
Heavy Meta
German-Austrian novelist Daniel Kehlmann’s Fame is a Nabokovian puzzle, a game of hide-and-seek, and a playful reflection on cultural renown and the lack thereof. Told in nine episodes that initially appear discrete but then rapidly connect with one another, the book focuses on three celebrities, three nobodies, and a minor author named Leo Richter, who early on speaks of a novel with a “narrative arc, but no main character.” Another character critiques Richter’s fiction, thinking it “full of complicated mirror effects and unpredictable shifts and swerves that were flourishes of empty virtuosity.”