Kellaway is able to skimp on the things that flesh out traditional novels — dialogue, for instance; descriptions, too — because we already know this world and the people in it.
For instance, the description of the paradigm was limited to the design matrix and a list of regressor names.
For instance, the description of the Toulouse trials includes several historical inaccuracies, and the original documents have never been located.
Take, for instance, his description of the ship, the Oronsay, which we are told is "lit like a long brooch".
Here, for instance, is Description No. 475, exacting and chilling as a steel instrument: "She was a stalk of ripe corn, but bound not as cereals are but as a rare first edition, with all the binder's art.
For instance, this description of one of Nesmith's vehicles: "Timerider had Nascar mufflers that made such a pretty noise it was like having a happy tomcat stuck in each ear".
Take for instance, the description of Amelia's Venetian childhood in which she "turned the chairs in the salotto upside down and pretended that they were gondolas, rowing across a marble lagoon".
His biographies of Abbon and St. Benedict offer more direct testimony on his time, for instance his description of Abbo's two trips to Rome, made because of political disagreements between the French king and the church.
Note, for instance, this description of a bully: "His big nostrils had a hard, caked-on layer of green crust on the outside, with a more liquid, glistening layer on the inside, like the devil's own confectionery".
Take, for instance, his description of Lincoln, as a toddler, waiting for his mother to read to him: "Her long fingers, big-knuckled with flattened tips like tongues, moved on the face of the page, and the spots and whirls and flashes, black on white, flowed out of them".
