[SJB]

I just bought a new copy of Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake." I tried to read it some forty years ago, as a sort of intellectual stunt. I think I managed to trace every letter on about one third of the pages, before I found the fact that I understood nothing of it incompatible with a need for self respect. I got slightly further into Heidegger's "Being and Time", also famous for being unreadable. And, as with Joyce's work, considered as one of the literary mountains necessary to climb if you are to elevate yourself up into the upper crust of intellectual snobs. I am slightly proud of this, both of having tried to read these two "unreadable" books, and to have given it up relatively early. I am not that proud of having read Mickey Spillane's "I the Jury", and Carter Brown's "The Wayward Wahine", but those literary works I did enjoy reading. So go on, do not mind me, just know I am an attentive follower of this thread.