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
Young Pynchon
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
Revising One Sentence
Found Material, Syntax, Brevity, and the Beauty of Awkward Prose: Forms and Influences IV
Fragmentary or Unfinished: Barthes, Joubert, Hölderlin, Mallarmé, 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
Maurice Blanchot Absent
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
Meeting Abraham Lincoln
"Paring Off the Amphibologisms": Jesus Recovered by the Jesus Seminar
A Reading of the Shepherd's Psalm
Remember the Van Wagenens

Acknowledgments and Notes