From the Book - First edition.
Preface. The practice of writing. A beloved duck gets cooked: forms and influences I
Commentary on one very short story ("in a house besieged")
From raw material to finished work: forms and influences II
A note on the word gubernatorial
Visual artists: Joan Mitchell. Joan Mitchell and Les Bluets, 1973
Writers. John Ashbery's translation of Rimbaud's illuminations
The story is the thing: Lucia Berlin's a manual for cleaning women
A close look at two books by Rae Armantrout
Small but perfectly formed: five favorite short stories
Visual artists: Joseph Cornell. The impetus was delight: a response by Analogy to the work of Joseph Cornell
The practice of writing (2). Sources, revision, order, and endings: forms and influences III
Found material, syntax, brevity, and the beauty of awkward prose: forms and influences IV
Fragmentary or unfinished: Barthes, Joubert, Holderlin, Mallarme, Flaubert
Thirty recommendations for good writing habits
Visual artists: Alan Cote. Energy in color: Alan Cote's recent paintings
Writers (2). "Emmy Moore's journal" by Jane Bowles
Osama Alomar's very short tales in fullblood Arabian
Haunting the flea market: Roger Lewinter's the attraction of things
Red mittens: Anselm Hollo's translation from the Cheremiss
In search of difficult Edward Dahlberg
Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary
Visual artists: Early tourist photographs. Dutch scenes: a portfolio of early twentieth-century tourist photographs
Writers (3). The problem of plot summary in Blanchot's fiction
Stendhal's alter ego: The life of Henry Brulard
A farewell to Michel Butor
Michel Leiris's Fibrils, volume 3 of the rules of the game
The bible, memory, and the passage of time. As I was reading
"Paring off the amphibologisms": Jesus recovered by the Jesus seminar
A reading of the Shepherd's Psalm
Remember the Van Wagenens.
