughts and just nodding happening here, but one of the things that came to mind was that I didn't. In no way, shape or form did I find your book opaque. Like I knew what was happening. I understood when the narrator was trying to manipulate me. It was like a playful banter. It was like, no, no, no, no, you don't. Nice try. I'm, you know, I'm on this and I, I, I, I love that. I love that I felt like I had to be engaged and a little bit wary of the narrator. Now, maybe another reader wouldn't feel that way, but I was. And anytime I was unsettled, I thought, good, I should be unsettled. Look around at the world. I should be unsettled of this voice telling me what is happening. And I should be critical of what it is trying to present to me and what it is saying is happening. Because in your novel, and I will get to this, there's a breakdown, let's say, of the narrative voice. And I don't want to give anything away, but there is a breakdown and we will get to that. The other thing I was thinking about when you were talking is about how I was speaking with one of my friends. Who's a screenwriter. And he was saying that they have been instructed to, in the script, in the dialogue, explain more like in. It's not an organic way people actually speak. It's actually moving away from that because the, the producers, powers that be are assuming that people are multi screening. So they're on their phones at the same time the TV's on. So they have to be able to understand what's going on without subtle cues of expression or anything. They have to be able just through the dialogue. So the dialogue has to include cues that would never actually be said. And again, like dialogue in books or, or film or whatever. It's. It's not often it's a rep. It's a representation of how we talk in real life, but it's not always very based on how it's an artistic representation of dialogue. The artistic merit of it could be debated all day long. I suppose it depends on the show, but. Or the book. But my point is, is that now it's even moving further away from even trying to look real or even trying to mimic reality because the producers or whoever are assuming that nobody's really paying attention, which, which is insulting. So I thought about that. But I do want to go back to what I was talking about, about what I consider in my mind what I think of when I was reading this novel novella, that there is a breakdown where whatever the narrator or narrators is trying to convince us is happening or has been happening, starts to disintegrate. It felt very Terminator, very Skynet, but still in a playful sense where I didn't feel like Sarah Connor was going to burst onto the screen or anything like that or onto the book. But I did. I was fascinated by that decision, which felt that while being the most natural thing that could happen, also was totally unexpected to me as a reader. I'm trying to talk about it without talking about it. So I would just love for you to attempt to talk about what I consider the breakdown of the narrative voice and your reasoning behind it.
- [40:53]
Michael Morola
Well, I think what, I think what you're talking about is, is another form, is another form of, of the metafictional. Metafictional approach to writing. Really. I mean, there's a, you know, when you say a breakdown, in many ways, I think what, what, what you're trying to say is that all of a sudden it turns out it, it's. There's. That the story is just a story that, you know and, and, and, and, and that, you know, that. That connects directly to, to, to my. To My thinking, when it comes to. And the fact that storytelling, that stories are not the external world, they're not a representation of the external world. They are their own creation. They are a creation within the external world. So that is part of what I try to do here. We have to remember that from the beginning, the idea was that this was being written by an AI collective from the 22nd century. So it says right from the beginning, the reader should be thinking that, okay, this is a story being told by this collective. And so how are they going to tell the story? Well, the ending. The. The way. The way it ends is. Is. Has a double. There's a. There's a couple of. Of things that happen at the end as which I. Again, you know, you want to. You don't want to give. Give too much away, but there's a kind of. Yeah, like a collapse of. Of the whole thing. However you say there's a. There's a collapse. But, you know, I say, as a reader, I say, well, it's happened. So whether it collapses or not at the end doesn't really affect the story itself. It doesn't affect what went on with Elspeth and Marybeth and Ariel and Malik. It doesn't affect that in that way. What it does affect is the reader's idea of this being disconnected from the physical reality, disconnected from the external world. So, you know, and that's. To me, that is the ultimate metafictional approach. I did a similar thing in my joint. Joint short stories. Linked short stories, sorry, in the Julio Metaphysics 3. And in that it's a story about. In the first part of it, Julio is actually controlled by the creator of the stories he's told what to do. He's pushed around. He's forced to go visit a friend that he knew from high school who is now dying of AIDS. And this is set in the 1980s, dying of AIDS. So the first half of the Thing is all about the creator, me controlling this poor character, just forcing him all over the place. In the second part of the collection, he breaks away. The character tells the creator to fuck off, basically, to go to hell, and he goes off on his own. The trouble with that, of course, is when he goes off on his own, he loses his identity. He doesn't know who he is, doesn't know where he is. He doesn't even know the names of certain things. He has to try to recreate all of that. And so is he in a better situation, worse situation? I don't know. It's a good Question, do we need a creator or can we create ourselves? Basically is the question. So, you know, those kinds of things are what I like to work with. And so the ending of how about this? Is a similar thing. As I say, there's a sequel, so the characters, they're not vanishing. So maybe that's a help anyway.
- [45:31]
Holly Gattery
Yeah. And I think it speaks to this, really, for me, my reaction to this disintegration or breakdown, which again, is also not that at all, because as you pointed out from the very beginning, we know what we're listening to. We know what we're reading. We know who our narrator is. And the fact that I somehow believed them.
- [45:59]
Michael Morola
Well, that. That's the heart. That's the. I think, the heart of the heart. That's. If a story has the heart, has a heart to it, then, yeah, it's difficult not to believe. And it hurts you when. When things happen. Yeah.
- [46:12]
Holly Gattery
I was like, no. But also, this is what I get for putting my faith in artificial intelligence. It was a lesson. There was a lesson here. So I felt like it was a very powerful lesson. My penultimate question for you is about the book's length. It's a novella, which is one of the things that drew me to this book before I even knew the premise of it. New novel by Michael Morola. So I knew you as an author. I admired you as an author. But it was novella that got me, because I love the novella form. I think when it is done well, it is gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. And I think it's such a beautiful length that allows for writers who are masters of the distilled language to really shine. Because I've read a lot of books recently where I'm like, where was the editor in this novel? Like, there's at least 100 pages that do not need to be here, where the author is repeating themselves, where I'm bored out of my tree and it's added absolutely nothing to the story. It's. It's happened a lot lately. I've been. Granted, I've been. I've been dabbling in a lot of romanticity lately, so that might help. I try to screen. Screen books before I hand them off to my teenagers. Some of them are quite spicy, but I always hand them off anyways. It doesn't matter. But I did. I was thinking about how novellas really allow authors who are masters of understatement to shine. And I would say that you are quite adept at understatement, because understatement, of course, understatement is a reflection of Such bigger things, such bigger ideas. So novella, was this at any point a longer project or. No, I know it started as a story, but what was it? Any point where you're like, oh, I should make this longer because that's something that always occurs to me because I write quite short books. Like, I think my longest book is like just squeaks over 200 pages. And that was like me fighting for my life to get it that long.
- [48:21]
Michael Morola
I know, I know. This, this, this. Yeah, this did start as a, as a. More, more like a story. And then, and then it expanded to, to this length. I did. No, no, no time that I consider making it longer. Increasing, increasing it in some way or other. I thought. I mean, I think, you know, the idea of a narrative arc in a novella or a novel, I mean it has to be organic. There has to be. It can't, you can't just artificially, you know, try to, try to inflate the thing because then, yeah, what you get is what you were just talking about. I edit a lot of material for pay sometimes and yeah, quite often I find that there's a lot of repetition or there's material in there that doesn't quite fit and they kind of shoehorn into a novel just to increase the word count. That's, you know, it just doesn't work. You can see it right away. I mean, if you have, I mean, not everybody can see it right away. You know, you, for example, would, because you, you have a lot of experience with, with this kind of thing. So. No, I, I didn't. This was it. It was it, it started and then it, it kind of rose up and then it came back down again like, like, like. And I hope that it's an organic narrative arc. And, and again, you know, the idea of, of, of, of the sequel came to me about halfway through this when I was writing this particular novella. The idea of the sequel came to me at that point and, but that, you know, I thought about, okay, maybe maybe I should just join the two and have a, you know, 85,000 or 80, 90,000 word novel. But I decided against that because I thought that this one was complete on its own. And how about that is complete on its own too. It's going to be a search novel, a search novella. So it's a little different. But no, I never thought of increasing anything. And I have to be careful because of the way I wrote it, because of the way the narrative, the narrator writes it could, you know, I mean, don't forget that this has footnotes in it. It's got. It's got things that could expand and keep on expanding. You know, things like Elspeth's Elizabethan thing. She's a big fan of feminine writers from. From the Elizabethan period. So I could have easily expanded that, and I could have expanded the special traits, special things that Ariel and Malik share, the twins share. There's a lot of material there that could be increased and it could be added to it, but at a certain point, it becomes unbalanced. You lose that balance, and then the reader will start making snoring noises. Yeah, I mean, at a certain point, I find.
- [51:55]
Holly Gattery
I mean, yes, if somebody else did it, I agree with you. There is never a dull moment. And when I was reading this, I was saying, gosh, I think that this book needs to be given to, like, high school students in media literacy classes. But I have every faith. A high school, maybe not grade nine, although maybe them too. But, like, once you get up to, like, grade 11 or 12, I really think they'd have fun with this book. I think university students would have fun with this book because has legs. It shows range and agility in terms of style and voice, and it's funny as hell. But it's also making a very compelling case about being cautious with. With what you consume and the. The voices or the narratives you trust. And like I said, one of the most disturbing parts of this book for me was when the breakdown happened to realize that I'd. I'd been fooled. And I knew. I knew it. It's. It's like a guy who you start dating and, you know, he's a bit of a rake. And obviously I've been watching Bridgerton, a bit of a rake and a cad. But you. You think he. You trust. Anyways, you get swept up in it all, and then. And then it's exactly what you thought it was. The tiger has not changed its stripes. And I think that that was a really valuable lesson for me in reading this book. And I had. I had a lot of fun reading it, even if it humbled me a little bit too. Thank you so much. Now, just before we wrap up, my last question is always about what you're working on now. And you have mentioned it's a sequel. How about that? And that's a search novella. Now, is there anything else you feel.
- [53:39]
Michael Morola
Comfortable sharing about it, about the new one, the sequel? Well, it's, you know, at the end of the. How about this? Ariel asks for another chance, right? And so she's given that chance. And the reason she's given that chance is so that she can search for Malik. Because Malik is right. At the end of how about this, Malik is off to Spain to work at a robotics factory or manufacturing where they're making robots and building ships to go to the moon and Mars. So, you know, she, after the Elspeth passes, she decides that she is going to search for Malik and then. Sorry, the sequel is about how she goes first to Spain to look for him and then wanders off and then ends up at a future, ends up, ends up on Mars, ends up on Mars at one point, and then ends up in an interdimensional space where she meets a hologram that has managed to break away from its projector. So, so that's. Those are the kinds of things that go on. And how about that?
- [55:17]
Holly Gattery
I'm, I'm here for it and I'm so looking forward to, to reading it. And when we wrap this up, just stay for a few seconds with me. Michael, I have some places to suggest you send it to because I'm so pushy and nosy and capable of apparently just standing in my corner and doing lightning. So, Michael Morola, thank you so much for joining me to talk about your really marvelous novella, how about this, which was released recently with At Bay Press, which is completely phenomenal press in Winnipeg. So everyone, you can get this book wherever books are bought or borrowed. If you're listening and you're an educator, professor, anything. Now take what I said to heart about maybe picking it up and, and teaching it in your class. It is highly teachable, highly fun, highly compelling, and in my case, a little bit unsettling in the best possible way. Michael, thank you so much again for joining me today.
- [56:15]
Michael Morola
Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. It's wonderful. A lot of fun.