I found this book via a link to it on kottke.org where Jason Kottke also noted its beautiful cover. The way the book was described—literary and “a brilliant meditation on those technologies that enrich or impoverish our connection to one another”—I thought, “How have I never heard of Ben Lerner?” After reading it now, I understand how. The book is as much poetry as story, maybe more so even. It’s the kind of book—the kind of writer in Lerner—that I don’t normally like, but this book has stayed with me many moments after I finished it.
It’s still sitting with me, here as I try to make sense of it, read pages over and over again, trying to under what I just read. It’s a thing to behold and wrestle with comprehending. And that’s the best compliment I can pay it.