Today’s New York Times Sunday Book Review includes a letter to the editor from philosophy and English professor Philip Kitcher, in which he masterfully corrects Slate overlord Jack Shafer. The latter had hypothetically asked in last week’s review of Roy Blount, Jr.’s Alphabet Juice: “Who before Blount thought to construct a complete conversation using only English vowels?”

Writes Kitcher: “The answer is James Joyce. Almost. The conversation Shafer cites, with the five vowels in order, has a precursor in a sentence from ‘Ulysses.’ In Chapter 9, Stephen Dedalus is meditating on his debt to the writer George Russell, whose pseudonym was AE. Stephen concludes his musings with a five-letter sentence: A.E.I.O.U.”