Martin MacInnes on his debut novel, Infinite Ground, set in South American, first in a city and then expanding out to the rainforest: "The book tries to dissolve the idea that humans are discrete things—shapes entirely made of this "human" quality, entirely ourselves, with a solid skin border separating us from everything else, bound as a species with a clear origin point, sufficiently removed from all other life. Safe, secure, permanent. That kind of human has never existed."
I'm thrilled to have come across Martin MacInnes in my exploration of contemporary novels written by young authors.
Keeping in mind the author's observation that humans are not separate entities; rather, we are intimately intertwined and interconnected to the world around us, here's a batch of direct quotes taken from the first chapters along with my accompanying comments -
“He had joined his workplace – a financial institution in the process of a large and complex merger, leaving it for the moment without a name – six years ago, straight from college. He was devoted to his job, known to forego holidays....His work demands were said to have increased three-fold, but remained nothing out of the ordinary. Reception records showed he was arriving earlier and leaving later every day.”
At the heart of Infinite Ground: a detective, herein called Inspector, searches for Carlos who excused himself from a family dinner held at a restaurant on order to go to the bathroom. But then, the unexpected: Carlos mysteriously disappears. A touch of irony: prior to his physical disappearance at the restaurant, like thousands of corporate types working in an office, Carlos has been subsumed (a kind of disappearance) by his job.
“As if it were not enough that the man had disappeared just like that, from the middle of the restaurant, without any warning whatsoever, and further that the mother, in relating the incident, had gone on for some time about what even he would consider insignificant details, it turned out, now, that this woman was not who she claimed to be.”
The shocker: ten pages into the novel, the inspector discovers he's surrounded by actors: the woman who said she's Carlos's mother is an actress and many people working for Carlos' employer, the Corporation, are actors playing the part of conscientious office workers. For as one administrative assistant relates “when the corporation was entertaining prospective clients, engaged in a series of meetings and wishing to give the best possible impression, it needed office workers displaying an appearance of optimal efficiency and hard work.” My overarching observation: this is an urban world of artificiality overly concerned with making a good appearance, so much so, it borders on the sinister.
“She was not in favour of investigating the occult, that was a dangerous path, she said, a tricky slope, but there was something dark and strange at work here, and often now, even in broadest daylight or while going about her shopping in the supermarket, say, she would watch her step, mindful of the every-present possibility of gong under, of falling, vanishing into a darkness.”
Eerie, eerie. Carlos' disappearance prompts speculation into how safe, how solid is our human identity and human presence in the world. There's even talk of an anticipated astronomical event that will shatter human life as we know it.
“He (the Inspector) was amazed and impressed by the colossal corporate arrogance, the stunning lack of imagination. The idea that all places – a forest, a desert, conceivably even seas – were really urban spaces in the preliminary stage.”
How much has really changed since the first Europeans landed in North America and South America? This strikes one as the supreme corporate mentality in our current world: every inch of everything on land and sea and in the air is but raw material, fodder, a tool to maximize corporate profit. With this mindset, what chance does a plant or rock or mere flesh and blood animal (humans included) stand when in conflict with such a brutal moneymaking buzzsaw?
Perhaps an approach to an answer to the above question will be forthcoming in the second half of Infinite Ground, when the novel flies to the interior and then enters the forest. Martin Machinnes has written a quizzical, thought-provoking work that's stunningly unique, one that's worth any reader's time. As Jeff VanderMeer observed, "I doubt you've read anything like it."
Scottish author Martin MacInnes, born 1983
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