I found Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Topology of a Phantom City sitting in the window of a favorite second hand bookshop and was immediately captivated by the title. I didn’t care what might be found between the covers, I had to have it for the title alone. I had a little bit of money. I’d been planning to spend it on food. With hunger, I knew, would come the sort of cleverness by which I could devise the means of obtaining nourishment elsewhere. I spent my last few dollars on the book.