One of the most unique and eye-rubbing-from-disbelief novels I've had the pleasure to read (I have 3 editions, and yet have not been able to convince anyone to try and finish this book). Shandy, you just know, must have been the inspiration for Robertson Davies's Fifth Business (in ovo beginnings only have so many such nests, to force a straw one). It's as modern as the future--has anyone ever seen a whole page of black ink before that wasn't inspired by this work? And the image of the war-dreaming uncle on his hobby-horse is like none other. Absolutely a work of absurd imagination and inspiration. --mm ( )