Harry Mathews, who, in part of his work, has vertiginously built upon (see The Conversions and Tlooth, recently reissued by Dalkey Archive), the wonderful, strange narratives of Raymond Roussel, had this to say in a recent interview in Rain Taxi: "The great discovery I made through him [Roussel] was that you didn't have to write about what happened the day you fell in the swimming pool, but that you could invent your own swimming pool that had never existed before, full of quicksilver, lighted by imaginary lamps." Which, abstracted, might lead to a formula something like, The writer is in the world; the writing is in the writer. Or, looking at it from a reader-oriented perspective, we might arrive at: The writing is in the reader; the reader is in the world; Either way we are dealing with a considerable degree of mediation. One I am interested in.