Take the most common devices used in fiction — plot, character, setting, conflict, and metaphor — and view them as shapes. There are linear stories, moving forward or backward along a single trajectory. There are multiple lines that coalescence into one pluralistic yet singular image. There are static, singular images of the present, like photographs: sparse, minimal, and distant. Then there are those narratives that are like a picture that someone smashed with a hammer into 1,000 shards — each broken piece refractive of the whole, yet reflective of its own inner truth...