One of the usual tactics of critical terrorism (whether or not it is legitimized by the power of the State) is to create a scarecrow-image, either of the author … or of the work, making it out, for instance, to be an impenetrable, confused, chaotic hodge-podge … so that the potential reader comes to associate it in his mind with the label "unreadable." The ambition, difficulty, and deliberate excesses inherent in Terra Nostra thus make it the ideal candidate for transformation into a scarecrow-image of a work, which is quoted from (in order to tear it to pieces) but not read, and the mausoleum of an author whom the penny-a-liners would like to see interred in it once and for all. But these overeager grave-diggers forget that Terra Nostra belongs to that category of novels that, like Ulysses or Under the Volcano, little by little create, through the text alone...