Arthur Rimbaud's Splendide-Hotel, "built in the chaos of ice and of the polar night, " is the setting for the novelist and critic Gilbert Sorrentino's imaginative meditation on letters and language. Each of the twenty-six chapters, which reflect the others as well as the whole, provide an opportunity for the author to expand on images suggested by the letters of the alphabet as well as to reflect upon the workings of the imagination and art of William Carlos Williams and Arthur Rimbaud. Reminiscent of the philosophical treatise/poem On Being Blue by William H. Gass, yet infused with more fictional elements, Splendide-Hotel is a unique and fascinating book.