MUNCHMEYER AND PROSPERO OR THE ISLAND

The author of the second novella writes a novel which turns out to be the first novella which is in itself about an author writing a novella. Ad nauseam, as the only thing more irritating than Miranda's ""journal entries"" about the progress of ""Munchmeyer"" and her Platonic semi-love for the fellow artist she so cutely names Prospero (on the island off Vancouver where they live in voluntary semi-isolation from their respective mates) are the whinings of Munchmeyer, a graduate student who kicks out his wife and four kids so he can write a novel that is actually a cop-out for diary writing. He also has his Platonic semi-love, in the person of his landlady, but the two stories, though parallel, shed little light on each other or the art of novel writing, which turns out to be drearier than one could possibly expect.