[The observations in Shapiro's essay are based substantially on interviews with John Ashbery, 1964–72.]

Ashbery was a connoisseur of [the French author Raymond Roussel] and began a doctoral dissertation on him but decided not to go through with it, although characteristically he collected many minute particulars about that grand eccentric. Thus the modulated parodies of narration in Rivers and Mountains may be associated with the labyrinthine parentheses of Roussel's poems and novels; this contagion of the parodistic tone seems to lead structurally to a "chinese box" effect or play within a play…. [In later works] Ashbery wittily employed another device of Roussel: the specious simile, "The kind that tells you less than you would know if the thing were stated flatly."… In lieu of the organic and necessary simile, Ashbery learned from the French master an extravagance of connection that leads one nowhere…. Ashbery is also a master of...