Memoranda

Jeffrey Ford
1999

Many layers make up Jeffery Ford’s sequel to The Physiognomy. Memoranda tells the journey of Cley into the memory of his former master, Drachton Below. Below has poisoned the village of Wenau with a deadly sleeping sickness, and accidentally infected himself. Now Below lies in a coma, slowly fading, as do Cley’s dear friends of his reformed, non-Physiognomist life, back in the village.

In The Physiognomy, we learned that the Well-Built City is an actualization of a mnemonic device in Below’s mind, meant to hold complex chemical formulae, scientifc concepts, not just memories of people, places, events. Cley must venture into the mind of his comatose former master, and retrieve the formula for the antidote to the sleeping sickness. Of course it takes a demon of the most surprising nature to facilitate this communion.

The question of what is real isn’t an issue. It’s all real. Cley can die inside Below’s mind, fall in love, or wither as Below’s mind withers with the sleeping sickness.

If Ford leaves it up to us to decide what is a love story, and what isn’t, he gives us a major clue: conservation of energy and spirit is a great part of these books. No one is ever really gone. We will meet again.