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Before the invention of paper, written words were preserved on fabric in the form of scrolls. The Chinese are credited with inventing paper around 105 c.e. Historians note that this date was chosen somewhat subjectively, as early experiments in the process of papermaking probably stretched over a long period of time before the process was perfected. No records exist that indicate how the Chinese first made paper, but it is believed that this early paper was made by pouring fibrous pulp onto flat cloth-covered molds, then drying it—essentially the same way paper is produced today. Once the pulp had dried, an interlocking matrix of fibers created the paper. Early forms of paper were not as well processed as modern paper products. In fact, early forms of paper had more in common with the fabrics they replaced than with modern paper. They were coarse in nature, but they did lie flat. This quality made it possible for the first real books to be produced.

Starting as a merger of seventeen paper and pulp mills in the United States, International Paper Company (IP) is one of the world’s oldest and largest manufacturers of paper and packaging products. The $25.2 billion company operated four major businesses in 2022: industrial packaging, printing paper, consumer packaging, and distribution. Within its industrial packaging business, IP was one of America’s largest manufacturers of containerboards and printing papers. The company owned or managed 23 million hectares of forestland across the world, with a presence in over 150 countries in Asia, Europe, Africa, Latin America, and South America.

Paper is an important technological development. Although paper-like materials had already been in use for thousands of years, true paper from separated cellulose fibers was invented in China in the year 105 CE. The manner of its production was a closely guarded secret. Since then, paper has become one of the most versatile and useful materials known, and it is used for many purposes.

Paper may be the most versatile media used in arts and crafts. Sheets can be folded, cut, glued, painted, twisted, woven, punched, and more. There is a rich tradition of paper crafts upon which many current techniques are based, while new materials and enthusiasm for paper in the art community have also generated new techniques.

Before the invention of paper, written words were preserved on fabric in the form of scrolls. The Chinese are credited with inventing paper around 105 CE. Historians note that this date was chosen somewhat subjectively, as early experiments in the process of papermaking probably stretched over a long period of time before the process was perfected. No records exist that indicate how the Chinese first made paper, but it is believed that this early paper was made by pouring fibrous pulp onto flat cloth-covered molds, then drying it—essentially the same way paper is produced today. Once the pulp had dried, an interlocking matrix of fibers created the paper. Early forms of paper were not as well processed as modern paper products. In fact, early forms of paper had more in common with the fabrics they replaced than with modern paper. They were coarse in nature, but they did lie flat. This quality made it possible for the first real books to be produced.

Most paper is made from wood, although wood is not technically suitable for producing many types of paper. Moreover, wood shortages periodically occur, and wood pulp prices are steadily increasing (they doubled between 2003 and 2008). Prices continued to increase throughout the second and third decades of the twenty-first century as global supply chain issues also drove prices up. Typical pulp in the paper industry comes from mixed hardwoods and mixed softwoods. Southern yellow pine, a softwood, makes up the bulk of pulpwood in the United States. Increased demand for pulp products could cause future wood supplies to be inadequate, leading to further increases in the price of paper. Recycled paper can make up part of the deficit, but with continued use, recycled paper begins to degrade and its quality decreases. Consequently, there has been growing interest in alternative sources of paper.

African American employees in a North Carolina paper mill, the Albemarle Paper Company, charged that the company’s preemployment tests and seniority system perpetuated the discrimination that had existed before the passage of Title VII, and they sought back pay relief. By a 7-1 vote, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the employees. Because the tests were judged to be not sufficiently job related to be valid, they had to be discontinued. The awarding of back pay, moreover, provided an appropriate incentive for compliance with the law. The decision provided a useful framework for resolving numerous claims under Title VII.

The Panama Papers are 11.5 million documents from the world’s fourth-largest offshore law firm, Mossack Fonseca, that were leaked by the media in April 2016, revealing a system for wealthy individuals to use offshore tax havens to store money and avoid paying taxes to their nation of residence. As of 2023, the Panama Papers was one of the largest digital data leaks in history, and though much of Mossack Fonseca’s activities are legal, the leak also showed how the company helped clients around the world to violate tax and financial disclosure laws.

The American Forest and Paper Association was formed in 1992 by the merger of the American Forest Council, established in 1932; the American Paper Institute, established in 1964; and the National Forest Products Association, established in 1902. The association publishes trade-related information for both members and nonmembers. American Tree Farmer: The Official Magazine of the American Tree Farm System is published bimonthly, and two annual statistical summaries provide information on recovered paper utilization and on paper, paperboard, and wood pulp. A comprehensive annual study of every mill in the United States gives capacity estimates for major grades of paper, paperboard, and wood pulp. When the association believes that sound forestry practices are being misrepresented, it responds in print, as in its 1994 publication Closer Look: An On-the-Ground Investigation of the Sierra Club’s Book, “Clearcut.”

The Puttermesser Papers is divided into five parts, which are further subdivided into several short chapters that trace the life history, including the life after death, of the novel’s feminist, Jewish, intellectual lawyer-heroine, Ruth Puttermesser. An amalgam of comedy and social satire, the book also includes supernatural fantasy derived from Jewish folklore, literary parody that inverts the conventions of historical sagas of great men who run for high public office, and a serious psychobiography of three famous nineteenth century figures. As a result, The Puttermesser Papers divides its energies among various genres of literature and social critique ambitiously and sometimes, to the reader, perplexingly.

On March 10, 1862, during the height of the American Civil War, the Union government of the North began to issue paper money in order to help finance the war effort against the secessionist South, which had organized itself as the Confederate States of America. Nearly half a billion dollars' worth of this currency was printed over the next three years, an enormous sum for that day and age. The expensive green ink used on the back of the bills, a preventative measure against counterfeiters, immediately spawned the slang term greenback for American paper money. Folding money and plain green were later popular expressions.

Human experimentation with flying did not begin with the Wright brothers. People have been fascinated by flight since ancient times. The first flying devices made from paper were kites, constructed by the Chinese around 1 c.e. Even Leonardo da Vinci tried to devise a way for humans to fly. It is said he used parchment folded into winged flyers during his experiments. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, paper airplanes were used as a common technique to study aerodynamics. During World War I, flying paper airplanes became a popular activity with children. In the 1940’s, the General Mills Company offered a series of fourteen paper model warplanes.

Paper chromatography is a scientific process that helps scientists study the components of mixtures and solutions. Paper chromatography separates the parts of mixtures and solutions on a piece of paper. The process was developed in the late 1800s, and it is used widely today.

Summary: In January 2011 the Arabic-language news organization Al Jazeera made public a collection of what it described as almost 1,7000 secret documents relating to about a decade of Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations up to January 2010. The documents included memos, emails, accounts of meetings, and strategy papers, among other things. The source of the leaked documents, from the Palestinian Authority, was not disclosed. Analyses of the documents published by Al Jazeera and The Guardian newspaper of Britain, among others, painted a picture of the Palestinian Authority granting concession after concession, particularly regarding parts of the city of Jerusalem, without receiving any concessions in return. Analysts said this could be interpreted either as Israeli intransigence, or as a Palestinian negotiating team that was too eager to make concessions in exchange for nothing.

The publication of the Pentagon Papers was the culmination of a long-term effort by Daniel Ellsberg, an analyst at RAND, to expose the U.S. government’s mishandling of the Vietnam War and efforts by a series of government officials to mislead the American public about the conduct of the war. Ellsberg was part of a team working on a top-secret report commissioned by U.S. secretary of defense Robert McNamara in 1967. The report would provide a historical record of U.S. involvement in Vietnam from the early 1950’s through 1968. As Ellsberg read the various reports that exposed mismanagement, ineptitude, and outright deception on the part of federal officials and presidential administrations, he came to believe the course of the war might be changed if these documents became public.

In the second number of Addison and Steele’s SPECTATOR papers eighteenth-century readers were introduced to the members of “The Club.” Heading the list of those characters who, among them, were intended to represent the entire range of public opinion and enlightened bias for the London of 1711 was “a gentleman of Worcestershire, of ancient descent, a baronet, his name Sir Roger de Coverley.”

Dylan Thomas’s “The Hand That Signed the Paper” consists of four quatrains that deride the cruel impersonality and wholesale destructiveness of modern politics and warfare. It is a universal war protest poem that expresses profound contempt for political leaders as a whole. They exhibit an absence of true feeling for their fellow human beings in their self-interested and pitiless handling of international conflicts and disputes. The poem scorns these irresponsible and coolly malevolent figures who have arrogantly set themselves up as the ultimate authorities over life and death.

Paper Moon is the comic and ultimately touching tale of Addie Pray’s coming-of-age adventures as assistant to a master confidence man during the Great Depression and her eventual decision to use her skills in a compassionate way. The story, related by an adult Addie, begins shortly after the death of Addie’s mother when she is taken in by Moses “Long Boy” Pray, who may be Addie’s biological father. He is initially more concerned with her potential as an accomplice as he uses her in his schemes to sell personalized Bibles or photographs. Addie soon proves that she is intelligent beyond her years and that she has a natural affinity for their chosen line of work, since her youth and innocent façade disarm victims.

The Peterkin Papers is a hilarious account of life in the mid-nineteenth century. From the opening story of Mrs. Peterkin accidentally putting salt in her coffee to the last page when she explains that it was not their luggage that was lost, “But we, as a family,” the reader laughs at the adventures of the Peterkins. The novel is an important example of humor in young adult fiction. Set in Boston in the 1870’s, the novel gives readers a satirical view of genteel family life. Lucretia Hale portrays the Peterkins as extremely unwise, but few young adults would argue that they or their families have never behaved as foolishly as the Peterkins.

“The Burning of Paper Instead of Children” is a good example of Rich’s developing experimental style. Between 1968 and 1970, Rich confronted in her poetry the inability of the language that she had inherited to express the pain both of her own life and of society as it underwent turbulent social change. The results of this experimentation can be seen in Leaflets but are also evident in this collection, The Will to Change. Whereas in her early work, exemplified by “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers,” Rich encapsulated a certain experience, in this experimental vein the poem itself is the experience. As Rich allows the unconscious to speak through her poetry, the poem contributes to the creation of new experiences for both poet and reader. The poem consists of five interrelated sections, which vary in form from fragmented free verse to prose poetry.

Juliana’s palace. Venetian home of the American expatriate Juliana Bordereau. Arriving at this home by gondola via one of Venice’s hundreds of canals, the unnamed narrator observes not only his expensive quarters and the stairway from them down to Juliana’s receiving room but also her hallway, her doors, the location of her and Tina’s private rooms, and their tattered garden. A main feature of Juliana’s bedroom is her old secretary desk, in which the narrator concludes the Aspern papers are secreted. His late-night advance toward the desk is imaged as a combination of the military and the sexual. His being seen and thwarted by Juliana amounts to an ignominious retreat and an embarrassing rebuff.

DEFINITION: Operations where raw materials are processed for the manufacture of paper

*London. Great Britain’s capital city is the headquarters of the Pickwick Club. Dickens’s acute sense of place enhances his descriptions of the great city, particularly the labyrinthine streets and lanes and inns—such as the White Hart Inn, where Sam Weller first appears and identifies the unscrupulous rogue Alfred Jingle. The various characters’ lodgings, such as Mr. Pickwick’s rooms at Mrs. Bardell’s, Mr. Weller, Sr.’s domicile in Dorking, and the rooms of Bob Sawyer, highlight class distinctions.

Samuel Pickwick, Esq., is the founder and perpetual president of the justly famous Pickwick Club. To extend his own researches into the quaint and curious phenomena of life, he suggests that he and three other Pickwickians should make journeys to places remote from London and report on their findings to the stay-at-home members of the club. The first destination decided upon is Rochester. As Pickwick, Tracy Tupman, Nathaniel Winkle, and Augustus Snodgrass go to their coach, they are waylaid by a rough gang of cab drivers. Fortunately, the men are rescued by a stranger who is poorly dressed but of the friendliest nature. The stranger, who introduces himself as Alfred Jingle, also appears to be going to Rochester, and the party mounts the coach together.

Lime is a manufactured product not found in nature. It is usually derived from the common sedimentary rocks limestone, dolomitic limestone, and dolostone, although it can also be produced from other high-calcium materials such as marble, aragonite, chalk, shell, and coral.

On receiving the news that he has been willed a rare sketch by the Japanese artist Hoku-sai, Howard Barton returns to his old stomping grounds in Northern California. Once there, he quickly, if unexpectedly, falls in with a group more or less led by his eccentric Uncle Roy, the perennially improvident proprietor of a haunted museum. Roy’s group includes his wife, Edith; his attractive daughter, Sylvia; Artemis Jimmers, an aged, oddball inventor; Mr. Bennett, a handyman with a predilection for making and displaying huge plywood cutouts on his property; and, in the background, the “gluers,” called so because of their habit of gluing bizarre decorations and objects on their vehicles.

In this book, published posthumously after being smuggled out of prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer tries to reconcile sociological ideas concerning the church as a human organization with the theological idea of the church as a divine society on earth. In so doing, he follows both his doctoral dissertation, Sanctorum Communio (1930; The Communion of Saints, 1963), which first introduced the theme, and Akt und Sein (1931; Act and Being, 1962), which was chiefly concerned with philosophical postulates of theology. Bonhoeffer, who in 1933 helped found the Confessing Church, which battled against National Socialism (Nazism) in Germany, focused on the earthly dimension of the church and its political responsibility. Influenced by philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger, Karl Barth, and Søren Kierkegaard, Bonhoeffer, who was one of the leading Lutheran theologians during the Nazi period, urged Christians to imitate Christ with respect to obedience, penance, and discipline so that the church might save the world, which was becoming increasingly secularized.

THE EVENT: Brief period during which Chinese immigrants took advantage of the legal principle of derivative citizenship by using the destruction of government birth records during the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 to enter the United States.

DEFINITION: Flexible sheets of compressed wood pulp, or similar substrates made of other materials, used chiefly for written and printed documents but also for disposable containers.

GENERAL INDUSTRY: Manufacturing

Wilfred Barclay has had a very successful career as a novelist. His first book was both a popular and a critical success. Subsequent works have done well, but in later years he has coasted on his reputation and has given in to his propensity for heavy drinking. Although he has had a decent respect for his own work, he has not thought in terms of literary immortality. He seems, rather, to enjoy living in comfort in the country with his wife, Elizabeth.

In 1967, U.S. secretary of defense Robert McNamara directed a study of the American military and political involvement in Vietnam since World War II. Leslie Gelb, a civilian staff official in the Department of Defense, headed up a team of dozens of military and civilian scholars who assembled seven thousand pages of documents in forty-seven volumes; the collection was classified top secret. One of those working on the project was Daniel Ellsberg, an employee of the RAND Corporation who was growing to distrust the government’s public assessment of the progress of the war in Vietnam. He felt the documents exposed the ineptitude of several presidential administrations in dealing with affairs in Southeast Asia and also highlighted the government’s efforts to keep embarrassing information from the American people.

For many years, Henry Ryecroft had toiled unceasingly at all kinds of writing. He did straight hack work, translating, and editing. At first, he knew the bitterest of poverty, but at long intervals a book appeared under his name. At last, he gained a somewhat less precarious livelihood. At rare intervals, some modest affluence enabled him to take a short trip abroad. By the time he was fifty years old, his health was failing; his wife had been dead for years, and his married daughter had a home of her own.

Cai Lun was born in Guiyang (Kuei-Yang), present-day Chenzhou City in Hunan Province. There is little information about his early life. Historical records show that in 75 c.e., he entered the service of the imperial palace and became a liaison official with the privy council and chamberlain to the royal family. Later, he became the chief eunuch under Emperor He (Liu Zhao; r. 88-105/106 c.e.) of the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 c.e.). Cai Lun held the high position of minister in charge of imperial edicts and documents and was adviser to the emperor on state affairs. The emperor also appointed him chief of the Imperial Supply Department and put him in charge of making swords and furniture for the royal household. Cai Lun was also assigned curatorial responsibility for the Imperial Library.

Definition: Pulp chemistry and paper chemistry represent discrete yet dependent fields in the same industry. The pulping procedure utilizes mechanical and chemical processes that convert wood and other natural material into individual fibers. Pulp produced in this manner is then treated with additional chemicals to create paper products that vary based on both the type of pulp utilized and the style of paper desired. Throughout the process, pulp and paper chemists seek to make stronger, more durable, and increasingly environmentally sound products that meet the needs of the modern world.

By the late 1960’s, it had long been recognized that Native Canadians had failed to share socially and economically in the general prosperity that followed World War II. They were frequently the victims of discrimination and lacked access to the economic, educational, medical, and social benefits available to the majority of Canadians. These issues were frequently lumped together in the popular media and by government bureaucrats as the “Indian problem.” The White Paper of 1969 was a policy statement and plan issued by Prime Minister Trudeau, Pierre E. Pierre E. Trudeau to resolve the problem. White Paper of Canada

The narrator, an unnamed, well-to-do American literary scholar. He is obsessed by a desire to learn everything possible about the life and works of the long-dead American poet Jeffrey Aspern and is willing to do almost anything to appropriate Aspern's papers. He has heard that the papers are in the possession of Juliana Bordereau, Aspern's former mistress, who is now living reclusively in Venice. Using a false name and pretending to be a writer, the narrator rents rooms in her run-down palazzo, improves her neglected garden, and in time mentions Aspern in chats, first with her niece Tita and then with Juliana, who does not mind throwing the narrator and Tita together. One night, Juliana, now quite sick, catches the unprincipled scholar rifling her old mahogany desk and collapses. Humiliated, he leaves Venice for several days. He returns to learn that Juliana has died and is buried, and he finds Tita in supposed possession of the papers, which she hints can be his only if he becomes a member of the family. The narrator leaves in consternation, sleeps on what seems to him to be Tita's proposal of marriage, and returns half resigned to agree; Tita, however, greets him with the news that she has burned the Aspern papers.

By the late 1960’s, it had long been recognized that Native Canadians Aboriginal Canadians had failed to share socially and economically in the general prosperity that followed World War II. They were frequently the victims of discrimination and lacked access to the economic, educational, medical, and social benefits available to the majority of Canadians. These issues were frequently lumped together in the popular media and by government bureaucrats as the “Indian problem.” The White Paper of 1969 was a policy statement and plan issued by Prime Minister Trudeau, Pierre Pierre Trudeau to resolve the problem. Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development White Paper of 1969

The Currency Act, or the Paper Bills of Credit Act, was legislation passed by the British Parliament in 1764 to regulate economic dealings in the then-British-ruled North American colonies. Practically since their inception, the American colonies had struggled to ensure that they had sufficient legal currency in circulation. Heavy import expenses and rising taxes meant that increasing levels of this already-scarce currency was being sent back to Europe.

The Biglow Papers is political satire and, as such, cannot be understood or appreciated until the reader is acquainted, first, with the policies and ideas being satirized and, second, with the conditions of publication. In short, like all satire, it must be seen in historical perspective before it can be evaluated.

Choosing a research topic is often the hardest step when writing a research paper. Below, we have collected the most popular research topics currently being searched. These suggestions are a first step in choosing a topic to research. From these broad topics, students can jumpstart the research process or persue a more narrow perspective on a particular topic or issue.

This is a tale of a man obsessed. The narrator, an American editor, is completely controlled by his desire to know all that can be known about Jeffrey Aspern, a deceased American poet. Determined to publish the definitive biography and collected work of his idol, the editor assumes a false identity in order to move into the dilapidated apartments of Juliana Bordereau, an elderly lady reputed to be Jeffrey Aspern's lover before 1825. Juhana lives in near isolation with only her niece and a maid for companions. Refusing the company of other Americans in Venice, including Mrs. Prest, the editor's confidante, Juliana is considered eccentric and stingy. Using these characteristics to his advantage, the editor offers to pay extravagant rent for her extra rooms, claiming that he is a writer who needs the inspiration of the garden attached to Juliana's property Juliana acquiesces, much to the surprise of her niece, Miss Tita Bordereau, and the editor begins his summer-long campaign to capture any of Aspern's papers that might be in Juliana's possession.

The Federalist Papers is a series of eighty-five political-theory articles published between 1787 and 1788 (and published collectively in two volumes in 1788) that were designed to rally and secure public support for the ratification of the proposed US Constitution. At the time, the passage of the Constitution was uncertain, particularly in New York where the articles were initially published. It was, after all, a radical proposal to replace the loose confederation of states defined by the Articles of Confederation with a far more cohesive union and powerful federal government. The Federalists believed strongly that such a union, carefully defined and mutually accepted by all member states, could alone preserve the economic well-being, peace, and long-term security of the United States against the threat of foreign invasion or the possibility of internal collapse. The essays have long since become some of the most significant documents in American history and political theory as collectively they lay out, clearly and concisely, the logic and reasoning behind the vision for the emerging government system of the new nation.

Henry Ryecroft, a contemplative man, formerly a hack writer but able now through the legacy of a friend to live quietly in a comfortable cottage in rural Devon, writing only when he chooses to. He enjoys wandering about the countryside observing the common plants and learning their names. He thinks often of his hack writing days and of the conditions under which he had lived. Like Charles Lamb, he was always a lover of books and purchased them out of his meager earnings; people nowadays read newspapers, not books. He remembers also the happy excursions on which his family went along the English coast in his childhood. He contrasts the Sundays of old, when he wrote his sharpest satire, with his quiet, peaceful ones now. He thinks of the decline of English taste in food. A successful writer friend visits him, and they talk over the old days of struggle. He misses the London concerts and picture galleries. He muses on Darwinism and its effects on English thought, and he considers his own indifference to odd fads and scientific discoveries. He finds comfort in the Stoics' views about death. He meditates on two great sources of England's strength: Puritanism and the Old Testament. One set moral standards; the other reminded the English that they were a chosen people. If in recent times conventional religion has declined and materialism grown, at least the old prudishness has been replaced by a new strength. He looks back on his varied life, which now seems fully rounded, the best life he could make it; he is content for it to end at any time.

In the late 1800’s, Charles Sanders Peirce—in conversation with William James, Chauncey Wright, Nicholas St. John Green, and Oliver Wendell Holmes at informal meetings of the Metaphysical Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts—developed and clearly expressed the central ideas that became the core of pragmatism. In the United States, pragmatism largely replaced idealism, gained numerous adherents, and influenced many American philosophers. The thoughts of American pragmatists can be seen in linguistic empiricism, developed by Vienna positivists, who grounded philosophical claims in experience, and the British philosophers who emphasized the study of ordinary language in the multiplicity of its uses.

Medardus (meh-DAHR-dews), a monk. He is put in charge of the relics of his order, which include among them an elixir reputed to cause any who drink it to belong to the devil; if two people should taste the potion, they would be as one in thought and desire while secretly wishing to destroy each other. Medardus drinks of the elixir and is then confronted with all the devices of the powers of darkness, which weave about him a web of falsehoods, murders, mistaken identities, and madness until he recovers and is purged of his guilt. He is then asked by Father Spiridion, the monastery librarian, to put his life story in writing.

Sir Roger de Coverley, a fifty-six-year-old bachelor, the benevolent autocrat of a large Worcestershire estate. The knight's humaneness, according to his own opinion, is the result of his love for a beautiful widow whom he has wooed for thirty years. His kindness is equaled by his rigid control of his servants, whose morals, finances, and behavior are the assumed responsibility of Sir Roger. In London, he presides over “The Club,” an informal but close-knit group of men of divergent interests and personalities. Sir Roger's every thought seems marked by affability, his every act by broad knowledge and understanding.

Mr. Samuel Pickwick, the stout, amiable founder and perpetual president of the Pickwick Club. An observer of human nature, a lover of good food and drink, and a boon companion, he spends his time traveling about the countryside with his friends, accepting invitations from local squires and dignitaries, pursuing Mr. Alfred Jingle in an effort to thwart that rascal's schemes, and promoting his friends' romances. The height of his development occurs at the Fleet Prison where, because of a breach-of-promise suit, he observes human suffering and learns to forgive his enemies. A rather pompously bustling and fatuous person at first, he grows in the course of events to be a truly monumental character.

Wilfred (Wilf) Townsend Barclay, a successful English novelist. Turning sixty, with a scraggly yellow-white beard and thatch of hair and a broken-toothed grin, Wilf is struggling with his addictions to alcohol and women. The latter leads to his divorce and departure from his house in Wiltshire to become a wanderer around the globe. After the early death of his parents—he never knew his father—he had become a bank clerk. His inaccuracies were tolerated only because of his prowess as a wing threequarter on the local rugby team, but eventually he was fired. Spells as a groom, an actor, and a provincial reporter, then wartime service, preceded the writing of his first novel, Coldharbour. His success was maintained by such later novels as AllWeLikeSheep, The Birds of Prey, and Horses at the Spring. Although he is a skeptic about miracles, his aesthetic interest in stained glass leads him into an Italian cathedral, where he collapses in front of an image of Christ and subsequently claims to be suffering from the stigmata (except for the fatal wound in the side). Averse to but flattered by the desperate attempts of Rick Tucker to become his biographer, he treats him literally like a dog while alternately evading and manipulating him. Less excusably, he treats his wife, daughter, and acquaintances with an indifference scarcely mitigated by his financial generosity. His capacity for self-analysis allows him to see himself as a clown caught with his pants falling down.

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