Roger Shattack offers here an array of provocative ideas to reaffirm literature as a central field of study and personal reward. With incisive analysis, he elucidates the nature of intellectual craftsmanship, defends art's moral component, and laments our culture's drift toward both anti-intellectualism and philistine pretension. Whether commenting on Flaubert, Foucault, or Pulp Fiction, Shattuck presents a stirring, humane synthesis of the principles and values by which we can live together as a nation finally at peace with its diversity.