““Julian curses his fixation: Ultimately, he should have his time writing down the conversations that floated up from the bar beneath the apartment he shared with Karla. That would have been much better. Instead of spotlighting a dead image, he should write about lives like that boy’s in 1984. Instead of making literature, he should have lost himself among familiar mirrors. He imagines a novel with only two chapters: the first, very short, records what the boy knew at the time; the second, very long, practically infinite, relates what the boy didn’t know. It’s not that he wants to write that story. It isn’t a future project. It’s more like he wishes he had written it years ago and could read it now.””
