Robert Pinsky, “José Saramago Goes Back to Genesis” (2011)

“Masters of narrative have the power to expose the act of fabrication without invalidating the work: sublime puppeteers like Austen or Nabokov smiling at the audience above their creations, addressing the reader or discussing what they know or need to suppose about the puppets and their stage. Sometimes it’s done with backspin, as when Dante says he hesitated to say he saw a body walking along holding its severed head — but what can he do, he really saw it?” [. . .]    —The New York Times (October 21, 2011)