On “Leopold’s Labyrinth” by Mike Corrao
By Corey Qureshi––––
Gone is Gibson's nascent Neuromanc’d novelty of the virtual world. In 2024, it is one of the most ubiquitous setpieces found in prose novels, literally or subliminally. Here, now, the endlessly beaten horse of interpersonal relations at the remove of social media–first, second, thirdhand reception of conflicts. Dissociation. Anxiety softens. Nothing happens till it does.
With this in mind, I was glad to be taken away from social media in Leopold’s Labyrinth. The faceless digital citizen of Mike Corrao's latest out from Astrophil Press is as dissociated as any screen-obsessive, though interacts with basically no one. Instead, You (book is in second person, a contemporary trick I think many of us grow tired of) are shuttled through the titular space in search of the purpose for its existence. You're following rules set by the anonymous programmers of the labyrinth known as the Asterion Group, barely parsing yet ever-progressing deeper into an unknown landscape that takes one further from physical existence.
"You are a miner. You mine this place for its meaning."
The book starts with a patterned acquisition of items, fashioned like the early stages of a video game. The gaming aspect is clearly stated from the outset in the press' blurb. These artifact-finding moments are divided up with reams of quotes from artists of different mediums, including but not limited to Luis Buñuel, Sun Ra, Anna Kavan, Anaïs Nin, Ed Steck, and Baudrillard. The quotes gesture towards stepping away from one's self to step into a longer potential range of experience. It's all kept very vague, besides the artifacts shown on 2D grids that accompany their descriptions. This volume is chock full of digi-images, several patterns, and one-off moments of design-play that seem to have a hand in the labyrinth building its own vastness in real-time as you're reading. There are digital graphics, typographical madness, motifs with legitimate glitch-art sensibilities, and the flipbook-type progressions of visual storytelling that populate Leopold. There’s a continual sense of discovery without any truly explanatory footing given to the reader. There’s a visceral taste of the labyrinth as living walls and artifact pores are pushed through.
The visually descriptive sequences early on aren't punctuated with many designs. A formula of encounter pushes us to an exit that asks:
"Are you willing to admit that you're lost?
left or right"
You're given the illusion of choice. There are no real alternative ways of going about the text. The video game atmosphere persists only in pixelated thematics. It's when we reach the monostanzaic burst of poetry about midway (there are no page numbers) through that You become I as the labyrinth's fixation grows on the narrator.
"I want to tear the fibres from my optic nerve
What is worth seeing?
I explore the depths of the interior
Now that I have lived so long outside
In mud and moss and dried bile-matter"
"What good is it to have blood in my body?
I want to become a microlith
I want to be a small anomaly in nature
Overgrown by the surrounding features
Almost Invisible"
Here, we're given further argument for the dissociation happening in this book. Desire to walk away from the tangible, deeper into…absence? You seem to grow confused of yourself, your sense of place, who you are as indefinite periods of time pass through the text. I started to relate this to Gary Shipley's The House Inside the House of Gregor Schneider, a book from Corrao's CLOAK that I was not a fan of. Leopold's Labyrinth does a much better job of pushing through its confusion than the Shipley. I'd say this is in part due to the explosion of different textual and visual forms that rush in at the back half of the text. Prose fragments, schemata, typographic emphases, visual poetry, glitchiness. Allusion to degradations of the physical self. You're given a real sense of the inconsistent consciousness of the person/lack thereof that we're tracking down into the core of the labyrinth, a place where any given beast is mythologized to be found.
I find Corrao’s designs to be an enhancement to the text, but at times it seems like there isn’t enough writing. Moreso an idea of the book, a text object, Ulises Lima stuff. I can appreciate this, but I still need a sense of literature. A book for the book gets dull. So many zinesters and art book presses do “poetry” collections, and they're just concept-driven items. Not pieces of considered writing. This title, while much higher in quality, seemingly has similar intentions, and thus, I'm somewhat skeptical of it.
Without giving much away (though there isn't much to give or given in the first place), confrontation unfolds, choices are made, change enacted. A boundless absorption of your animated spirit into the maze of the book's logic and place. A sense of endlessness.
I'd argue Leopold's Labyrinth is one of those things that's almost more about the reading experience itself than a plot-driven novel. Sure, there's some poetry, and we're grounded in a set of scenes, or at least an approximation of them. But that's my issue. Not Enough Grounding. Experimental beyond story. A display of formalism or a break from form for the sake of itself. Really just an atmosphere. Away from a socialized space (dialogue between author and reader) to the point of alienation. Ironic considering my praise of it avoiding social media. Though I suppose in a way this can be the conversation itself—how far are you willing to follow Corrao down through his routine of process and discovery? And does it matter what we think when it’s over with? This type of thing is fun for a certain type of person. For others, it's a fetish object, an art object before anything else. I think it could've really succeeded with more and clearer language, rather than appearances from and immersions back into the created virtual fog.
I wish there was more to say, but the book is so brief! Something to get done within a week. Regardless, here's to another outing from one of our best modern experimenters in his prime. Not the first of Corrao's I'd point someone to, but an interesting piece in the greater puzzle of his work we'll surely be piecing together someday.
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Corey Qureshi is the author of three chapbooks of poetry. He works as a bread baker and runs BOXX Press. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and children.
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