The Novel has No Definition

Was reading Poets and Writers and somebody said this was the best book not about 9/11 but about 9/11 they have ever read. So far, it's just anecdotes that "the author" has been keeping on recipe cards in an attempt to discover/write a novel. Much of the random triva is interesting, some not so much. For example, "A seascape by Henri Matisse was once hung upside down in the MOMA in New York--and left that way for a month and a half" (interesting); "Brahms had blue eyes/As did Abraham Lincoln/And Hitler" (not so much). Turns out this is a great "novel", so I ordered more of his work from the library.