The trilogy has become famous in the history of fiction because of what is left out: the usual novelistic apparatus of plot, scenes, and characters.
For a thriller, the web of hidden connections is too coarsely woven; for a journey of self-discovery, it relies too heavily on the apparatus of plot for its eventual working out.
Before we rush to condemn whole-hog the novel's supposedly obsolete conventions the well-worn apparatuses of plot and character we ought look at how they function and what they do well.
Before we rush to condemn whole-hog the novel's supposedly obsolete conventions — the well-worn apparatuses of plot and character — we ought look at how they function and what they do well.
If it turns out that America's security apparatus is thwarting plots that it is itself through its other activities inspiring, a long, detailed list of authentic, thwarted plots may tell us only that America's overweening security apparatus has so far successfully neutralised its own predictable dangers.
Nicholson Baker's "A Box of Matches" has a very thin fictional apparatus: there is virtually no plot; it's just Baker sitting down with a box of matches — he actually did this, of course, just as for "The Anthologist" he videotaped himself giving lectures about poetry — and thinking, thrillingly, about the ephemeral nature of existence.
To change the slope, they stacked books under the apparatus, dutifully taking measurements and plotting graphs to illustrate velocity, gravity and acceleration.
To test the stalk strength of each plot, they take an apparatus consisting of a few metal bars and "push" the corn over, seeing which plots withstand this best.
But the segment ties it into a forceful package, one that concludes by noting that the expensive security apparatus played no part in foiling plots like the attempted Times Square bombing.
Increasing attention is being paid to adapting designs to the constraints of the physical apparatus, in the form of split-plot methods or conscious understanding of the statistical penalties to be paid.
