I

The Millenial Warp

American Nostalgias

Sense and Semblance: The Implications of Virtuality

The Idea of the Internet

Walking after Midnight

Only God Can Make a Tree

Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man; or, Why I Can't in Good Conscience Write about Noam Chomsky

II

An Open Invitation to Extraterrestrials

Biography and the Dissolving Self

The Grasshopper on the Windowsill

States of Reading

Against the Current

Reading and Depth of Field

Docufiction

"Poetry" and "Politics"

Running Out of Gas

Second Thoughts

This Year's Canon

III

When Lightning Strikes

On a Stanza by John Keats

Rainer Maria Rilke

Robert Lowell

Seamus Heaney

Atmospheres of Identity: Elizabeth Bishop

The Leaning Umbrella: A Reflection on Flaubert

A Gatsby for Today

Jack Kerouac

Destinies of Character

Don DeLillo's Underworld