Description

A Brand New York Review Books OriginalThe Notice Murders Membership is just a secret culture of self described “conceivers” who, to protect the chastity of the concepts, may dedicate nothing to document. (What, in the end, is the run-of-the-work scribbler of tales or even a completed corruptor of concepts?) The reasoning of the membership is uncompromising and rigid. Every Sunday, people meet in a firelit room stuffed with bare dark bookshelves where they make an effort to top each other by creating ever unlikelier, ever more ideal concepts: a testing of Hamlet hijacked by an actor who disappears with the part; the dual existence of the happy ancient cleric derailed by an outfit change; a device-work globe that imprisons men’s thoughts while conscripting their health; a lifeless Roman scribe stuck this aspect of the Water Acheron. However in this book occur a threatening Soviet Moscow of the 1920s, the people of the team are unusually mistrustful of 1 another, while all are underneath the spell of its despotic Leader, and there's no showing, ultimately, so just how deadly the solely conceptual—or, for instance, letters—may be.