A collection of sharp, satirical essays and reviews that range from critiques of the novel and literary standards to polemics on theater, journalism, language, and social foibles. The pieces combine pointed humor, close readings, and aphoristic judgments to assess writers, trends, and institutions, including examinations of criticism, storytelling forms, stage illusion, orthography, and war. Sections gather reviews, controversialist tracts, reporter’s dispatches, and light-handed meditations, mixing practical advice for writers with caustic commentary on popular taste and cultural pretensions.