I have read Paul Auster's novels with some degree of satisfaction in the past. I feel, though, that I know his sources too well to accord him much originality. If I hadn't read Kafka and Beckett, Celan, etc... then Auster would be an extremely original writer.

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The extraordinary second half of Beckett's "Molloy." Moran, in this alternate universe where almost everyone's last name seems to start with M, makes preparations to go on a secret mission, on foot, to find Molloy, whose name might be Mollose. He must bring with him his fourteen-year old son, whom he views with an odd mixture of contempt and tenderness. Everything great about the Beckett of this period is in this 60 pages or so. I'm going to have to read it in French.

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What is the point of my series of comments on slips of paper found in books? I honestly don't know. I once sold off a large number of books to a used book store, some of which my friend Bob Basil subsequently bought. Imagine his surprise bringing home a copy of Pound's Cantos and finding my name in it. Of course, I regret selling these books now.

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Ron Silliman's blog, found on this same site (ronsilliman.blogspot.com) is a wonderful source of information and insight. I wonder, though, why it is so darned earnest in tone--in contrast, of course, to the humor of his poetry. In Columbus, Ohio, where I was teaching in the early 1990s, there was a bookstore across from campus on High Street where I would buy books of LANGUAGE poetry. I have never seen a book of Ron Silliman in any other bookstore before or since, but I would walk over there quite often and acquire a new letter of the "Alphabet." Or did I order most these books from Segue or Roof after getting a catalogue in the mail? My memory is fuzzy. I will never forget the line "Teaching Reagan to count backwards by sevens." Or is it eights?