Just Because: "The Last Samurai"

This is one of my favorite books in the world, and one of the only ones I can imagine rereading every few years. Unfortunate title, as people think I'm talking about the Tom Cruise movie or get it confused with Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, which actually plays a big role in this book. The Last Samurai is by Helen DeWitt, who is, IMHO, a total genius. That said, here's the beginning (after the Prologue):

1: Do Samurai Speak Penguin Japanese?

   There are 60 million people in Britain. There are 200 million in America. (Can that be right?) How many millions of English-speakers other nations might add to the total I cannot even guess. I would be willing to bet, though, that in all those hundreds of millions not more than 50, at the outside, have read A. Roemer, Aristarchs Athetesen in der Homerkritik (Leipzig, 1912), a work untranslated from its native German and destined to remain so till the end of time.
   I joined the tiny band in 1985. I was 23.
   The first sentence of this little-known work runs as follows:

   Es ist wirklich Brach- und Neufeld, welches der Verfasser mit der Bearbeitung dieses Themas betreten und durchpflügt hat, so sonderbar auch diese Behauptung im ersten Augenblick klingen mag.
   I had taught myself German out of Teach Yourself German, and I recognised several words in this sentence at once:
   It is truly something and something which the something with the something of this something has something and something, so something also this something might something at first something.
   I deciphered the rest of the sentence by looking up the words Brachfeld, Neufeld, Verfasser, Bearbeitung, Themas, betreten, durchpflügt, sonderbar, Behauptung, Augenblick and klingen in Langenscheidt's German-English dictionary.
   This would have been embarrassing if I had been reading under the eyes of people I knew, since I should have been on top of German by now; I should not have frittered away my time at Oxford infiltrating classes on Akkadian, Arabic, Aramaic, Hittite, Pali, Sanskrit and Dialects of the Yemen (not to mention advanced papyrology and intermediate hieroglyphics) instead of advancing the frontiers of human knowledge. The problem is that if you have grown up in the type of place that is excited to be getting its first motel, the type of place that is only dimly (if, indeed, at all) aware of the very existence of the Yemen, you want to study dialects of the Yemen if you can because you think you may well not get another chance. I had lied about everything but my height and my weight to get into Oxford (my father, after all, had shown what can happen if you let other people supply your references and your grades) and I wanted to make the most of my time.