Read twice, Summer 2000 and November-December 2006. 
 This is one of those books that so many seem to hate, but coming back to it again after all those years confirmed to me that the book succeeds just fine on a number of levels. It can be read for a sort of existential horror entertainment, as a typographical marvel and amusement, as a diabolical Nabakovian puzzle box, or as a eerie rumination on loss and absence and how the irrevocable past impedes the present. Of course, they all work best together, but readers can usually ignore the ones they dislike. Problems arise, I think, when readers get angry at layers that they are aware of but don't really care to delve into.