The Review of Contemporary Fiction

30: Pieces of a Novel by Henry Holt
Irving Malin

Stephen Dixon. 30: Pieces of a Novel. Henry Holt, 1998. 672 pp. $30.00.

Dixon writes apparently realistic fiction, but he renders “reality” so fully that his descriptions tend to heighten details—experiences and things (a bathroom, a wheelchair, a key)—so that these descriptions become surreal. We wonder about their factual validity. And, to complicate matters, Dixon will, now and then, offer clues that his descriptions are crafted words; he interrupts texts to cancel a word. Thus the total effect is devastating—we have to put all the pieces together, but are not sure how to create true shape.
Once we recognize that our “lives” are as perplexing and obscure as Dixon’s descriptions, we begin to understand that he is forcing us to interpret our interpretations. We become unsure of the shape of a life. Does a life, indeed, have a shape—a beginning, middle, and end? Can we know how we began or how we will end? Living and reading are processes, force fields, puzzles.
The title of Dixon’s novel provides a clue for interpretation. Traditionally, “30” is the sign for the end of a newspaper item, a type of closure. The novel contains twenty-nine separate sections and its thirtieth section consists of fifteen texts entitled “Ends.” Therefore, there is no one ending, no sense of a final solution. The subtitle, too—Pieces of a Novel—deliberately fights conclusive arrangement. The pieces are, indeed, perversely arranged. One piece does not lead to another in any traditional way. There may be a “burial,” but in the next piece the dead person is still alive, even younger.
The novel is, therefore, a search for origins and ends; the protagonist obsessively examines the real frames of reference. But then the frames, we find, are elusive shortcuts or incomplete bypaths. The last lines of this bold extraordinary novel reflect this labyrinth of meaning for which Dixon is legend, even “the end” here sends the reader turning back to the novel’s parts. Dixon’s style has so accustomed us to unexpected turns (returns, counterturns) that we can never expect “the end” to be the only possibility. [Irving Malin]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction 30: Pieces of a Novel by Henry Holt Irving Malin Stephen Dixon. 30: Pieces of a Novel. Henry Holt, 1998. 672 pp. $30.00. Dixon writes apparently realistic fiction, but he renders “reality” so fully that his descriptions tend to heighten details—experiences and things (a bathroom, a wheelchair, a key)—so that these descriptions become surreal. We wonder about their factual validity. And, to complicate matters, Dixon will, now and then, offer clues that his descriptions are crafted words; he interrupts texts to cancel a word. Thus the total effect is devastating—we have to put all the pieces together, but are not sure how to create true shape. Once we recognize that our “lives” are as perplexing and obscure as Dixon’s descriptions, we begin to understand that he is forcing us to interpret our interpretations. We become unsure of the shape of a life. Does a life, indeed, have a shape—a beginning, middle, and end? Can we know how we began or how we will end? Living and reading are processes, force fields, puzzles. The title of Dixon’s novel provides a clue for interpretation. Traditionally, “30” is the sign for the end of a newspaper item, a type of closure. The novel contains twenty-nine separate sections and its thirtieth section consists of fifteen texts entitled “Ends.” Therefore, there is no one ending, no sense of a final solution. The subtitle, too—Pieces of a Novel—deliberately fights conclusive arrangement. The pieces are, indeed, perversely arranged. One piece does not lead to another in any traditional way. There may be a “burial,” but in the next piece the dead person is still alive, even younger. The novel is, therefore, a search for origins and ends; the protagonist obsessively examines the real frames of reference. But then the frames, we find, are elusive shortcuts or incomplete bypaths. The last lines of this bold extraordinary novel reflect this labyrinth of meaning for which Dixon is legend, even “the end” here sends the reader turning back to the novel’s parts. Dixon’s style has so accustomed us to unexpected turns (returns, counterturns) that we can never expect “the end” to be the only possibility. [Irving Malin]

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