Exploring the theme of transformation, this work delves into the profound connections between cosmic phenomena and human nature. It presents a dreamlike narrative that intertwines ancient concepts of metamorphosis with modern insights gained from orbital telescopes, suggesting that the universe holds deeper truths about humanity than we often recognize. The book invites readers to reflect on the mysteries of existence and the potential for change inherent in both the cosmos and ourselves.
Set against a backdrop of a decaying urban landscape, the narrative delves into the psyche of Mantra Hand, offering a unique blend of esoteric themes and literary reflections. Influenced by renowned authors such as Nabokov, Burroughs, and Vila-Matas, this installment in the Midtown Tetralogy presents a literary exorcism that invites readers to explore deep psychological and philosophical questions. This definitive edition marks the first Canadian printing, enhancing its significance in the series.
Set in a city trapped in perpetual decline, the narrative explores themes of decay and resilience. As the concluding installment of Ryan Madej's Midtown Tetralogy, it delves into the lives of its inhabitants, revealing their struggles and connections amidst the backdrop of a crumbling urban landscape. The story intertwines personal journeys with the broader socio-political issues affecting the city, offering a poignant reflection on the passage of time and the impact of environment on identity.
Fiction. "Ryan Madej is an increasingly rarefied beast (or talent, I prefer beast but options). To call his work experimental or surreal feels crude. However much it resists classification, Madej's artistic search is the unmistakably authentic offspring (or product) of a writer's writer in the most romantic sense of the word. A mad psycho-alchemist, a synthesist of theory, dialogue, imagination, poetry, puzzles, ciphers, maps, his work is the most decisive answer to the vacuum left behind by Cortázar, the magical realists, Calvino, the inventive purveyors of literary adventurism promising to push through every boundary to obliterate and illuminate the nature of the book. Madej is the new standard bearer, the metaphysical captain steering the panpsychic vessel. THE MARBLE CORRIDOR reads like found artifact, his stewardship of the style single-handedly renewing the dimension of mutual engagement, of invitation to discovery, of sobering totality of a narrative experience and surrender to its consumed delirium. Madej is in a lane all his own. Here he has fashioned a head-spinning, fifth wall shattering cavort through a labyrinth of studied introspection. Madej toys with the esoteric, the arcane, a hybrid of metamemoir and post narrative, a dynamic fulfillment of the indelible refrain that everything is happening, has happened and all that's left is to interpret it. Madej radically reinvents the foregrounded conceit, his sensuous and disarmingly direct language a master class in forgetting oneself within an author's intimate universe, their best kept secret wherein interpersonal boundaries erode and the reader achieves the loftiest bliss, that of unknowing, unlearning, forgetting that they are reading."--Manuel Marrero
