"He began by looking into Egypt: poking into the ruins, lugging home from the Brooklyn Public big folios, sniffing at indexes, settling down to browse. In none of them what he was looking for, The topic was vast, of course, and Egyptology took up long shelves at the library, having its own Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms: antique mutivolume studies from whose ancient silt poked up etched plates, and then newer mythographical analyses clinker-built and obdurate as pyramids, and lastly decadent popular works chock-ful of color photos-in none of them was the country he sought. He felt like someone who had set out for the Memphis of crocodiles and moonlit temples and wound up in Tennessee." - John Crowley