January 10, 2012
Helen DeWitt /// Lightning Rods One guy with a far-fetched, taboo-shattering idea that will change absolutely everything: a common focal point in a novel by, say, Houellebecq—but whereas the French misanthrope tends to zero in on what this means for the genius, DeWitt is superhumanly generous, casting her net over the whole psychosociosexualcapitalist pyramid of 21st-century American thought. And as she departs from her lone visionary’s point of view she encodes a brilliant, subtle treatise on chaos and control: for from deliberate choices come disastrous effects, and from accidents emanate little eddies of unintended perfection (or synergy, as the book would have it). DeWitt’s sly coda guarantees a grin precisely because it is one of these thrillingly obscure leaps forward, progress that’s roundabout, indirect, back-door … and possible for those reasons alone.        

Helen DeWitt /// Lightning Rods

One guy with a far-fetched, taboo-shattering idea that will change absolutely everything: a common focal point in a novel by, say, Houellebecq—but whereas the French misanthrope tends to zero in on what this means for the genius, DeWitt is superhumanly generous, casting her net over the whole psychosociosexualcapitalist pyramid of 21st-century American thought. And as she departs from her lone visionary’s point of view she encodes a brilliant, subtle treatise on chaos and control: for from deliberate choices come disastrous effects, and from accidents emanate little eddies of unintended perfection (or synergy, as the book would have it). DeWitt’s sly coda guarantees a grin precisely because it is one of these thrillingly obscure leaps forward, progress that’s roundabout, indirect, back-door … and possible for those reasons alone.        

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