Simon, Dante and Harry

Just in defence of my own digressive and erratic mind ... "call me Al" does have something to do with Potter. Granger notes the classical "descent into the underworld" as part of the central structure present in every Potter novel (it is worked into the alchemical structure of death and resurrection but it is in the specific image of the classical descent under the earth to the land of the dead ... every Potter novel involves descent into the earth except Goblet, which involves a graveyard, the land of the dead) Rowling gets it from Dante, who gets it from Virgil, who gets it from Homer. Simon writes using Dante ... what more can you ask for? heh heh