Table of Contents
Teacher --Can it be taught? --The Spanish connection --The limits of imagination --A few words about minimalism --It's a long story : Maximalism reconsidered --It's a short story --It goes without saying --Postmodernism revisited --A body of words --Very like an elephant : reality versus realism --"Still farther south" : some notes on Poe's Pym --Kenosis : "I think it's trying to tell us something" --Borges and I : a mini-memoir --Once upon a time : storytelling explained --Goose art, or, The aesthetic ecology of Chesapeake Bay --"Jack and Jill" : an exegetical aria --Browsing --Ad lib libraries and the coastline measurement problem : a reminiscence --Four forewords:The floating opera and the end of the road ;The sot-weed factor ;Giles goat-boy ;Lost in the farmhouse --4 1/2 lectures : the Stuttgart seminars on postmodernism, chaos theory, and the romantic arabesque:1.PM/CT/RA : an underview ;2 .Postmodernism visited: a professional novelist's amateur review ;3.The arabesque ;4.Chaos theory : postmod science, literary model ;4 1/2.PM/CT/RA : "So what?" or "Ah, so!"? --Inconclusion : the novel in the next century.