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Acknowledgments
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ix |
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Preface: In Rough Country
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xiii |
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I
Classics
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1 |
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A Poe Memoir
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3 |
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The Woman in White: Emily Dickinson and Friends
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13 |
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Cast a Cold Eye: Jean Stafford
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29 |
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The Art of Vengeance: Roald Dahl
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45 |
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Revisiting Nabokov's Lolita
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63 |
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Shirley Jackson's Witchcraft: We Have Always Lived in the Castle
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68 |
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"As You Are Grooved, So You Are Grieved": The Art and the Craft of Bernard Malamud
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84 |
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"Large and Startling Figures": The Fiction of Flannery O'Connor
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94 |
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Boxing: History, Art, Culture
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112 |
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II
Contemporaries
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131 |
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Remembering John Updike
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133 |
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Homer & Langley: E. L. Doctorow
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135 |
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In Rough Country I: Cormac McCarthy
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144 |
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In Rough Country II: Annie Proulx
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180 |
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Enchanted! Salman Rushdie
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197 |
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Philip Roth's Tragic Jokes
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216 |
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A Photographer's Lives: Annie Leibovitz
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226 |
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"The Great Heap of Days": James Salter's Fiction
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236 |
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Margaret Atwood's Tales
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251 |
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In the Emperor's Dream House: Claire Messud
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282 |
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After the Apocalypse: Jim Crace
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299 |
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The Story of X: Susanna Moore's In the Cut
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310 |
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"It Doesn't Feel Personal": The Poetry of Sharon Olds
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320 |
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Too Much Happiness: The Stories of Alice Munro
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327 |
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III
Nostalgias
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343 |
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Nostalgia 1970: City on Fire
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345 |
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The Myth of the "American Idea": 2007
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351 |
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"Why Is Humanism Not the Preeminent Belief of Humankind?" Address upon Receiving the 2007 Humanist of the Year Award
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354 |
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In the Absence of Mentors/Monsters: Notes on Writerly Influences
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357 |
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Revisiting Lockport, New York
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372 |
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Notes
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387 |