Knowers unknown to ourselves -- The misery of the misbegotten -- The playwright as thinker -- Anarchism: the politics of the "long loneliness" -- Beginnings of American history -- "Lust for possession" -- Possessed and self-dispossessed -- "Is you a nigger, nigger?" -- "The merest sham": women and marriage -- Religion and the death of death -- "The Greek dream in tragedy is the noblest ever" -- Waiting for hickey -- The theater as temple.