Of Iron and Irony: Starling Lawrence's The Lightning Keeper

This review essay of Starling Lawrence's The Lightning Keeper asks whether it is possible to write a straightforward epic in praise of good old-fashioned American industry and ingenuity in our jaded present. Cohen reflects on the novel's blurring of history and fiction and on the author's decision to present both himself and his fictional narrator as historians. What seems to be at stake is the re-enchantment of modernity. The book's unusual incorporation of real and fake archival material as supportive apparatus occasions a discussion of what kind of relationship we can have to the technological marvels of yesteryear: awe-filled, ironic, nostalgic, or some amorphous and unsatisfactory blend of all three?