A comprehensively stunning book. Novel, play or poem, this landmark work jumps vividly to life with quirky invention, concentrated integrity and charming humor. Conference also teems with lyric passages: "Once there's an opening, there's absence. Departure. Open your mouth: you could walk through. The sky's an illusion and I'm perhaps legion. Yes or no. An opening is the nick of time, maybe, and clouds' job is to stave that off, in a huge collaboration with illusion. The sky is illusion: that's evident: agreed. This blinding is beauty's definition perhaps, and its reasons too." The wildly improbable cover art (Audubon on mescaline?) is almost worth the price on its own.