Booker states that apart from his PhD in English Lit he has also written over a hundered articles on nuclear physics and electronics, which is enough to make you spew. Given that I have been theorising on the Menippea for the last four years, I find Booker's approach a little facile... his approach to "defining" Flann O"Brien as a menippean satirist amounts to ticking off the elements that correspond to Bakhtin's hit-list. He also makes no mention of Kirk's Bibliography, which is a glaring omission. Overall, a poor effort, from someone who obviously regards themselves as an egghead intellect. (Why do Americans continually abbreviate their first names to initials? from D. Bruce Musgrave