Prologue,1952:Christian Gauss as a Teacher of Literature 9
F.Scott Fitzgerald 30
Ring Lardner's American Characters 37
Emergence of Ernest Hemingway 41
Gilbert Seldes and the Popular Arts 49
Poe at Home and Abroad 65
The All-Star Literary Vaudeville 76
Mencken's Democratic Man 92
The Sportsman's Tragedy 96
Thornton Wilder 102
The Death of Elinor Wylie 109
Signs of Life:Lady Chatterley's Lover 113
Dostoevsky Abroad 117
Citizen of the Union 123
Dos Passos and the Social Revolution 128
T.S.Eliot and the Church of England 133
Dahlberg,Dos Passos and Wilder 138
Notes on Babbitt and More 146
The Nietzschean Line 161
Lytton Strachey 166
André Malraux 171
The Literary Worker's Polonius 178
Letter to the Russians about Hemingway 194
It's Terrible!It's Ghastly!It Stinks! 206
Twilight of the Expatriates 211
The Boys in the Back Room 216
Alexander Woollcott of the Phalanx 249
Mr.Joseph E.Davies as a Stylist 254
The Life and Times of John Barrymore 259
"Never Apologize,Never Explain":The Art of Evelyn Waugh 265
What Became of Louis Bromfield 271
J.Dover Wilson on Falstaff 278
A Toast and a Tear for Dorothy Parker 284
A Treatise on Tales of Horror 287
A Guide to Finnegans Wake 295
A Long Talk about Jane Austen 302
"You Can't Do This to Me!"Shrilled Celia 309
Katherine Anne Porter 313
A Picture to Hang in the Library:Brooks's Age of Irving 317
Why Do People Read Detective Stories? 323
Beёxamining Dr.Johnson 328
Leonid Leonov:The Sophistication of a Formula 333
Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? 338
"Mr.Holmes,They Were the Footprints of a Gigantic Hound!" 346
Splendors and Miseries of Evelyn Waugh 353
George Saintsbury's Centenary 359
Ambushing a Best-Seller 363
Oscar Wilde:"One Must Always Seek What Is Most Tragic" 369
Books of Etiquette and Emily Post 380
A Dissenting Opinion on Kafka 389
Jean-Paul Sartre:The Novelist and the Existentialist 398
The Musical Glasses of Peacock 407
The Original of Tolstoy's Natasha 413
William Faulkner's Reply to the Civil-Rights Program 422
Index 432