[1] X—, speaking about Jim, says: We were constructed to be polar opposites so that the story—our story—might be born.As is clear from the above quotation, metafictional issues are present in the novel.

X— makes frequent reference to the "story-mongers" and "meaning-mongers", and is constantly trying to figure out whether trivial matters that happen qualify as "incidents" or "events" or are otherwise "part of the story".

Brodsky, on the copyright page, acknowledges Noël Burch Theory of Film Practice (1973), translated from Praxis du cinema (1969), for an idea that he explores in the novel.

Soon after three in the morning they encounter a policeman, and Jim offers up a photograph, apparently of his parents, an event that X— obsesses over.

Later, while dining in a fine restaurant, one Colletti asks X— to recruit Jim for help distributing some pharmaceuticals of an unspecified nature.

This extraordinary novel ... continues Brodsky's evolution as one of the most important writers working today, and demands our attention.Disbelief in the power of language to convey the experience of being is dispiriting fare, and such propositions are contentiously pressed.

One wonders how long failure, unrelieved by humor or compassion, can continue as the occasion for Brodsky's art.This is really a novel of the meditations that surround meditations, and an act of thought here is as every bit as imposing and important as physical behavior... Dyad is an anthem sung from an urban dump by one of those tenors who sing Bach's cantatas.