Okay, so. Updating review. This is not an easy book, and it is in some sense a puzzle or code. I had to read it twice, and think about it a lot, before it kind of made sense.

It's sort of a parable about entropy in communication, and is thus, itself, an imperfect narrative: corrupted, distorted, subverted, unreliable. The reader's frustrations in attempting to decode the story echo the quest of Oedipa herself.

Other themes: lost and alternate histories (reminiscent of Tigana or Borges), humans as patterns of information which are irrevocably lost after death, secret/alternate methods of communication adopted by those who cannot (or choose not to) communicate in the ordinary way.

The book encodes itself. We are told we will not, cannot remember the revelation.

Just as in Hamlet, the play within the story echoes the structure of the whole.

"You came to talk about the play," he said. "Let me discourage you. It was written to entertain people. Like horror movies. It isn't literature, it doesn't mean anything."

"Certain things, it is made clear, will not be spoken aloud; certain events will not be shown onstage; though it is difficult to imagine, given the excesses of the preceding acts, what these things could possibly be. The Duke does not, perhaps may not, enlighten us."