Includes bibliographical references.

On some functions of literature -- A reading of the Paradiso -- On the style of The communist manifesto -- The mists of the Valoi -- Wilde : parados and aphorism -- A portrait of the artist as bachelor -- Between La Mancha and Babel -- Borges and my anxiety of influence -- On Camporesi : blood, body, life -- On symbolism -- On style -- Les Sémaphores sous la Pluie -- The flaws in the form -- Intertextual irony and levels of reading -- The Poetics and us -- The American myth in three anti-American generations -- The power of falsehood -- How I write.

collection of essays and addresses includes the author's musings on Ptolemy, his reflections on the experimental writings of Borges and Joyce, and confessions about his own ambitions and anxieties.