As Peters writes, "(The book) is a provisional narrative introduction to the story of free cultures in America, using Swartz's life as a lens on the rise of information sharing in the digital age".
His one narrative innovation is the introduction of the Four Seasons (Vasily Tkachenko, Anton Pimonov, Maxim Zyuzin, Ivan Sitnikov) who preside silently on the stairs in Act I, dance during the transformation scene and appear at the fateful clock-striking moment.
He couples personal observations with statistics and peppers his narrative with introductions to only-in-New-York characters, like the Orthodox Jewish dean of discipline at a public school in the South Bronx.
"Inferno" jumps around in time a lot, and characters and situations flash in and out of the narrative sans introduction or context.
An innovation in the narrative is the introduction of the go-between Pandarus.
Next, look at every speech like a story, with an introduction, narrative, argument, refutation and summation.
In his autobiography (Barlow 1958), Darwin writes that, along with Humboldt's Narrative, Herschel's Introduction (sic) to the Study of Natural Philosophy, first published in 1830 (Herschel 1987), were the two books that he read at Cambridge that "stirred up in me a burning zeal to add even the most humble contribution to the noble structure of Natural Science".
Carabott stated that at least two or three episodes would have been needed to properly tell the narrative of their introduction.
The challenge then will be juggling all of these narrative strands and character introductions while at the same time having something cohesive and focused.
"Tango" is a promising but uneven book in dire need of an introduction, a narrative structure and an editor.
