["The End" Appendix and "The End" Essentials] is literally two books (in reversible format, front to back, and back to front) by the most perceptive watchdog of American publishing and writing, and one of the most articulate and persistent spokesmen for the experimental, the new and the young in contemporary American literature. It is sometimes irritable, often controversial and always articulate.

"The End" Appendix is an addendum to Kostelanetz's The End of Intelligent Writing, a book that stirred literary controversy for months after its publication. The End documents, after the fact, the difficulties the author had in publishing subsequent works, and analyses the causes of his ostracism by commercial publishers.

"The End" Essentials announces its argument. Kostelanetz's thesis is that "a panoply of growing forces and festering symptoms forecast the likely end of "intelligent writing" or "literature" as we have know those traditions. The reason for this crisis...