18 essays on dostoevsky
On Raskolnikov, the theory that refutes itself, and Napoleon's missing essay.
On Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov, and what a theory is actually for.
On Svidrigaïlov, and what happens when the theory works
On Svidrigaïlov, exhausted options, and what you say when you've run out of destinations.
On the interval between deciding and doing.
On Letter 353, the cold room, and the journey Tolkien couldn't make.
On false vantage, ground knowledge, and what Tolkien does to the reader in The Hobbit.
On Sauron's three laughs, and what they reveal about the blindness that competent desire produces.
On walking in legend and on the green earth at the same time.
On the whale's thick walls, the stone lance, and what self-containment costs.
On Tolkien, the Machine, and the refusal to do what you can
On Sauron, Ahab, and two ways desire can destroy you.
On Bilbo, smallness, and what it means to read The Hobbit last.
On what follows from irreducible uncertainty about your own subject-status.
On the Doubloon chapter, and the reader who cannot get out of the mirror.
On Old Sag-Harbor, Stubb's impossible throw, and what pride of reason costs you.
On Sauron's near-repentance, the tragic logic of proof-of-worthiness, and what permissionless means.
On Canto V, the book that became its own content, and the seduction that works inside innocent reading.