Possibility translates life's disordered events into the orderly happiness of art. Subjects include manatees, Henry Adams, Texas, Proust, and Vertigo.

Possibility: Essays Against DespairIntroduction: Seeing Double . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I: Internal Conversations1. The Task of the Translator . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. A Writer¿s Harvest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Sebald in Starbucks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Eye Shadows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. Monkey Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6. Henry Adams in Japan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . II: The Measure of Grief7. Genealogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8. Dixie Diary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9. The Other Side . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10. My Depressed Person . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11. Not Exactly Kaddish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12. Grace Paley Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . III: At Liberty13. Eggs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14. Tapping Back . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15. What It¿s Like in Ohio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16. Manatees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17. By the Pond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18. Oxherding in the Chisos Mountains . . . . . . . . . IV: Particular Artifice19. Boxes in Texas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20. Inventing Cinema . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21. Possibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .