[Incandescence] has a striking profusion of tantalizing baseball references: The narrator's name is Stargell, and he is joined by a host of tangential characters called Munson, Carew, Lee MacPhail, The Georgia Peach, Concepcion, and Al Hrabosky. One searches in vain, however, for the baseball metaphors these names promise. Their use is, in fact, nothing but an idle literary device that serves no larger purpose—not surprising, really, since there is no larger purpose, not to mention theme, discernible in Incandescence.

Nova's characters do not grow in the course of the story; they stand still, reveling (as does the author) in their own quirkiness…. Yet not only does Nova give his characters unexplained eccentricities; he senselessly maims them as well, chopping off the legs of one, blinding another.

As for the story itself—well, there isn't much of that either. The author has merely strung together a series of...