Exemplary Lives of Impossible Men

Borges. Nabokov. Vonnegut. Joyce. They all want the author of this book dead. (As do Pynchon, Barthelme, Auster, Wallace, Heller, Barth, Beckett, Calvino, Lem and DeLillo. Among others.) Why? Because “Exemplary Lives of Impossible Men” is the apex of the postmodern novel—the apogee and apotheosis, the capstone and culmination of the literary style they pioneered…written by a hack who appropriated and executed all their favorite literary tricks. (Could the word “executed” have more than one meaning here, perhaps?) It exhibits all the characteristic features of pomo lit while breaking all its rules. It’s the last postmodern novel—the final nail in the coffin of the literary form—and it’s the only postmodern novel you ever need to read. It’s funny. It’s heartbreaking. (But mostly it’s funny.) And it’s the only novel ever written that analyzes itself. What more could you ask of a satiric metabiography that details the lives, careers and oeuvres of eight epically failed writers while simultaneously mocking both pretentious literary styles and skewering pompous literary criticism? Is this book science fiction? Yes and no. Is it literary fiction? Mmm, yes. And no. Is it a mystery? Oh, absolutely, and on every possible level. Is it a complicated word game full of intricate interconnections and a final surprise revelation? Is this a rhetorical question?