Everyone, after all, recognized me as his 'mentor' in those passages, as they did most of his other thinly disguised characters Book Details I was hard pressed to com- ment on this first work, either to Yin himself or to our mutual friends. In his first autobiographical essay, Auscultation of Two Worlds, Yin surprised many of his friends by the flamboyant accounts of his dramatic life. Many who knew him compared him to Don Quixote the younger genera- tion compared him to Danny Kaye, not only in his appear- ance, but in his speech, movements, and actions. Yin Zigas was a genius he was a romatic, he was a physician with compassion, he was a scientist with pene- trating curiosity, he was an actor, and he was a loyal friend. Witold Gombrowicz in Ferdeydurke After procrastinating for over two years since Yin's death on the writing of this Foreword for his second auto- biographical work, I finally begin using the above quota- tion from Witold Gombrowicz. Everyone, after all, recognized me as his 'mentor' in those passages, as they did most of his other thinly disguised characters.Also the task is to evaluate and assess, and to decide whether the work is a novel, or a book of memoirs, or a parody, or a lampoon, or a variation on imaginative themes, or psychological study and to establish its predominant characteristics whether the whole thing is a joke, or whether its importance lies in its deeper meaning, or whether it is just irony, sarcasm, ridicule.

Also the task is to evaluate and assess, and to decide whether the work is a novel, or a book of memoirs, or a parody, or a lampoon, or a variation on imaginative themes, or psychological study and to establish its predominant characteristics whether the whole thing is a joke, or whether its importance lies in its deeper meaning, or whether it is just irony, sarcasm, ridicule.

Laughing Death by Vincent Zigas