Table of Contents

Preface Acknowledgments I. Edward Dahlberg Times 5 Edward Dahlberg, Teacher Dahlberg's The Olive of Minerva Edward Dahlberg 1900-1977 The Wages of Expectation The Causes of Immortal Conceptions II. The Literary Life and Hard Times The Literature of Place and No Place The Night the Ghost Didn't Get In Catholics Coming of Age Ellen Frankfort's Voice Difficult Women and Minor Characters On Becoming a Novelist and Panic among the Philistines Famous People He Has Known The Post-Modern Aura Protesting N.E.A. Artisits Should Accept Grants from the Arts Endowment Letters to Editors: The N.E.A. and the Loyalty Oafs III. Fictional Times: America, England, Ireland Craig Nova, 1,2,3 John Updike Nicholas Delbanco, Donald Marsh, Katherine Dunn, Rosalyn Drexler, Kenneth Patchen, Harry Crews, Robert Hemenway David Black James Carroll Mary Gordon Chuck Blaise and Madison Jones Hugh Nissenson John Barth Gordon Lish Thomas McMahon James T. Farrell Joseph Caldwell and James Reid John Cheever Norman Kotker Richard Elman and Robin Hemley Nettie Jones C.E. Poverman Douglas Unger Richard Bausch and Mark Probst Howard Frank Mosher Thomas Pynchon Larry Heinemann Adrian Mitchell Patrick McGinley Bernard Mac Laverty William Trevor and Fay Weldon Iris Murdoch D. M. Thomas IV. Nonfictional Time: Amnesty, Trials, Profiles, Censorship Remebering to Forget Jury Duty Michael Harrington William Sloane Coffin, Jr. Of Judges and G-strings Will the Court Bare All? Freedom at Risk V. Time for One Story The Maggot Principle Afterward Index

About the Author

William O'Rourke has taught at Rutgers University, Mount Holyoke College, and is currently an Associate Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame.

Reviews

"Though unabashedly literary, O'Rourke's primary concerns-freedom, war, work, and religion-are intensely American. O'Rourke earns the respect of his readers through his superb phrasing, his rigorous thinking and his consistently sound values. As a general reader I trust what he has to tell me because his writing is so gracefully persuasive. If O'Rourke were a lawyer, I'd want him to represent me in court; if he were a carpenter, I'd want him to build my house." - David Huddle, University of Vermont "Signs of the Literary Times is a fascinating account of working with literature by one of America's more interesting, responsible, and innovative writers."-Jerome Klinkowitz, University of Northern Iowa.