mom away from mom

so i was reading the new york times book review at breakfast today (bright and early at 7 a.m. - you gotta love 7 a.m. construction projects), and one review in particular puzzled me. it sounded familiar, even though i'd never even heard of the book it was talking about before - a story, as I understand the article, about a man fighting a conceptual shark with a theoretical shark hunting boat. i read and reread the review, eventually tracing my fascination to these few paragraphs:

" 'A violent something' lurches out of the TV and attacks his sofa, leaving him 'bobbing and floating and trying to tread water in the idea of the floor, in fluid liquid concept, in its endless cold rolling waves of association and history.' I hate it when that happens."

and:

"His only defense is to set up a "nondivergent conceptual loop" - to wit, an arrangement of Dictaphones relaying a constant ambient noise between them. In short, to survive, he must turn himself into a walking Brian Eno concert."

and finally:

"I couldn't stop wondering how much help a theoretical boat was going to be. Then I remembered they were only fighting a conceptual shark to begin with, at which point I went off to make myself a cup of tea."

and that's when i realized why it was giving me deja vu. the byline on this review is tom shone - but if i didn't know better, i could have sworn it was written by my mother.