I don't really understand why they're friends. Sure, they feed off of each other in their publishing cycles and they're all about this Archimboldi, but I don't get why they call each other and are friends. They don't really seem to know each other very well. Sometimes the novel moves as if to show the reader things about the main characters in ways that will not reveal those things to the other characters. Some parts feel almost dream-like in the way that the images pile on top of each other and then jump to another place. I'm having trouble remembering the details, but I wonder if that's intentional; a mysterious author writes a story about a mysterious author. Perhaps these are not characters at all, but merely facets of various human qualities?