1. The critic's credentials
Eight propositions about literature and society
2. The handle: Nabokov's Invitation to a beheading and Bend sinister
Richard Wright reappraised
The art of Joseph Mitchell
Truths from the grave (Edgar Lee Masters)
Anthropologist of Gopher Prairie (Sinclair Lewis)
Prince Myshkin in Hollywood (Nathanael West)
The book of the year? (Philip Roth)
Fun and Love (John Barth)
Germ's choice, shame's voice (James Joyce)
Playing doctor, playing war (Peter Everett)
The bulging pockets of Anthony Carson
4. A blow with a maize stalk (George Simeon Mwase)
Waiting for the Bakayoko (Sembene Ousmane)
Sad encounters (Cesare Pavese)
The oldest story (Dino Buzzati)
Fable Italian style (Dino Buzzati)
Salad days, green and cold (Gottfried Keller)
A trap named Hope (Kobo Abe)
Conscious of the seasons (Yasunari Kawabata)
Counting the cats (Anton Chekhov)
Varangian times (Boris Pilnyak)
A Scythian humanist (Evgeny Zamyatin)
Nabokov's distorting mirrors
5. A Darwinian sidelight: the shape of the young man's nose
Jessie Weston and the forest of Brocelainde
Myths and mothers (Johann Jacob Bachofen)
Illumination for the unchurched (NEB Old Testament)
History and sacred history.
