Golden Age

The Golden Age is a fantastical travelogue in which a modern-day Gulliver writes a book about a civilization he once encountered on a tiny island in the Atlantic. The islanders seem at first to do nothing but sit and observe the world, and indeed draw no distinction between reality and representation, so that a mirror image seems as substantial to them as a person (and vice versa); but the center of their culture is revealed to be "e;The Book"e; a handwritten, collective novel filled with feuding royal families, murderous sorcerers, and narrow escapes. Anyone is free to write in "e;The Book,"e; adding their own stories, crossing out others, or even ap- pending "e;footnotes"e; in the form of little paper pouches full of extra text-but of course there are pouches within pouches, so that the story is impossible to read "e;in order,"e; and soon begins to overwhelm the narrator's orderly treatise.