"Self has always given the impression of a man who intends to elope with his thesaurus at the first available opportunity; on the evidence of "How the Dead Live," that opportunity has finally presented itself. We get pointless reiterations ("unbeatable gloating, unbelievable schadenfreude"); we get the word "puling" twice in eight pages, which, for a book that invokes Joyce, will not do; and we get wave after wave of viscous imagery ("congealed reality . . . blubbery blancmange of an evidence"). Throw this book at a wall and it will stick."