Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. Foreword ix
4. Introduction: The Monologue as Conversation xi
5. The Uncommon Reader 1
6. Divination 21
7. To the Tally of My Soul: Whitman's Image of Voice 42
8. The Politics of Modem Criticism 72
9. The Making of a Critic 93
10. The uses of Decadence: Wilde, Yeats. Joyce 115
11. Long Work, Short Life 134
12. Literature and Belief: Three "Spiritual Exercises" 147
13. Summations 164
14. Magic and Spells 182
15. The Barber of Kasbeam: Nabokov on Cruelty 198
16. Collective Violence and Sacrifice in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar 221
17. Three in a Bed: Fiction, Morals, and Politics 243
18. Dylan the Durable? On Dylan Thomas 255
19. What Henry James Knew 276