Table of Contents

*FrontMatter, pg. i*Contents, pg. v*Acknowledgments, pg. vii*Introduction. The Place of Poetry in the World, pg. 3*I. The Actual and Imaginary Library: Literature as a Social Institution, pg. 12*II. Mighty Poets in their Misery Dead: The Death of the Poet in Saul Bellow's Humboldt's Gift, pg. 37*III. "Battering the Object": The Attack on the Literary Text in Malamud's the Tenants, pg. 66*IV. Reading Zemblan: The Audience Disappears in Nabokov's Pale Fire, pg. 89*V. The Taking of the Moon: The Struggle of the Poetic and Scientific Myths in Norman Mailer's of a Fire on the Moon, pg. 130*VI. Finding the New Thing, pg. 162*Works Cited, pg. 176*Index, pg. 181