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“But she asked herself (and by extension, the two of them) how well anyone could really know another person's work.”

The critics speak to Mrs. Bubis in their quest to uncover more information about the true identity of Archimboldi. At this point in the novel, Mrs. Bubis’s true relationship with the novelist is uncertain. In truth, she knows him almost as well as anyone else. Her comments deflect the critics with allusions to the unknowability of art but, subtly speak to her own anxieties about the extent to which she knows Archimboldi. She may know his name, she may know his history, but it is unclear if she ever be sure of his actual character. The critics know Archimboldi’s work better than anyone, she accepts, but they know even less about the true Archimboldi than her.

“Archimboldi (about whom so little was known that it might as well be nothing at all), which in turn drew more readers, most captivated not by the German's work but by the life or nonlife of such a singular figure.”

To the critics, the nonlife of Archimboldi is even more fascinating than the prospect of truly knowing his story. To them, his mysterious existence is a blank canvas. Their efforts to piece together whatever they can about his life become a professional exercise in discerning meaning from a text, projecting their own biases and sympathies onto their imagined character of Archimboldi to distinguish them from their peers. The true Archimboldi does not matter; what matters is the meaning they create from trying to know the unknowable.