That his crazyquilted literary career paralleled his frustrated life compounds the pathetic situation, yet many a reader of Irish literature must have breathed a sigh of relief when it became apparent that the intricacies and vagaries of At Swim were abandoned for the comic fantasies of the later novels.

Anyone would think you still had a soft spot in your heart for that rat-fucker.

In themselves, naturally, neither the concept of clothed- and unclothedness, nor that of man and woman before one another, have anything whatsoever to do with good and evil […]

A dense meshwork structure is formed.