07/11/2016
Part memoir and part manifesto, Australian writer Murnane's series of fictional and essayistic experiments requires careful consideration and study. The premise of the book extends from the Henry James epigraph that opens it: "The house of fiction has in short not one window, but a million." Murnane walks readers through several of his distinctive touchstones of writing, and he illustrates his arguments with multiple vignettes and fictional scenarios. Murnane is brooding and deeply serious about his subject matter. He ruminates on the effects of memory by writing variations of a story in which a man sees a young girl on a train. The encounter opens a door of possibility, and Murnane wants the reader to realize that this story could ultimately be written "in any of a million ways." He often writes in lengthy, spiraling sentences and is prone to making broad pronouncements such as "One of the many devices employed by writers of fiction is the use of the present tense." Murnane frequently contrasts the abilities of fiction with those of film—to the detriment of film. Murnane is a master of breathing life into fiction, and his compilation of ideas on the subject holds immense value because those ideas are often so idiosyncratic and contrarian. (May)
Praise for Gerald Murnane and A Million Windows
“An exploration of the mind and of literary creation, it is a book of intricate construction and vast intellectual scope….I found myself marveling at Murnane’s intellectual power and originality, acknowledging respect for an artist so devoted to the precise execution of a demanding aesthetic.”—James McNamara, The New York Times
“A genius on the level of Beckett.”—Teju Cole, author of Open City
“[Murnane’s] emotional conviction . . . is so intense, the somber lyricism so moving, the intelligence behind the chiseled sentences so undeniable, that we suspend all disbelief.”—J. M. Coetzee, The New York Review of Books
“[A] beautiful and strange tale…[an] astonishing feat by a writer of profound conviction.”—Michael Autrey, Booklist
“Murnane is a master of breathing life into fiction, and his compilation of ideas on the subject holds immense value because those ideas are often so idiosyncratic and contrarian.”—Publishers Weekly
“Murnane is a writer of such precision and irony that one hesitates to describe A Million Windows except to say that it will fascinate (and amuse and provoke) anyone who has driven past that house of ‘two, or perhaps three, storeys,’ and wondered what exactly was going on inside.”—Lorin Stein, The Paris Review
“An extraordinary and consistently compelling read from beginning to end.”—Midwest Book Review
“It compels the reader to question the relationship between fiction and reality, the visible and invisible world, probing the rapport between the author-as-narrator and the reader-as-partner in literary discourse.”—Eugene Bacon, World Literature Today
