| I My Plan to Begin With -- My Plan to Begin With, Part One 3 -- Used Bookshop Stories 5 -- Books They Read 13 -- Going Under in Wendover 15 -- Zelig of Notoriety 22 -- Clerk 29 -- II Dick, Calvino, Ballard: SF and Postmodernism -- My Plan to Begin With, Part Two 33 -- Holidays 35 -- Crazy Friend (Philip K. Dick) 39 -- What I Learned at the Science-Fiction Convention 68 -- Best of Calvino: Against Completism 74 -- Postmodernism as Liberty Valance 77 -- Claim of Time (J. G. Ballard) 84 -- Give Up 88 -- III Plagiarisms -- Ecstasy of Influence 93 -- Afterlife of "Ecstasy"/Somatics of Influence 121 -- Always Crashing in the Same Car 125 -- Against "Pop" Culture 134 -- Furniture 138 -- IV Film and Comics -- Supermen!: An Introduction 141 -- Top-Five Depressed Superheroes 144 -- Epiphany 147 -- Izations 151 -- Everything Is Broken (Art of Darkness) 159 -- Godfather IV 163 -- Great Death Scene (McCabe & Mrs. Miller) 164 -- Kovacs's Gift 166 -- Marlon Brando Breaks 171 -- Missed Opportunities 174 -- Donald Sutherland's Buttocks 176 -- Drew Barrymore Stories 180 -- V Wall Art -- Collector (Fred Tomaselli) 185 -- An Almost Perfect Day (Letter to Bonn) 194 -- Billboard Men (Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel) 197 -- Todd James 203 -- Writing and the Neighbor Arts 205 -- Live Nude Models 207 -- On a Photograph of My Father 214 -- Hazel 216 -- VI 9/11 and Book Tour -- Nine Failures of the Imagination 221 -- Further Reports in a Dead Language 225 -- To My Italian Friends 227 -- My Egyptian Cousin 229 -- Cell Phones 236 -- Proximity People 240 -- Repeating Myself 243 -- Bowels of Compassion 245 -- Stops 248 -- Advertisements for Norman Mailer 252 -- White Elephant and Termite Postures in the Life of the Twenty-first-Century Novelist 258 -- VII Dylan, Brown, and Others -- Genius of James Brown 265 -- People Who Died 305 -- Fly in the Ointment 307 -- Dancing About Architecture 311 -- Dylan Interview 317 -- Open Letter to Stacy (The Go-Betweens) 331 -- Otis Redding's Lonely Hearts Club Band 335 -- Rick James 341 -- an orchestra of light that was electric 345 -- VIII Working the Room -- Bolaño's 2666 349 -- Homely Doom Vibe (Paula Fox) 356 -- Ambivalent Usurpations (Thomas Berger) 360 -- Rushmore Versus Abundance 367 -- Outcastle (Shirley Jackson) 373 -- Thursday (G. K. Chesterton) 379 -- My Disappointment Critic/On Bad Faith 384 -- American Vicarious (Nathanael West) 390 -- IX Mad Brooklynite -- Ruckus Flatbush 397 -- Crunch Rolls 401 -- Children with Hangovers 403 -- L. J. Davis 406 -- Agee's Brooklyn 410 -- Breakfast at Brelreck's 413 -- Mad Brooklynite 418 -- X What Remains of My Plan -- Micropsia 423 -- Zeppelin Parable 426 -- What Remains of My Plan 429 -- Memorial 433 -- Things to Remember 435. |
