This collection chronicles Phyllis Webb’s struggle with the creative process and her intense need to probe beneath the surface of things. The subjects of these essays are various, but themes and concerns recur, and the focus is usually literary, with a few light brush strokes of fantasy here and there. If the tone-and-mood shifts are frequent, time, place and my own state of mind might account for some of their occurrences, others were deliberately contrived to keep an audience entertained, or, at the very least, awake. – Taken from the Preface.