[nice tight clean copy, no discernible wear to book; jacket similarly nice but for a surface-scrape mark at top of spine and some extremely minor edgewear]. "The adventures of Carl Hausman, a dreamy, dissatisfied young man who, while watching a baseball game one hot August afternoon, chases a foul ball into a thicket and discovered an opening into the underworld. Morpheus, the genial master of that realm, takes Carl on an epic tour that includes the lost kingdom of Atlantis, a library containing the conclusions of all the books that were never finished as well as all the books mentioned in other books but never actually written, mirrors with memories, mermaids, giants, and a man who sprang to life out of a mediocre painting."