"I like the book's idiosyncratic perspectives; its brilliance, its originality. The prose is burnished, the ideas arresting. Philosophy as literature (currently a rara avis!)" — Cynthia Ozick

"Lang has found a way to make us, for a time, philosophers despite ourselves by presenting a novelist's imagination in philosophical clothing. Nothing sheepish, however, about his often cruelly precise observations. They summon us to imagine more fully (i.e. carnally) and then to think more consequently (i.e. like Kafka or Wittgenstein). These extended aphorisms, little essays really, begin casually enough from any subject—reading, walking, voyeurism, death—but develop in startling ways. They almost convince us that self-consciousness is a good thing and that logic can be made reader-friendly." — Geoffrey Hartman, Yale University

Articles of Incorporation

Acknowledgments

Words,

One

Clarity

Reading

Silences

In Private

Walking, Talking

Alone

The Realist

English and the English

Measure for Measure

Order

Prayer

Reading in Vain

Signs,

Desire

Gods

Catching a Fish

Pointing

One by One

Parents

Novelty

Weather or Not

Together

Taking Chances

Doing and Not

Mirror Images

Names

Limbs,

Food for Art

Acrobatics

False Immodesty

Future Facts

Marriage and Monotheism

Impotence

Nature's Nature

The Art of Cruelty

A Bildungsroman

The Fail-Safe Principle

Redress

Eros Unbound

Spectator Sex

Sins,

Choosing

A Fit Crime

The Marriage Paradox

The Genius of the Lie

Losing Paradise

Children and Adults

Partial Recall

A Bargain

Filial Impiety

Sameness and Difference

The Seeds of History

Paid in Full

Circles and Lines

and People

The Price of a Possible World

Endings

Memory Now

Class Struggle

Risen

Borges as Borges

One Out of Many

Fables Refabled

Taking the Cure

Objections to Objects

Repairs

Particles and Fields: A Lament

3 1/2 on Death