I. My plan to begin with. My plan to begin with, part one ; The used bookshop stories ; The books they read ; Going under in Wendover ; Zelig of notoriety ; Clerk
II. Dick, Calvino, Ballard : SF and Postmodernism. My plan to begin with, part two ; Holidays ; Crazy friend (Philip K. Dick) ; What I learned at the science-fiction convention ; The best of Calvino : against completism ; Postmodernism as Liberty Valance ; The claim of time (J.G. Ballard) ; Give up
III. Plagiarisms. The ecstasy of influence ; The afterlife of "ecstasy"/somatics of influence ; Always crashing in the same car ; Against "pop" culture ; Furniture
IV. Film and comics. Supermen! : an introduction ; Top-five depressed superheroes ; The epiphany ; Izations ; Everything is broken (art of darkness) ; Godfather IV ; Great death scene (McCabe & Mrs. Miller) ; Kovacs's gift ; Marlon Brando breaks ; Missed opportunities ; Donald Sutherland's buttocks ; The Drew Barrymore stories
V. Wall art. The collector (Fred Tomaselli) ; An almost perfect day (letter to Bonn) ; The billboard men (Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel) ; Todd James ; Writing and the neighbor arts ; Live nude models ; On a photograph of my father ; Hazel
VI. 9/11 and book tour. Nine failures of the imagination ; Further reports in a dead language ; To my Italian friends ; My Egyptian cousin ; Cell phones ; Proximity people ; Repeating myself ; Bowels of compassion ; Stops ; Advertisements for Norman Mailer ; White elephant and termite postures in the life of the twenty-first-century novelist
VII. Dylan, Brown, and others. The genius of James Brown ; People who died ; The fly in the ointment ; Dancing about architecture ; Dylan interview ; Open letter to Stacy (the go-betweens) ; Otis Redding's lonely hearts club band ; Rick James ; an orchestra of light that was electric
VIII. Working the room. Bolanõ's 2666 ; Homely doom vibe (Paula Fox) ; Ambivalent usurpations (Thomas Berger) ; Rushmore versus abundance ; Outcastle (Shirley Jackson) ; Thursday ( G.K. Chesterton) ; My disappointment critic/on bad faith ; The American vicarious (Nathanael West)
IX. The mad Brooklynite. Ruckus Flatbush ; Crunch rolls ; Children with hangovers ; L.J. Davis ; Agee's Brooklyn ; Breakfast at Brelreck's ; The mad Brooklynite
X. What remains of my plan. Micropsia ; Zeppelin parable ; What remains of my plan ; Memorial ; Things to remember.
