I may have three favourite American authors or so my emergency cache of reading matter seems to suggest. Fearing that a particularly unsettled sleep will leave my spine uncooperative, I keep thirty-six books within a paralysed arm’s reach, that they may occupy me until the ambulance arrives. American literature is represented by only three writers, but that nation’s literary community is so insular that it is frequently too difficult for me to tell one from another. To this end, I have devised a simple device by which I can keep the three distinct.

Two are sons of architects;
& Two had architects for fathers;
Two have moustaches;
Two have beards, but they are not the same two, except for one of them;
Three are dead;
But three lived between April 1931 and October 1979;
Two, in print, have praised Flann O’Brien, as would have pleased my younger self;
One, in print, drew the grave of L. F. Celine;
Two illustrated their own books;
A third “cannot draw a lick,” but can collage like a champion;
Two are of German extraction;
One voice I have on elpee;
Another on seadee;
Two were shipped to American wars;
But only one saw action;
Three went to university;
One has a degree;
One has none;
The last one is a Master;
Two wrote about abstract expressionism;
While the other two appeared in The New Yorker almost by the month;
Three died in New York City, but where else is there to die in the United States?

But, you see, now I have confused my self all the more! Who were they again?

N.B.
Since the writing of these sentences, three books by Ms. Stein have been promoted from a foot’s reach to the windowsill. Pray I will never need her.