Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgements -- A Note on the Texts -- Introduction -- 1 Roland Barthes, from A Lover's Discourse: Fragments -- 2 'Where are we going? And What Are We Doing?' -- 3. Anne Carson, 'Every Exit Is an Entrance (A Praise of Sleep)' -- 4 Hélène Cixous, 'Without end, no, State of drawingness, no, rather: The Executioner's taking off' -- 5 Jacques Derrida, 'Aphorism Countertime' -- 6 Geoff Dyer, from Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D. H. Lawrence -- 7 Benjamin Friedlander, 'Gertrude Stein: A Retrospective Criticism' -- 8 Peter Gizzi, 'Correspondences of the Book' -- 9 Kevin Kopelson, 'Music Lessons' -- 10 Denise Riley, 'Lyric Selves' -- 11 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, 'Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl' -- 12 Ali Smith, 'Green' -- 13 John Wilkinson, 'Imperfect Pitch' -- 14 Sarah Wood, 'Anew Again' -- Index