Tom McCarthy, Satin Island (2015)

…this not-Report you’re reading now, this offslew of the real, unwritten manuscript… (p. 115)

I’d begun to suspect — in fact, I’d become convinced — that this Great Report was unplottable, unframeable, unrealizable: in short, an in whatever cross-bred form, whatever medium or media, unwritable. Not just by me, with my limited (if once celebrated) capabilities, but fundamentally, essentially, inherently unwritable. . . . Even when I reasoned these last, deranged notions back out to the fringes of my mind, I was still left with the immovable fact of the thing’s unwritability. This filled me with anger, and a feeling of stupidity, and sadness, too — grief not for an actual loss but, worse, for a potential or imaginary one: this beautiful, magnificent Report: this book, the Book, the fucking Book, that was to name our era, sum it up; this book that left the format of the book itself behind, this book-beyond-the-book. . . . (pp. 115-116)