Thursday, November 5, 2015

Tom McCarthy, Satin Island ***

From the first chapter to the last, Satin Island is filled with colorful metaphors about how connections create meaning and how we imbue things with meaning by positing connections. The narrator hopes to devise what he calls Present Tense Anthropology™, where you can understand the connections (and therefore meaning) in real-time, as you live. He wants us to understand our actions while they are happening.

The narrator's desire for real-time meaning shows his kinship with the narrator of Remainderone of my all-time favorite books. However, Satin Island remains more abstract and academic than Remainder. The metaphors are entertaining and sometimes funny, but they aren't grounded to an actual plot. The stories "radiate with a prospect, with an overwhelming promise, of significance" -- very Remainder-ish.

No comments:

Post a Comment