Ali Smith's hyper-technological and dehumanizing dystopia

Unlike some of the undisputed classics of dystopian literature, for example Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, 1984 by George Orwell or Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, who in a more or less defined and precise way show what the monstrously controlling societies that they literary in their new novel are like and how they function. Gliff, the British Ali Smith (1962) only shows it to us in a vague, partial way, based on a few significant details, creating a global drawing that tends to be abstract. He does this intentionally, of course, and this, let's say, deliberate imprecision has a frankly disturbing suggestive power in the best passages of the work. Overall, it deprives it of its symbolic and representative capacity, deactivating its expressive force and lowering its emotional and dramatic temperature.

Like all totalitarian systems, that of Gliff It is divided between those who are part of it because they conform to the ironclad, dehumanizing rules that govern it, and those who are excluded because they do not want to conform or because, for moral, ideological, or behavioral reasons, they have been expelled or rejected. In this case, also as in all totalitarian systems, being excluded means that you have no right to anything and, in practice, you don't even have the right to exist: they mark the house where you live with red paint and evict and destroy it, they don't allow you access to the internet or any kind of digital device—which, in a society, must also be precariously free—and, finally, you are considered "unverifiable," an official status that leaves you completely defenseless, the first step before being "eliminated." Of those who are part of the system, the author gives us even fewer details. It refers to the "Delivery Level building," in whose basement lies "the Packing Tape," concepts and labels that refer to a world controlled by Amazon-style corporations, a capitalist totalitarianism of consumption and subjugation cloaked in post-ideological neutrality.

The strange logic of nightmares

Ali Smith makes two siblings, Bri and Rose, wander through this dystopian setting. They are "unverifiable" because their mother, now deceased, wanted to protect them from the clutches of power. With a structure that, until well into the novel, does not allow the reader to fully locate themselves in temporal terms—that happened five years ago, this is happening now, this happened a long time ago—the plot of Gliff It unfolds with the strange and unpredictable logic of nightmares. As in nightmares, a key symbolic element is also present here: horses. The title of the novel, a word that means nothing in English, is precisely the name of a horse that lives with the protagonists for a time and, in the oppressive and gray world that traps and threatens them, recalls all the good things they have lost and long for: nobility, freedom, beauty.

Desolate and distressing, but also with glimmers of hope and combativeness, Gliff She may be a minor Ali Smith, but she displays the author's bold intelligence and lively, daring style, translated into Catalan with the usual skill by Dolors Udina.