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No argument is ever fully finished, and this book is no exception. There is still more to be said, more support to give to claims, more examples needed for clarity. Yet this book has evolved with the help of many friends: It has gained strength and maturity over more than a few years as it has benefited from revisions, reconsiderations, and turns of argument. Paragraphs that now seem to follow a rather simple (and I hope) logical development are really the final products of a taxing dialectical process; I responded to a reader’s intelligent comment, which was itself a response to a response I made to an earlier reader’s intelligent comment, which responded to an earlier primitive and undeveloped idea I thought was my own after I forgot who prompted me to think it. I am incapable of the monologic discourse essential for the production of a book. I am now somehow listed as the “author” for this present work only because I struggled to be obsessive enough to knit together the ideas of different people sharing a common interest.

Four friends have given careful attention to more recent drafts of this manuscript. Jeffrey Berman at SUNY, Albany, has long been a wise and supportive guide; his advice, his psychoanalytic expertise, and his three books on literature and psychoanalysis, as well as his forthcoming book on psychoanalytic effects in the classroom, both educated and inspired me. Jim Mellard at Northern Illinois University read this manuscript with care and intelligence; chapter titles and sentence wording often reflect the clarity of his thinking and not my own. Claudia Tate at George Washington University has a talent for asking intelligent questions; her marginal comments helped me see clear relationships where I foundered in imprecision. Jean Wyatt at Pomona College helped me focus and develop my central argument; her generous, intelligent advice and her own recent book helped me to appreciate the breadth and depth of reader-response theory. I would also like to thank an anonymous reader who gave careful attention to the manuscript and directed my attention to facets of the argument that needed more clarity and more support.

Each chapter has its own personal history. A few were published elsewhere and, before publication, went through their own slow process of revision and alleged transfiguration.

Chapter 1 benefited from suggestions from Mark Bracher at Kent State University, Geoffrey Harpham at Tulane University, and Mark Kipperman and Jasper Neel, both at that time at Northern Illinois University. Jim and Tita Baumlin at Southwest Missouri University asked me for an essay on ethos several years ago. At the time I had never given a moment’s thought to the concept of ethos, but with their help I discovered an engaging theoretical concept. They gave enormous attention and much help to developing an earlier version of chapter 2. I wish I could be so intelligent and industrious an editor. Jon Quitslund and Patrick Cook, colleagues at George Washington University, also read the manuscript carefully, offering much advice. Mark Bracher, Norman Holland at the University of Florida, and Teresa Toulouse at Tulane gave careful and plentiful response to chapter 3 as it developed into the essay that was later published in College English (February 1987, Copyright 1987 by the National Council of Teachers of English and reprinted with permission). Mark Bracher and Geoffrey Harpham also gave helpful advice with early drafts of chapter 4. Mark taught me to be a more careful writer and vigilant thinker. Geoff gave me an appreciation for the rhetorical energy and creativity of good writing. Walter Reed, John Farrel, Jim Kaufmann, Louis Mackey, and Charles Rossman—all at that time at the University of Texas at Austin—gave helpful advice for the earliest version of chapter 5. This was later published in a shorter form in Conradiana (16, 1984, copyright 1984 by Conradiana and reprinted with permission). I sometimes think I have been driven to write an entire book of theory in order to support an initially promising but muddled and unfinished reading of Heart of Darkness. Mark Bracher helped with the development of chapter 6. His expertise with Lacan was constantly useful for both this chapter and the progress of this book.

All of this thinking really began more than 14 years ago at the University of Texas at Austin when a group of graduate students and instructors —Mark Bracher, Jackie Byars, Harney Corwin, Terry MacDonald, and Rosa Turner—met weekly under the instruction of Jim Kaufmann to better understand relationships between literature and psychoanalysis. These meetings overcame my own resistance to Freud and shifted my research interests from philosophical to psychoanalytic inquiry.

George Washington University provided the professional stability I needed to finish this book. I appreciate their trust in granting me tenure before this book was accepted for publication. I would like to thank our department chairpeople, Chris Sten and Judy Plotz, for their support. The administrative staff, Connie Kibler and Lucinda Kilby, were generous with their time and attention.

Finally, I would like to thank my family. My wife Janis Alcorn offered encouragement and support despite being busy with her own books and articles. My father, Marshall W. Alcorn, Sr., provided many years of encouragement. If I have come to write a book about storytelling, it is in part because I heard so many stories from him. My own sons, Sean and Skye Alcorn constantly remind me that language is not mere signification, but a medium for telling stories, a medium for forming bonds, making promises, and establishing trust. It is a means by which we construct identity, community, and personal values. If I have not discussed Donald Duck (Skye and Sean’s favorite literary character) in this book, it is only because I have found no rhetorically effective way to explode or marginalize the academic pomposity that insists on situating such a discussion. I have been told that Wittgenstein suggested that, in regard to that which we cannot talk, we must remain silent. Donald Duck, I suspect, would energetically insist, “quack, quack, quack.” I am always happy to see fools rush in where philosophers of language fear to tread. Donald, like many of us, cannot contain what he cannot say.