Myth of Pterygium

by Diego Gerard Morrison

The story of a failed poet struggling with vision loss, personal crises, and what it means to be an arms dealer in a quasi-dystopian Mexico City.
 
This debut novel is set in a vaguely dystopian, yet also realistic, Mexico City—endless traffic jams, relentless clouds of pollution, economic hardships, and the ever-present threat of drug cartels. The unnamed narrator of the novel, at times referred to as Arthur—in part because of the growing similarity of his life with Arthur Rimbaud’s—struggles with the dissonance of leading an artistic life while providing for his family. A failed, penniless poet with a child on the way, he is forced to take a job in his family’s weapons dealing enterprise, which he soon discovers is connected to the corrupt Mexican armed forces and drug cartels, who are responsible for the increasing death toll in the country. All the while, the narrator struggles with a growing condition in his right eye, a pterygium, that is slowly taking over his vision, blurring the events of his life, including his wife’s complicated pregnancy, extortions by the drug cartels, and his own relationship to his writing. As the narrator gradually finds his life spiraling out of control, the novel moves quickly to a startling conclusion.

Myth of Pterygium is the winner of the 2021 Autumn House Rising Writer Prize in Fiction, selected by Maryse Meijer.
 
 

136 pages, Paperback

Published March 22, 2022

About the author

Diego Gerard Morrison is a writer, editor and translator, whose recent work explores themes of magical realism and appropriation set within the context of the Mexican drug war. He is the cofounder and fiction editor of diSONARE, an editorial project based in Mexico City. His fiction, non-fiction and other writings appear or are forthcoming in The Brooklyn Rail, The River Rail, Terremoto, Boiler House Press, The Poetry Project and Shifter, among others. He lives and works in Mexico City.

Reviews

[Claire Gault · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Beside me, my brother begins a slight jitter of his leg, and a pulse runs along the base of the couch. He watches my mother pick up a handful of rice and coffee.
'All this,' she shifts the grains and beans in her cupped palm, 'is the remnants of clairvoyance.'"

For great literary fiction like Myth of Pterygium, I read with a highlighter in hand. I can't tell you how many beautiful, poignant lines I found and wrote in my journal. As an editor beginning her career, I can relate to his frustration sitting at his computer in many ways (to be quite honest). Morrison has a talent for crafting a bleak mood, really making me wince with the description of the pterygium takeover. I recommend this to anyone that wants a stimulating, captivating read. Thank you AHP!

[Josh Guzman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good writing, ok ending

[Mave Goren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very skillful small novel merging genres, subplots, registers, and even formal constraints. While just over 100 pages, Morrison crams this book full of tension and atmosphere. In this way, it feels like The Crying of Lot 49, a large, maximalist novel crammed into a digestible package. Over the course of the story, Arthur's eye gets worse and worse and the text soon removes quotation marks, and eventually line breaks.
There's a particular kind of Spanish-Language literature that feels indebted to Magical Realism but operates more on the planes of realism and postmodernism. Typically dark, there are usually elements of autofiction, the text is dense and the sentences are long. Bolaño comes to mind, but also Living Things by Munir Hachemi is an example of this "genre" I enjoyed. In some cases, this style can feel self-indulgent, or derivative. It's difficult to have a novel where you have to sit through characters rattling off authors and books you'd rather be reading. Morrison does a good job of getting the reader interested in these subjects rather than having them serve as mere shout outs. Rimbaud's career as an arms dealer works perfectly with Arthur's family benefiting from the drug trade.
If I were to offer a criticism, while I enjoy the looping narrative, the repeated visits to the pediatrician, the repeated appearances by the Famous-Armless-Writer and his horrible dogs, it becomes repetitive after a while where I'd find myself emerging from the story and wondering if any progress had been made in the first place.
I'm shocked at how few ratings this book has. Definitely check it out if you're into imaginative literary fiction.

[Noah Castinado · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think about this book everyday, I Will adapt this.

[Grey Cloud · Rating 4 out of 5]

took a break to sit and learn to whistle to La Vida Es Un Carnival while reading this one

[Cindy Crabb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Compelling and refreshing. Just complicated enough. I loved it!

[Nicolette Sosa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found this audiobook through my library and was pleasantly surprised. Not something I would normally go for but definitely entertaining!

[Liza_lo · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a grim, but at times darkly funny, body horror novella. Set in Mexico City Arthur is a failed poet with a baby on the way who has to eat crow by going to work for the family company, a munitions supplier. He is also, throughout the novel, haunted by pterygium growing on his eye (I googled, it's a real and creepy looking condition).

Things go from bad to worse in this always interesting piece that examines the claustrophobia of city life, urban planning, and yes, the horror of the body.

The titular myth is that the pterygium can never grow back once it's removed and like that notion, all of Arthur's woes keep circling back to damn him.

[Mark Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the same way that a person tries to wink the remnants of a hangover out of their eyes the first thing in the morning, Diego Gerard Morrison’s debut novel, Myth of Pterygium, opens with a morse-code like awakening.

I wrote this review for The Masters Review and you can read my full thing here at: https://mastersreview.com/march-book-...