The Novel

There is no more important thing in the world for Chee than the novel. The idea of the form, from how it is created, to what it can do, to the question of how novels come into the world, are the prime, animating force of these essays. While he spends time scientifically dissecting his own process and thinking that led to the creation of his fictional works, he also endows the form with a good deal of mystery, personifying it in some cases, and using elaborate metaphors to explain their creation and their function. “Books,” he writes, in his final essay (here meaning novels in particular) “were still to me as they had been when I found them: the only magic,” he writes (274).

The Mask

The idea of the mask, and its many different functions and connotations, comes up in nearly every essay in Chee’s...