Culture January 8, 2016

The narrator of Argentine novelist César Aira’s 2004 short story “The Cart,” himself a writer, describes the affinity he feels for an errant shopping trolley that can move on its own, “like a little boat full of holes in search of adventure.” “Even our respective techniques were similar,” he writes of the apparently banal vehicle with magical powers: “progressing by imperceptible increments, which add up to make a long journey; not looking too far ahead.”