Forced Entry

Perhaps it was the strong broth of slumber which left me so sensitive to touch through the weekend and easily excited by by the 500 or so pages of Clive James which I noshed like a hefty platter of paleek paneer. I noted to my wife on Saturday that I can't begin to imagine the construction and composition of a novel like that of Georges Perec's User Manual; conversely, it is far from impossible to fathom myself, or, more likely, Joel piecing together something comparable to Cultural Amnesia.

Apparently Clive finds Walter Benjamin impenetrable, as he does Gibbon's RAFOTRE and Moby Dick simply isn't worth the effort. The primacy of cafe wits in this narrative isn't likely an accident.