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causticcovercritic's review against another edition
5.0
A wonderful lost book about the impermanence of identity, the compromises made for a shot at happiness, and autodidacticism taken much too far. At times it has the air of a Patricia Highsmith novel, but not in the ways you might expect--it wrongfoots you several times when you think you're entering psychological thriller territory. A deeply satisfying book.
matt_hedgpeth's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
briandice's review against another edition
5.0
MacDonald Harris’ stunning novel Mortal Leap is a refutation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s line about American lives having no second act. The protagonist of the story is our narrator and it is through his experiences that we are given a mirror to witness our own. It is strange that it is only I who give a reality to this world, these objects that seem so solid: all that is inside me our narrator posits, very early in the book. I often think this thought. You may, too.
You could read the blurb here on GR about the book – but don’t. This review will give no spoilers, not even a hint of the tremendous narrative, because it must be allowed to bloom in each reader in its unique flowering. Is my life, like the narrator opines about one of the book’s other characters, a dirty game of hide-and-seek with the undertaker? Am I, as the Japanese saying goes, the man that is in whatever room I am in? Who I am here on Goodreads - is that the same person as the one earning a living, arguing with the Hertz representative, tucking his daughter into bed?
Known fact: every seven years or so the cells in our bodies are completely renewed. I’m physically not the same person. The corporal version of me is a handshake that occurs between a dying cell to a live one without my conscious help. Or approval. Like the protagonist in this book, I have to create, then recreate and sometimes drastically change my identity. I want a Second Act, perhaps a Third. But I must do it as Joan Didion recommends, keeping on nodding terms with the person I used to be – whether or not I find him attractive company. “As long as you refuse to accept your identity, you won’t become yourself – and nobody is going to recognize you.” This is advice given by one of the characters to the narrator. Does he heed it? Should he? Should we?
Read this book. If you cannot find a copy, and would like one, please PM me. And bless you, Rod, for pointing me to this book and providing me the means to read it.
You could read the blurb here on GR about the book – but don’t. This review will give no spoilers, not even a hint of the tremendous narrative, because it must be allowed to bloom in each reader in its unique flowering. Is my life, like the narrator opines about one of the book’s other characters, a dirty game of hide-and-seek with the undertaker? Am I, as the Japanese saying goes, the man that is in whatever room I am in? Who I am here on Goodreads - is that the same person as the one earning a living, arguing with the Hertz representative, tucking his daughter into bed?
Known fact: every seven years or so the cells in our bodies are completely renewed. I’m physically not the same person. The corporal version of me is a handshake that occurs between a dying cell to a live one without my conscious help. Or approval. Like the protagonist in this book, I have to create, then recreate and sometimes drastically change my identity. I want a Second Act, perhaps a Third. But I must do it as Joan Didion recommends, keeping on nodding terms with the person I used to be – whether or not I find him attractive company. “As long as you refuse to accept your identity, you won’t become yourself – and nobody is going to recognize you.” This is advice given by one of the characters to the narrator. Does he heed it? Should he? Should we?
Read this book. If you cannot find a copy, and would like one, please PM me. And bless you, Rod, for pointing me to this book and providing me the means to read it.
whats_margaret_reading's review against another edition
4.0
I'd been highly recommended Mortal Leap for about a year and a half before I finally requested it through inter-library loan (my reading time may be infringed upon by my grad student life but I wouldn't give up the library privileges for the world, except maybe graduating eventually). It showed up right as the semester went nuts. Of course, not as nuts as the plot and premise of this novel.
Our narrator starts out as a young man in Utah, from a devout Mormon family, who will rather get caught reading a girly mag instead of the Joseph Conrad novels he loves. He has issues for sure, and before too long our narrator is on his way to reinvention, first on a ship and then having his face and hands so badly burned he cannot be identified. His purest form of reinvention is literally erasing his previous identity.
Mortal Leap was originally published in 1964 and it's difficult to get a copy outside of libraries. The story itself is strange and captivating, and I can't seem to figure out why the book went out of print. The nameless narrator deals with what happens when one does not feel strongly attached to a particular place or way of life, and what happens when people start to drift. There are some weaknesses in the middle of the novel while there is a sense of safety where the narrator is passing himself off as a man with a wife and history outside of his own sad life, but these are remedied by the end of the novel in a very neat way. The wife that our narrator comes out of the woodwork to claim is not just some object, as the narrator first sees him, and I loved how she was given a larger role by the finale.
There is some lower than navel-gazing, over-thinking about life, and some great commentary on readers and literature, in addition to the crazy plot. It's multilayered enough that no matter how annoying or rude the narrator becomes, there is still a reason to stick it out until the end.
A man with a poor, unimportant background sees chances to reinvent himself, finally literally as a different person, with a different identity and different family.
(Those of you Mad Men nerds out there know what I'm talking about. The rest of you, don't Google just go watch the show. You'll see the connection and it's even more unbelievable that Mortal Leap has not been reprinted. NYRB could make a mint.)
Also posted on BookLikes.com here.
Our narrator starts out as a young man in Utah, from a devout Mormon family, who will rather get caught reading a girly mag instead of the Joseph Conrad novels he loves. He has issues for sure, and before too long our narrator is on his way to reinvention, first on a ship and then having his face and hands so badly burned he cannot be identified. His purest form of reinvention is literally erasing his previous identity.
Mortal Leap was originally published in 1964 and it's difficult to get a copy outside of libraries. The story itself is strange and captivating, and I can't seem to figure out why the book went out of print. The nameless narrator deals with what happens when one does not feel strongly attached to a particular place or way of life, and what happens when people start to drift. There are some weaknesses in the middle of the novel while there is a sense of safety where the narrator is passing himself off as a man with a wife and history outside of his own sad life, but these are remedied by the end of the novel in a very neat way. The wife that our narrator comes out of the woodwork to claim is not just some object, as the narrator first sees him, and I loved how she was given a larger role by the finale.
There is some lower than navel-gazing, over-thinking about life, and some great commentary on readers and literature, in addition to the crazy plot. It's multilayered enough that no matter how annoying or rude the narrator becomes, there is still a reason to stick it out until the end.
A man with a poor, unimportant background sees chances to reinvent himself, finally literally as a different person, with a different identity and different family.
(Those of you Mad Men nerds out there know what I'm talking about. The rest of you, don't Google just go watch the show. You'll see the connection and it's even more unbelievable that Mortal Leap has not been reprinted. NYRB could make a mint.)
Also posted on BookLikes.com here.
daniels_books's review against another edition
5.0
I’ve been afraid of writing this review because I know I’m not a good writer, and I want to find the words to express how I feel about Mortal Leap, but I realize I can’t ever really find the perfect way to describe this book, so why bother, right? But I guess that is what this book is really about, not some idiot trying to write a book review, but taking the “leap” into the unknown and trusting that you will find yourself, or whatever it is you are looking for, on the other side. Let’s see if I have found myself at the end of this review.
I think what I noticed most about this book is similar to what Ben Loory says in his review: that this book calmly meanders its way to its end. This book appears aimless as its protagonist, “Ben,” abandons his Mormon childhood, becomes a merchant, gets arrested, becomes shipwrecked, loses his identity, etc. But it’s not loose and unstructured, Harris is just not anxious to show everything up front. Rather, he has certain ideas running through the whole book. I marked in my notebook something that struck me when first reading it: on page 112, after a crucial moment in his moral development, our protagonist concludes, “Well, it’s better not to look in mirrors.” What impressed me was that this continues a thought he has on page 2, 110 pages earlier. (Note: I no longer have the book, so I can’t double check this.) What interests me even more is that I am not sure that the protagonist would even agree with such a statement by the end of the book. He becomes so many different people in the course of the story, and many of his developments are steps in the wrong direction and will need to be undone by the end. This faux-messiness is probably what makes this book so interesting, plot-wise.
But it’s this inability to look at one’s self that really struck me. It turns out that Ben’s habit of making life changing decisions quite rashly is not just a way to rid the parts of himself he dislikes, it’s a way of jumping into something entirely new in order to find a self that is in some way truer. He hates himself. He wants to run away from love and the burden of having a self, but cannot. Ben is given a chance to actually rid himself entirely of everything that he was, which is still fascinating even though I’ve seen the first season of Mad Men, and yet one wonders if such a thing is ever possible. Can Ben actually hide his past from his new life? And if he pretends somewhat successfully, is he really rid of it?
Look, to wrap it up, this book is refreshing. It’s an adventure story without the fast pacing, it’s philosophy with a plot, and it’s all completely compelling. Read the damn thing, you’ll get street cred because it’s out of print.
(And look, there I am! I found out that I am totally and only interested in what people think of me! Maybe I’ll run away from home and see if that changes. Thanks, Mortal Leap!)
PS. I suggested this title to be picked up by New York Review of Books for a reprint. Perhaps if we all go to their website and do the same, it’ll happen!
I think what I noticed most about this book is similar to what Ben Loory says in his review: that this book calmly meanders its way to its end. This book appears aimless as its protagonist, “Ben,” abandons his Mormon childhood, becomes a merchant, gets arrested, becomes shipwrecked, loses his identity, etc. But it’s not loose and unstructured, Harris is just not anxious to show everything up front. Rather, he has certain ideas running through the whole book. I marked in my notebook something that struck me when first reading it: on page 112, after a crucial moment in his moral development, our protagonist concludes, “Well, it’s better not to look in mirrors.” What impressed me was that this continues a thought he has on page 2, 110 pages earlier. (Note: I no longer have the book, so I can’t double check this.) What interests me even more is that I am not sure that the protagonist would even agree with such a statement by the end of the book. He becomes so many different people in the course of the story, and many of his developments are steps in the wrong direction and will need to be undone by the end. This faux-messiness is probably what makes this book so interesting, plot-wise.
But it’s this inability to look at one’s self that really struck me. It turns out that Ben’s habit of making life changing decisions quite rashly is not just a way to rid the parts of himself he dislikes, it’s a way of jumping into something entirely new in order to find a self that is in some way truer. He hates himself. He wants to run away from love and the burden of having a self, but cannot. Ben is given a chance to actually rid himself entirely of everything that he was, which is still fascinating even though I’ve seen the first season of Mad Men, and yet one wonders if such a thing is ever possible. Can Ben actually hide his past from his new life? And if he pretends somewhat successfully, is he really rid of it?
Look, to wrap it up, this book is refreshing. It’s an adventure story without the fast pacing, it’s philosophy with a plot, and it’s all completely compelling. Read the damn thing, you’ll get street cred because it’s out of print.
(And look, there I am! I found out that I am totally and only interested in what people think of me! Maybe I’ll run away from home and see if that changes. Thanks, Mortal Leap!)
PS. I suggested this title to be picked up by New York Review of Books for a reprint. Perhaps if we all go to their website and do the same, it’ll happen!
rivercrow's review against another edition
5.0
I am a lazy reviewer and wish to change that by actually reviewing some of the books I read. It should start with this one, but time does not permit it at the moment. So, a promised review soon.
In the meantime, I can give no better recommendation for Mortal Leap than adding it to my Essential list (consider it my 6 star or the best of my favorites). It IS that good.
"I had no objection to facts and labels in principle. Let them find out the facts, let them write labels all day if it gave them pleasure. I had no facts to give them, that was all. I had stopped believing in facts the way an atheist stops believing in God. I was in the water and then it had all been burned away--past, ego, identity, memory. There was something left, evidently. Something was thinking. But what?"
. . .
"Most people believed in a body and also in a soul, or whatever you wanted to call it, an ego. But it was more complicated than they thought. They thought of the ego as a kind of foggy pear-shaped essence inside you that stayed the same no matter what happened to the body: aware of other people and different from them, knowing its name, preferring coffee with cream, disliking warm beer. It didn't matter what you did with your body, tattooed yourself blue, became a hashish addict or fell into a sausage machine, you were still you and inside there was an unconquerable soul that went marching on. All this was probably true and I had had an ego like that once too. But what they couldn't get through their heads, Baroni and the others with clipboards and their questions, was that this part of me had been burned away too that night in the water. They thought the burns were only third degree (charred skin, some tissue damage) but they had gone deeper than that. Or perhaps my ego had been closer to the surface than most people's, out in the skin where the fire could burn it away. Anyhow it was gone, disappeared with the fingerprints that had slid off on the hot metal and dissolved in the sea.
P. 130
P. 40
"He meant everything, the money, my rage, the agony of the sausage-eater in Odessa. Doubled up with pain on the floor of the cabin I saw he was right, and I had been wrestling with the wrong person. It was a part of myself that was my enemy; I still had a childish illusion that the flesh on my own bones was somehow unique and precious to the universe, in some obscure corner of my mind I wanted others to love me and make exceptions for me simply because I felt heat and cold, pain and loneliness as they did. Now this was gone once and for all, and I understood there were no exceptions and no one was invulnerable, we all had to share the same conditions and in the end this was simply mortality, the mortality of things as well as ourselves. After that I didn't expect anybody to love me and I understood why Victor kept his money taped to his chest. I got up off the floor impassively and went away without a word. Victor didn't give me back my money, and neither of us ever mentioned the subject again."
Damn.
In the meantime, I can give no better recommendation for Mortal Leap than adding it to my Essential list (consider it my 6 star or the best of my favorites). It IS that good.
"I had no objection to facts and labels in principle. Let them find out the facts, let them write labels all day if it gave them pleasure. I had no facts to give them, that was all. I had stopped believing in facts the way an atheist stops believing in God. I was in the water and then it had all been burned away--past, ego, identity, memory. There was something left, evidently. Something was thinking. But what?"
. . .
"Most people believed in a body and also in a soul, or whatever you wanted to call it, an ego. But it was more complicated than they thought. They thought of the ego as a kind of foggy pear-shaped essence inside you that stayed the same no matter what happened to the body: aware of other people and different from them, knowing its name, preferring coffee with cream, disliking warm beer. It didn't matter what you did with your body, tattooed yourself blue, became a hashish addict or fell into a sausage machine, you were still you and inside there was an unconquerable soul that went marching on. All this was probably true and I had had an ego like that once too. But what they couldn't get through their heads, Baroni and the others with clipboards and their questions, was that this part of me had been burned away too that night in the water. They thought the burns were only third degree (charred skin, some tissue damage) but they had gone deeper than that. Or perhaps my ego had been closer to the surface than most people's, out in the skin where the fire could burn it away. Anyhow it was gone, disappeared with the fingerprints that had slid off on the hot metal and dissolved in the sea.
P. 130
P. 40
"He meant everything, the money, my rage, the agony of the sausage-eater in Odessa. Doubled up with pain on the floor of the cabin I saw he was right, and I had been wrestling with the wrong person. It was a part of myself that was my enemy; I still had a childish illusion that the flesh on my own bones was somehow unique and precious to the universe, in some obscure corner of my mind I wanted others to love me and make exceptions for me simply because I felt heat and cold, pain and loneliness as they did. Now this was gone once and for all, and I understood there were no exceptions and no one was invulnerable, we all had to share the same conditions and in the end this was simply mortality, the mortality of things as well as ourselves. After that I didn't expect anybody to love me and I understood why Victor kept his money taped to his chest. I got up off the floor impassively and went away without a word. Victor didn't give me back my money, and neither of us ever mentioned the subject again."
Damn.
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