The plot itself is both simple and uncommon for the novel form. This is, more or less, how McCann asks us to read Apeirogon. Phenomena are fixed in place and time the value of the idea, then, is that it is one plausible map to the objects of its consideration - a way of illuminating the relations between them. In The Origin of German Tragic Drama, Walter Benjamin wrote that “ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars.” He meant that the ideas that allow us to give meaning to objects and phenomena are no more present among those objects than constellations are among the stars above. And when ambition is the word, one hopes to watch it dissolve behind something challenging, breathtaking, and maybe even new. It is a tale saturated with the mid-career ambition of a celebrated author. His latest novel, Apeirogon - named for a shape with a countably infinite number of sides - is a collection of these and other curiosities, made to ring intelligibly around a central narrative of anger, loss, compassion, and solidarity. DID YOU KNOW that François Mitterand’s final meal was an ortolan, cooked whole - a traditional French dish thought to be so shameful to eat that the diner must cover his head with a napkin while chewing? Or that, when a suicide bomber activates his vest, his head usually separates from his body, a phenomenon known as the mushroom effect? Or that a frigatebird can stay aloft for two months without touching down?Ĭolum McCann wants to tell you these things.
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