SOURCE: "Facing the Footage," in The Nation, New York, Vol. 246, No. 19, May 14, 1988, pp. 680-84.

Howard is an American author, critic, and editor whose works include Expensive Habits (1986). In the following excerpt, she details the multiple texts within Prisoner's Dilemma.

Prisoner's Dilemma begins with the stars. On a summer night a father demonstrates the celestial bodies to his children. A father instructing: Ed Hobson is, in fact, a high-school history teacher who is as familiar with Ursa Major as he is with the casts of 1940s movie musicals, his mind an omnium-gatherum, mostly of American culture, but the optical accident of pictures in the sky and a clever game of cards can be accommodated in his view. It is a view of the world made manageable through knowledge—counting by eights, Robert's Rules of Order, Shays' Rebellion or quoting great lines of not-so-great verse. Any Hobson at any moment...