Attack of the copula spiders: and other essays on writing

Vitriolic and incisive, Douglas Glover's newest essays defend literature against the assaults of a post-literate age.;How to write a novel -- How to write a short story: notes on structure and an exercise -- Attack of the copula spiders: thoughts on writing well in a post-literate age -- The drama of grammar -- The mind of Alice Munro -- How to read a Mark Anthony Jarman story -- Memoirs of the undead: Cess Nooteboom's The following story -- Novels and dreams: Leon Rooke's A good baby -- A scrupulous fidelity: Thomas Bernhard's The loser -- Pedro, the uncanny: a note on Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo -- Before/after history and the novel -- Don Quixote, Rosemary's baby, Alien, and The French lieutenant's woman: meditations on the ideology of closure and the comforting lie.