A priest remakes himself from animal flesh. A land surveyor travels into the earth's crust in search of a boulder. Hauled for centuries it forms a rut, the longest sentence in recorded history. Black Vellum is a Nietzschean experiment. The priest symptomizes Nietzsche's analysis and serves as an embodiment, a deviant incarnation, of the philosopher himself. Other figures are encountered in the content of their thought; Schopenhauer,...