Dreams of a dreamer

Eric Kraft is an oddball, an eccentric, a bit of a genius -- the writerly equivalent of a dreamer who puts together weird and wonderful contraptions in his garage. For almost 30 years, and through many books, he has been crafting "The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences and Observations of Peter Leroy," a series of fictions framed as memoir, or maybe they're just fictionalized memoir, bits of life seen in a dizzying metafictional mirror. Reading these books and trying to figure out where Kraft stops and Leroy begins is part of the mystery here, and part of the fun.

By Richard Rayner

March 1, 2009