I was taught how to read novels by a brilliant poststructuralist critic called Stephen Heath. I have an image in my mind of Dr. Heath holding a sheet of paper—the hallowed “text”—very close to his eyes, the physical proximity somehow the symbolic embodiment of his scrutinizing avidity, while he threw out his favorite question about a paragraph or stanza: “what’s at stake in this passage?” He meant something more specific, professionalized and narrow than the colloquial usage would generally imply. He meant something like: what is the dilemma of meaning in this passage? What is at stake in maintaining the appearance of coherent meaning, in this performance we call literature? How is meaning wobbling, threatening to collapse into its repressions? Dr. Heath was appraising literature as Freud might have studied one of his patients, where “What is at stake for you in being here?” did not mean “What is at stake for you in wanting to get healthy or happy?” but almost the opposite: “What is at stake for you in maintaining your chronic unhappiness?” The enquiry is suspicious, though not necessarily hostile.