Like Wittgenstein¿s jottings on Shakespeare, Aaltomania sets out to avoid programmatic overreach, and any prescriptive critical briefs. It opts for no systematic revelation and attempts no real cumulative goal in adding to Aalto scholarship. On the contrary this essay opts for the ¿magic¿ and ¿trollishness¿ of Aalto, aspects of Aalto which the author sees sadly missing from the critical industry that suffocated Aalto in the last decade of the 20th century. Aaltomania asks how much is buried in the reverence and critical gaming around ¿legendary¿ architects like Aalto. Are we so immersed in a critical endgame where the erudite and verbally clever cast their own spells? Why is Alvar Aalto protected by so many who realise not the mechanics of this protection? Why is there a feeling that more truths will only damage the current picture given of Aalto¿s incredible and astonishing contribution to architecture in the 20th century? The Aalto Centenary (1998) offered its own consensus for a critical permanence. Accepted critical history was hardly challenged as uncritical praise mocked the provisional and the ephemeral, leaving much on Aalto unexplored. Contrary to the scholastic tradition of ¿closure¿, Aaltomania seeks simply to explore, in all the taboos and hagiography on this legendary architect, the questions that have survived so far in not being asked. Could it be that we have missed the point? Are we not all responsible for those images that may no longer conform to the accepted achievements? Aaltomania is about architecture and Alvar Aalto. But Aaltomania is no conventional essay or book of architectural criticism. It is about our own critical selves. It is also about critical history. A history in the unmaking! The oedipus INTRODUCTION: history in the unmaking, critical end-games, nine lives, nine deaths, the legendary everyfinn, cognitive delusions, forging Aalto¿s signature, aaltocentricity, realities and illusions, readings against Aalto, sympathy for devil