I started this four times. This time I got almost halfway through with a little help from “A Companion to Gravity’s Rainbow” (which was really very little help). I was clearly not having fun—many pages had to be skipped because, while they were masses of useless information, they were also totally lacking in narrative appeal. I decided that since there are over 700 books on the list I have not read, I would go back to something that is a little bit of fun. When I’ve finished the other 1000, I’ll come back to this again.