Cover -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Assembling an Ethics of Reading -- First Line: Text-Reader-Interpretive Community -- Second Line: Ethics of Reading -- The Literary Studies/Cultural Studies Divide, and Ethics -- Reading and Otherness -- Creativity and Ethics -- Against Interpretation and Clarification -- Programs of Life -- 1 Between Reading and Writing: Susan Daitch, David Markson, and "Bartleby" -- Writing Is Read -- Reading Is Written -- A Transformative Endeavor -- "Killer Whales" -- Wittgenstein's Mistress -- 2 Fascinated Disgust in Richard Powers -- The Use of Use -- Engaging "the Other Fellow" -- 3 Kinds of Stasis in David Foster Wallace -- -1. Beginning Stasis -- 0. Signifying Stasis -- 1. Cinematic Stasis -- 1. Doctor-Assisted Stasis -- 1. Unthinking Stasis -- 1. M*A*S*H Stasis -- 1. Waiting Stasis -- 1. Drug Stasis -- 1. Wraith Stasis -- 1. Infinite Stasis -- 1. Tennis Stasis -- 1. Heroic Stasis -- n - 1. Asignifying Stasis -- 4 Silence Junkies: Irvine Welsh's Novel Subjectivities -- The Writer's Silence -- New Scottish Writing and "the Queen's fuckin English" -- Trainspotting: "Less tae life" -- Marabou Stork Nightmares: "This is what I have instead of a life" -- Filth: "Part of me is elsewhere" -- "Delirium," Literature, History, and Politics -- Conclusion: The Demand of Bartleby -- Cultivating Fascination -- Arguing Relevance -- The Demand of Bartleby -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W.