The Meaning of Gliff – 02/11/2024

Gliff is a horse rescued by two children. Gliff may yet rescue them. He was facing the abattoir. They face ‘re-education’.

Gliff is a momentary resemblance, a transient glance, an impulse. Gliff means to glimpse, to frighten, to glare. It’s a misspelling (did you mean ‘glyph’?), a mishearing (did you mean ‘cliff’?), but not a misnomer for Ali Smith’s new book.

The meanings of ‘gliff’ fill the pages – even as they fade from a scribbled note ageing in a character’s pocket – inviting the reader into a game with language, trying to keep up with puns, with the dark implication of farcical events and with a runaway horse.

‘Gliff’ the word and Gliff the novel hold so much shifting and layered significance. Yet there is nothing glancing or transient about the latter, this work of art: Ali Smith is, for me, the writer searching for new forms, new ways of expressing story and veracity, in the face of climate change, ‘hostile environments’, increasing prejudice and poverty.

Two siblings come home from visiting their mother abroad accompanied by her partner, Leif. They find a red line painted around their house. They must leave. They sleep in a campervan and wake up to find a red line painted around it. The van won’t start and they must leave. Leif finds them an empty house and goes, promising to return with their mother. He might. He might not. Before then, again, they must leave.

This is a very near future with total surveillance, 45-degree springtime, children forced to work on dangerous production lines, burnt repeatedly by acid, and no libraries. Dissent and protest do not stand a chance. This being Ali Smith, the writing also swirls with classical mythology, Shakespeare, music and art, all while feeling effortless. Though one knows it is not and tries to see how it’s done. Next year, she’ll publish Glyph, the story of which is hidden, hinted at (OK, it is there to be gliffed, if only one could) within Gliff.

The surveillance in Gliff is all the more terrifying for being vague. Cameras, microphones, and informers are all in operation but who for and why is left to the imagination. In Your Face Belongs to Us, the reality is frightening for its detail. Kashmir Hill’s investigation into the development of facial recognition and the company Clearview AI, which has no qualms about who it shares its technology with, is thorough, admonitory and unfortunately not fictional. I could not look away.  

Recently I went to a fascinating talk, organised by the Bristol Humanists, given by Susie Alegre, a human rights barrister, about the dilemmas and threats to human rights posed by AI. I have just started her book, Human Rights, Robot Wrongs. While no less unnerving than Hill’s book – the case studies explore some shocking, horrific and overlooked implications of AI – it is a relief to read a measured argument on the subject, offering considered proposals for regulation, explaining how existing laws can be used and reminding readers that things have not spun out of control (yet).

We are organising an event with the Bristol Humanists in December on science and poetry and different ways of communicating advances in science, featuring a discussion with Michael Malay, Bob Walton and Rebecca Nesbit, who will also read from their prose and poetry on nature and conservation.

I like to do my homework and perhaps the perfect preparation for this is Origins by Joseph Conlon, a very bouncy account of the early universe told in verse by a theoretical physicist. The first half describes the creation and origin of the elements, the second the formation of galaxies, fitting in a biography of Heisenberg. Also gloam-goblins, drowsy snails and Versailles…

Between Ali Smith and Joseph Conlon, one feels compelled to face reality, political and scientific, in fantastical and surreal ways. If you’d like to hop onto another Escher-esque staircase, The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine by Mario Levrero, translated by Annie McDermott and Kit Schluter makes for a mesmerising short story collection. The machine is waiting, plugged in, in the first story. What does it do? One looks for answers, paranoid, amused…

Since several of these stories have been compared with Lewis Carroll’s writing, I must mention the new Lewis Carroll Puzzle Book. Despite having once again completed my homework – I wrote earlier this year about The Annotated Alice – I need help with some of these puzzles… At least they’ll keep me quiet whilst all the precocious children in Ali Smith’s novels calmly and wittily save society, solve our problems and salve decency.

The wisdom of children in Smith’s books often puts me in mind of an old favourite, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. An extraordinary edition, The Little Prince Pop-Up Book, has just come out. However wise, I am not sure how many children (or adults) I will allow near my precious copy but you may be more permissive.

I do strongly encourage excited engagement with these more sturdy and equally enticing books:
Awesome Weird Animals by Joshua George, illustrated by Iana Kauri, Matt O’Neil: an interactive guide to animals with some delightfully odd behaviours and physical aspects. Yes, it features a heron.
The Universe: Discover What Lies Beyond Our Skies by Abigail Beall, illustrated by Dawn Cooper: a journey through time from the Big Bang and through space from planets to comets to nebulae to things I am learning about from Conlon’s poetry. As well as the illustrations, the photography is exquisite.
Explanatorium of Science by DK and Robert Winston: a new edition of this brilliant guide to “every aspect of science.” I like ambition in a book. It is a delight to open on any page. Yesterday I learnt about a blue volcano in Indonesia. I’m saving fireworks for Tuesday.

All the details of our science and poetry event with Bristol Humanists on 2 December are here. Shortly before that you must come to our end-of-year poetry performance and party at The Lansdown on 21 November. And before that the Clifton LitFest is taking place, organised by the tireless Friends of Clifton Centre and Library; I want to go to everything but particularly this.

May you glimpse something as special as Gliff this weekend and may the glimpse last a lifetime,
Lizzie

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