Genesis -- E.A. Poe -- Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom -- Composing Moby-Dick: what might have happened -- Sam Clemens's two boys -- Sinclair Lewis's Arrowsmith -- Fitzgerald's Crack-up -- Malraux, Hemingway, and the Spanish Civil War -- Dos Passos: U.S.A. -- Harpo -- Heinrich von Kleist -- Arthur Miller -- Franz Kafka's Amerika -- W.G. Sebald -- Einstein: seeing the unseen -- The Bomb.
Summary
In a new collection of essays, the author offers a series of reflections on the nature of imagination and creativity, looking at diverse forms of creative endeavor--from the literary and scientific to the comic and cosmic--as well as on his own creative process in his writings.