Creation Lake is a novel that wants to be many contradictory things to many people all at the same time: It is a spy novel and a satire of a spy novel; a retro “novel of ideas” in a mid-20th-century style that’s also an absurdist postmodern novel of paranoia, floating signifiers, and randomness—an homage of sorts to Don DeLillo’s The Names. Mostly, however, it is a container to deliver many different kinds of information in explicit and implicit ways, especially about the evolution of humanity, and the history and topography of rural France. In this way, it resembles an essay or long monologue of a type found in institutionalized avant-garde theater and so-called “performance,” a novel that seems almost designed to receive grant funding from numerous institutions interested in work that “explores” or “examines” issues of climate change and inequality, feminism, and indigeneity, with the aim of “soliciting,” “encouraging,” or “provoking” thoughts about “the human condition” without making anyone too uncomfortable. Future editions should be published with the artist statement.
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