 In "Torpor", Kraus shifts out of the first-person narration of "I Love Dick", employing a kind of free-indirect discourse.In naming her central characters Sylvie and Jerome, Kraus alludes to the hapless, interchangeable protagonists of George Perec's first novel, "Les Choses".Perec, a childhood friend of both "Torpor"'s Jerome and Kraus's real-life husband, Sylvère Lotringer, is quoted several times in the novel.