thought against the pressure of that of other individuals, aligned or compet-
ing; the way in which ideas and standpoints react to changing circumstances,
narrowly professional and broadly general; the play of the social, ropes-and-
pulleys dimensions of academic life on its substance; and the construction of
a scholarly persona to fit a desired audience. When all this is supplemented,
as it is here, with response essays, also personal and also free-ranging, by
other players in the game (chers collègues, mais néanmoins amis), the result
is a vivid, n-dimensional view of contemporary intellectual life elsewhere
presented in a warier, dressed-for-the-occasion form.

That so much of the impetus for this sort of talking-writing should come
from composition studies is hardly surprising. The intense concern in such
studies with how texts come into being, with how to build them, what they are
built out of, and how, once built, they have their effects, naturally conduces
to a realistic view of a process--"composition"--generally ignored, mystified
or reduced to an ancillary matter. The cross-disciplinary character of such
studies, trained as they are on how the thing is done or botched, wherever it
is done or botched, makes of them a general inquiry into the practical task of,
in the plain-man words of Paul Ricoeur, "saying something about some-
thing." In pursuing that inquiry wherever it leads, and to whomever, they are
making of the interview a powerful tool.

Institute for Advanced Studies
Princeton, New Jersey

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