The house that Jack has built, while not a pack of cards, will infuriate those who think books should be solidly constructed, unified, and with an intellectual space defined by clear and resolute boundaries. Perhaps Glas has all these qualities of real estate. But like art of a certain caliber, it begins by confusing and even estranging us, and the difficult question is how long this estrangement should last, how genuine it is. Not since Finnegans Wake has there been such a deliberate and curious work: less original (but what does "original" mean to Derrida?) and mosaic than the Wake, even flushed and overreaching, but as intriguingly, wearyingly allusive. It is hard, at the same time, to shake off a feeling that high seriousness is mixed here with high frivolity, and that we may wake up from the beautiful strangeness of Glas into a handful of provocative epigrams...