I love the web. At one point in the book, someone sees the Southern Cross, from Vietnam. There must be some crossover, because you don't see an entirely different set of stars at 1 degree north latitude than at 1 degree south; but I had thought of the Southern Cross as severely southern, as southern as Polaris is northern. I googled: how far north is the Southern Cross visible? Answer: 30 degrees. Vietnam must lie south of that latitude, I was sure, and sure enough, it ranges from 21 to 9 degrees north.
Vocabulary: Pataphysics is the physics beyond metaphysics.
Thank you, David James Duncan, for a terrific book. Critics fuss at the character-narrator's narrating scenes at which he was not present, but I say it works. It works because the siblings are so interwoven, however different they all are.
I expected parallels to The Brothers Karamazov to be more obvious. . And I was glad they weren't. Dmitri, Ivan, Alexei, and the illegitimate one whose name is not Karamazov, to Everett, Peter, Irwin, and Kincaid, plus Bet and Freddy: not exactly. Politics and philosophy and religion and the love of good women appear in both, but mostly Duncan likes the pun. Besides, their last name doesn't begin with K.