Introduction
by Karen Joy Fowler xiii
A Note at the Beginning xix
Part 1 Going Over Eighty
In Your Spare Time 3
The Sissy Strikes Back 8
The Diminished Thing 12
Catching Up, Ha Ha 18
The Annals Of Pard
Choosing a Cat 23
Chosen by a Cat 29
Part 2 The Lit Biz Would You Please Fucking Stop? 35
Readers' Questions 39
Kids' Letters 44
Having My Cake 48
Papa H 53
A Much-Needed Literary Award 59
TGAN and TGOW 63
TGAN Again 69
The Narrative Gift as a Moral Conundrum 74
It Doesn't Have to Be the Way It Is 80
Utopiyin, Utopiyang 85
The Annals Of Pard
The Trouble 91
Pard and the Time Machine 95
Part 3 Trying To Make Sense Of It
A Band of Brothers, a Stream of Sisters 101
Exorcists 105
Uniforms 107
Clinging Desperately to a Metaphor 111
Lying It All Away 115
The Inner Child and the Nude Politician 120
A Modest Proposal: Vegempathy 128
Belief in Belief 131
About Anger 136
The Annals Of Pard
An Unfinished Education 147
An Unfinished Education, Continued 150
Doggerel for My Cat 154
Part 4 Rewards
The Circling Stars, the Sea Surrounding: Philip Glass and John Luther Adams 159
Rehearsal 164
Someone Named Delores 166
Without Egg 173
Notre-Dame de la Faim 179
The Tree 184
The Horsies Upstairs 188
First Contact 197
The Lynx 201
Notes from a Week at a Ranch in the Oregon High Desert 210