Smirt is the first volume of a trilogy. (Smith and Smire follow.) Cabell explains that these books are his contribution to naturalistic literature--an attempt to accurately represent dreaming experience. Cabell is very droll, one might say too clever by half, and these books are full of jokes at the expense of his friends, reviewers, the reading public, and himself.

"This book attempts to extend the naturalism of Lewis Carroll." So begins the authors note. He defends the thesis ably. He insists that dream life rarely gets realistic treatment in literature. And, in this, the first of his trilogy "The Nightmare Has Triplets," Cabell does just that.

Immediately, in the first chapter, you realize that, though the book is one of those odd entries into the Second Person Sweepstakes (the winner of which is vague, of course, since it can be none other than YOU), this is a very personal book for its author. He is the dreamer. And the scene is set simply:

"You lived in contentment. Your desired work was done. The romantic novels which you had written pleased, at all events, you. Sedately and wholly, as cool water contents a thirsting man, so did these books satisfy you, not because of their super-eminence in any special grace or profundity, but because they were what you had desired to do, and that which, somehow, amid all dissuasions, all stumbling-blocks, and all treacheries of chance, you had done. . . .

And the author goes on like this, for several pages. The conclusion? Inconclusive:

"You were thus a personage, to a reasonable extent. It was a fact which your intelligence could not, and did not ever attempt to, ignore.
"'Nevertheless --' said the black dog.
"And it rather startled you."

There begins a tale, realistic in the manner of Lewis Carroll. ( )