Table of Contents -- 1. Introduction 11 -- Ethics, deconstruction and postmodern gnosis 24 -- Historical background 27 -- 2. Trials of the Truth: Welcome to Hard Times, The Book of Daniel and Ragtime 35 -- Postmodern ethics and narrative ethics 38 -- Narrative ethics in history and fiction 39 -- Myth, antimyth, and the ethics of lamentation 42 -- The aesthetics of truthfulness 45 -- Welcome to Hard Times 46 -- The Book of Daniel 53 -- Ragtime 64 -- 3. An Intuition of the Self: Loon Lake and Billy Bathgate 81 -- Emerson and Jung 92 -- Loon Lake 96 -- Billy Bathgate 112 -- 4. The Ethics of Narrating Gnosis: The Waterworks and City of God 127 -- Definitions of Gnosticism 131 -- Gnosis and the Kabbalah 134 -- Postmodern Gnosticism 138 -- The Waterworks 143 -- City of God 152 -- 5. The Ethical Challenge in Difference 175 -- Bibliography 179.