I was in a library which seemed to be on The Ohio State University campus. I was in a room which had one wall filled with books and I was reading some kind of story in a paper. The story was written in a strange way. It actually consisted of two stories. On the left side of the paper was one story and on the right side of the paper was another. The margin for the left side was formed straight at the end of the sentences in the middle of the page, but on the extreme left where the sentences began, the margin was irregular. The right side was the reverse, so that down the center of the page was a straight line where the sentences began, and at the far right the lines were irregular where the sentences ended. So there was a space down the middle of the paper and on the sides of the paper the lines were jagged.

The two stories fitted together to make a whole. First I would read a sentence from one side and then a sentence from the other side. The story was about a hobbit-like character named "Ben" or "Benjamin."

As I stood reading, I glanced at the wall of books, and it began to seem that the titles of the books corresponded to lines of the stories I was reading. So it appeared that there was a separate book written concerning each line in the story and that there were volumes and volumes of books which had been written about the story. As I came to one line, I found the corresponding book on the shelf and removed it. It was indeed about the material in that particular sentence of the story. The book was filled with pictures. In the first part of the book the pictures were like those of a Mad magazine, but as I leafed through the book, I saw many pictures of high art, mostly of painters in the style of the Italian Renaissance.

As I looked over the shelf again, it seemed that not all the books pertained to the story. Indeed I noticed to my left several books by Herman Hesse tucked on the shelf. One was entitled Herman and Dorothea. The books had the wrong call numbers and had obviously been mis-shelved. I began removing them and thought about how someone hadn't been doing their job properly.

Someone walked into the room and began asking me about my family in Kentucky. Somehow, it seemed I had created for some reason (probably literary) a fictional family for myself in Kentucky. I didn't want, however, to delve into all that at the moment, so I said my uncle lived in Kentucky and he was well.

I eventually found myself on a country farm. It was tobacco harvest time. I didn't want to work, so when I saw it was raining, I went back to sleep. Actually, it didn't matter whether it rained or not, I still wasn't going out.