Scenes of nature, signs of men -- Notes for a comparison between American and European romanticism -- Problems and roles of the American artist as portrayed by the American novelist -- James on Hawthorne -- Lost America -the despair of Henry Adams and Mark Twain -- Henry James and Henry Adams -- William Dean Howells and A hazard of new fortunes -- Stephen Crane -- Bostonians and the human voice -- Games American writers play: ceremony, complicity, contestation, and carnival -- Toward an ultimate topography: the work of Joseph McElroy -- Frames and sentences -- William Gass's barns and bees.