Summary

Chapter q is titled “thinking.” The author opens this chapter, in numbers 419 and 420, with personal commentary on how he most enjoys writing that explores and examines life, and the world in which it is lived. “I want a literature,” he says, “built entirely out of contemplation and revelation” (140).

In numbers 421 through 427, the text offers different perspectives on the relationship between authors and their writing, making the suggestion that many authors do not know what they are saying about themselves or the world until they actually write it. This springboards into the author’s comment in 428, in which he refers to autobiography as the experience of a writer “surrender[ing] to the unfathomable phenomenon that is his own life,” (144), as opposed to creating a story. After interjections, in numbers 429 through 431 on the similar processes of living and creating an essay, the author...