delirium tremens is a symptom of severe alcohol poisoning...not the by-product of four drinks...isn't alcohol, in moderate quantities, also associated with truth-telling and confessional? greg obviously did not play the hilarious drinking game "i never" as an undergraduate. four drinks seems just about in the zone where we used to use to unveil all our secrets without being able to remember to whom they belonged the next day. twain's book is certainly a commentary about the state of our cultural memory in the face of technological horrors. it anticipates processes of forgetting and madness in the face of modern apocalypses more than it emphasizes memory (which, in CY, is about the implementation of humor in cultural memory as a strategy for a "forgetful memory" which elides the horror of some of the consequences of Hank's imperialism until it can no longer be ignored, in the end). if we agree that the text implies that the M.T. narrator and Hank continue drinking throughout the narrative (ignoring the concept of a unity of narrative time and real time, for the moment), then perhaps the book is not a descent into delirium but a slow drinkers' revelation of the (underlying) truth of Hank's own horror at the changes he inflicted on the culture? admitting the truth could certainly result in the sort of guilt and madness and confusion portrayed in the end...the mind's own defense against modern horrors. Meryem Ersoz University of Oregon