Introducing the main characters of \u201cThe Axe,\u201d the narrator\u2014omniscient, omnipotent, and jaded\u2014suddenly pauses: \u201cBut none of that matters, because these aren\u2019t real people, and it\u2019s hard enough to hold onto your own memories without holding onto theirs.\u201d Some of Row\u2019s characters are aware that they\u2019re characters; some of his narrators struggle against the constraints of their own roles. (\u201cNone of these details are accurate, by the way,\u201d says the first-person narrator of \u201cThe Sliding Door,\u201d midscene.) Stories that don\u2019t explicitly satirize or deconstruct literary or literary-world conventions (see \u201cMeditation for a Small Audience\u201d or \u201cReading Group Guide\u201d) explore storytelling, meaning-making, representation, in other ways: In \u201cLate Blues,\u201d two women contend with the legacy of a Black quiltmaker whose work was revered. In \u201cYoung Adult,\u201d a pair of teenagers engineer and then livestream robot sex. Throughout all this, Row references Beckett, Luk\u00e1cs, Marshall McLuhan, and other literary theorists, but also seems to emphasize the ultimate futility\u2014the tedium, really\u2014of all that theorizing about something we seem unable to finally quit. We go on telling stories\u2014in books, at the dinner table, to ourselves. This is implied by the very fluidity of Row\u2019s prose: Even as he (or his narrators) perform a kind of ironic detachment\u2014\u201cAs if what happens to me matters to anyone else except to flatter their own better judgment. The story is arrogant; the story is an elaborate inside joke\u201d\u2014you can\u2019t stop reading. In other words, Row\u2019s storytelling is masterful even as he tears down the very tropes that stories are defined by. Some stories are stronger than others (\u201cDear Yale\u201d feels particularly bloodless), but as a whole, the book is brilliantly conceived and executed.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Introducing the main characters of \u201cThe Axe,\u201d the narrator\u2014omniscient, omnipotent, and jaded\u2014suddenly pauses: \u201cBut none of that matters, because these aren\u2019t real people, and it\u2019s hard enough to hold onto your own memories without holding onto theirs.\u201d Some of Row\u2019s characters are aware that they\u2019re characters; some of his narrators struggle against the constraints of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7020,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7019"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}