The Nothing-Something of Loren Ipsum

This essay argues that Andrew Gallix's novel, Loren Ipsum, explores a nothing-something analogous to the one Ophelia's utterings become in the fourth act of Hamlet, asking in its first chapter, "what is lost when nothing is lost? When it becomes something?" The question here--posed by the novelist Sostène Zanzibar, refers to a note that reads "NOTHING IS LOST" and is found on the corpse of a murder victim--resonates beyond this context and seems to serve as the grounding question of the entire novel.