First published in 1991. This book is written with the intent to reach serious readers in and outside a university through joint mental contact with serious writers of the present and the past. To get whatever there is to be got out of this book, a reader should also read or have read (at least) Bernard Malamud’s A New Life, Saul Bellow’s Herzog and Doris Lessing’s The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five, so that we can work together.