Paul's refrain, "fit the pieces together you see how fit the . . . damn pieces together," represents Gaddis's challenge to the reader. It is not easy to carry out. Gaddis leaves readers in the dark quite often: the initials VCR are used without revealing what they stand for until the end; a letter from Thailand arrives and its contents are divulged, again, not until the end; and names are dropped but not identified for pages. A description of the house itself — as "a patchwork of conceits, borrowings, deceptions . . . a hodgepodge of good intentions like one last ridiculous effort at something worth doing even on this small a scale" — can work quite well as a description of the novel.

However, according to Steven Moore, the novel is highly symmetrical: the action takes place during one month's time (October to November 1983), and chapters are arranged symmetrically: 1 and 7, 2 and 6, 3 and 5 are...