What is a novel? What is a revolution? Is there anything new under the sun? In these essays, poet and critic Cam Scott contemplates the novel in various guises--as culture and technology; as a labyrinth, series, list, and sect. Far from an academic typology, these discrete and overlapping studies are excerpted from the activity of a politically interested readership, for whom literature makes real demands of the one world that it describes. Includes writings on Dennis Cooper, Guy Hocquenghem, Dionne Brand, Gail Scott, Robert Glück, Kevin Killian, Renata Adler, Renee Gladman, Ted Rees, Lyn Hejinian, Harryette Mullen, and Jordy Rosenberg.