When reading Rick Moody’s novella, The Albertine Notes, I was confused initially midway through when Kevin started taking Albertine. Yet after a while, I realized the story was non-linear and that it functioned on kariotic time, as time was never discussed when Kevin was under the influence of drugs. Another thing that I realized was that at the end of the story, he seemed strung out on drugs, yet these are his notes. How did he himself muster the effort to write everything he wrote? After all, at the beginning of the story, he is writing in the past tense as if everything had already happened already. I kept wondering how this novella could be interpreted, and in the end I settled that The Albertine Notes uses the post-apocalyptic setting with the fundamentalist ideology of kariotic time.

The character Cortez was an interesting addition because his role constantly seemed to shift. Throughout Kevin’s point of view, Cortez was a character that owns a cartel, to a man who committed his first murder through a memory, and to someone who wanted to bomb Manhattan. It was quite confusing to actually follow along with what was being said throughout the story. Another thing was the shifting perceptions of who his mom was. He was confused with the image of Cassandra as his mom. He even had memories of her being a chief chemist for the Cortez syndicate, informer for the Resistance, just a young woman, and of her as an older Chinese Woman. The memories of Cassandra were introduced as may or may not; meaning that Kevin was high and was going through different points of events through kariotic time. After all, when he was locked inside a supply closet in order getting high on Albertine, the reader was told the amount of time that he was on the drug.

Nevertheless, I found The Albertine Notes, to be confusing to follow at times when Kevin was slipping in and out of different memories. I think this was set by design by the author who wanted to display kariotic time, as anything kariotic can only be displayed in a nonlinear sense. Then again it could be like that just because Kevin was under the influence of Albertine making the confusion over memories as was one of the dilemmas that I was faced while I was reading the novella.