Still life with razor

Abstract

Although 'Still Life with Razor' begins with an account of art vandalism, the inspiration for the novel--the 2000 America Online-Time Warner merger--could not be further removed from the art world. While the novel deals with art, its subject is how value is assigned to things that lack intrinsic worth, regardless of whether this struggle occurs in debates over a piece in a gallery, in retrospective attempts to understand a love affair, or in the fluctuation of stocks in response to rumor and promise. 'Still Life with Razor' is first the story of a narrator attempting to puzzle out his involvement with a vandal. While narrative-as-defense is a technique of crime fiction (and common when narrators appeal to readers' sympathies), this novel also uses an artificial present tense to show the narrator's nostalgia for events that he has misunderstood and that have had severe negative consequences on his life.