Parallax

by Robin Morgan

She inspected her knitting. "A yarn imagines itself, you know," she murmured, "from separate strands. Every story is made of strands, too, of worlds that keep unfolding simultaneously along the same yarn. You can spot one at a time or, rarely, a multitude swarming—though no yarner can ever glimpse both the individual tale and the swarm at the same moment. Imagination can conceal while it reveals. Sooner or later, though, everything gets used."

In Parallax, Robin Morgan's most radiant prose, spare but sensuous, welcomes you into her dazzling imagination. This is a story about storytelling—a set of shorter tales which, like Russian dolls, nest and fit together to reveal a larger one.

A fable for the future, a prediction about the past, Parallax is a luscious story that enfolds you and demands immediate rereading the moment you finish, a story that surprises you and invites you to play with the patterns inside its paradoxes, a story whose characters will accompany you for the rest of your life.

Genres: Fiction

174 pages, Paperback

Published October 15, 2019

About the author

An award-winning poet, novelist, political theorist, feminist activist, journalist, editor, and best-selling author, Robin Morgan has published 20 books, including the now-classic anthologies Sisterhood Is Powerful (Random House, 1970) and Sisterhood Is Global (Doubleday, l984; updated edition, The Feminist Press, 1996); with the recent Sisterhood Is Forever (Washington Square Press, 2003). A leader in contemporary US feminism, she has also played an influential role internationally in the women’s movement for more than 25 years.

An invited speaker at every major university in North America, Morgan has traveled — as organizer, lecturer, journalist — across Europe, to Australia, Brazil, the Caribbean, Central America, China, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Nepal, New Zealand, Pacific Island nations, the Philippines, and South Africa; she has twice (1986 and 1989) spent months in the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, West Bank, and Gaza, reporting on the conditions of women.

Her books include the novels Dry Your Smile (Doubleday, l987) and The Mer-Child A Legend for Children and Other Adults (Feminist Press, 1991); nonfiction Going Too Far (Random House, 1977), The Word of a Woman (Norton, 1992, 2nd ed. 1994), and The Anatomy of Freedom (Norton, 1994). Her work has been translated into 13 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Russian, and Sanskrit. Recent books include the poetry anthologies Upstairs in the Garden (1994) and A Hot January (both Norton), as well as the memoir Saturday's Child (Norton, 2000), and her best-selling nonfiction piece The Demon Lover - The Roots of Terrorism (Norton, 1989—2nd ed. with a new introduction and afterword (Washington Square Press, 2001). Her novel on the Inquisition — The Burning Time — was published in 2006 (Melville House), and Fighting Words A Toolkit for Combating the Religious Right in 2006 (Nation Books).

As founder and president of The Sisterhood Is Global Institute and co-founder and board member of The Women’s Media Center, she has co-founded and serves on the boards of many women’s organizations in the US and abroad. In 1990, as editor-in-chief of Ms. magazine, she relaunched the magazine as an international, award-winning, ad-free bimonthly, resigning in late 1993 to become consulting global editor. A recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Prize for poetry, and numerous other honors, she lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Cansu Kargı · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oldukça orijinal ve okuması keyifli öyküler, daha önce benzer mantıkla yazılmış öyküler okuduğumu hatırlamıyorum.

(Lakin 2023'te iyi öyküler okumak istiyorum, sevdiğiniz öyküler varsa yorumu okuyanlardan öneriler almaktan memnuniyet duyarım)

[Sally Piper · Rating 5 out of 5]

An elegant, intelligent and imaginative novel about storytelling, told as tales within tales, many of which read like fables, others as warnings, and all of them undercut with warmth, generosity and wit.

[Hannah Wattangeri · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a lovely book - full of stories and fables, all with depth, understanding and wit. It is the kind of book that I will be reading again and again - there are so many moments that have a depth of understanding that need to be revisited and contemplated.

[Rachael McDiarmid · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Ursula K Le Guin's endorsement for this book which is published by Spinifex Press. "I read it because I started it and did not want to stop. The more I read, the more I did not want to stop. I loved the mixture of frame and stories . . . the good-natured tone, the wit, the generosity. This is vintage Morgan." This book is a journey. Why not join Robin Morgan for the ride?

[Michelle Renyé · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book, full of storytelling, mostly as poetry, which means, not trying to understand things as in storytelling. Don't ask me why! I kind of sensed the book is about courageously exploring ways to pass on things learned throughout a life of courageous exploration and non-stop learning. I say "courageously exploring" as a born explorer too: someone not appreciated in mainstream patriarchal cultures of violence-prevalence, obsessed, as they are, with making the impossible possible -- perfectly dehumanized. So the stories build like a universe where things happen and are alive, this is, imperfect, and full of vital things to consider, to keep one company considering how hostile the prevailing human world is to all that sustains life and coexistence.

So what I'll do here is what I'm about to do when I post this: I browsed the book, jotted down some of the underlinings I made, then contemplated them, then selected some and put this together, like a Dada poem. I think it mirrors some in the book.

My notes from Parallax, a novel by Robin Morgan

Anyone who fears meaning doesn't know how to play (114)
the idea of freedom . . . lives in the connections (86)
Nothing has meaning but in its story (115)
a story exists in time, through and across time (117)
Words are also nomads (115)
the ending happens throughout the story (117)

Practice the economy of kindness (166)
As if it were possible to bring outsiders in by bringing the inside out (172)
It wasn't as harrowing to be honest as everyone pretended (160)

how tiny sea animals communally construct a reef over thousands of years (174)

[Sofie Donald · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a beautiful, bewildering book. I know I haven’t quite understand the breadth and depth of it which makes it the kid of book you can read a few times and always find something new. A story about stories. I have bought this book as an evil but wish I’d bought a hard copy. So many phrases I’d like to remember and refer back to, they are written so beautifully.
Highly recommend-

[Louise Hewett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Parallax by Robin Morgan is a stunning, evocative novel. It's like casting your gaze over an antique handwoven rug, feeling textures and memories beneath your fingertips, hearing resonances not in your ears but in your ribcage. And then you find you have tears in your eyes.

[Pozan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Konsept güzel ama yaratılan dünyanın, karakterlerin bir arka planı olmadığından, giriş-gelişme olarak bir yere varmadığından ötürü içerdiği öyküler de havada kalıyor. Öykü anlatıcılığı üzerine güzel birkaç demeç vardı ama sırf o kısımlar için alıp okuyun diyemem.