Introduction : comedy and the irresponsible self
Shakespeare and the pathos of rambling
How Shakespeare's 'irresponsibility' saved Coleridge
Isaac Babel and the dangers of exaggeration
Saltykov-Shchedrin's subversion of hypocrisy
Anna Karenina and characterization
Italo Svevo's unreliable comedy
Giovanni Verga's comic sympathy
Joseph Roth's empire of signs
Bohumil Hrabal's comic world
J.F. Powers and the priests
Jonathan Franzen and the 'social novel'
Tom Wolfe's shallowness and the trouble with information
Salman Rushdie's nobu novel
Coetzee's disgrace, a few skeptical thoughts
Saul Bellow's comic style
V.S. Pritchett and English comedy