These selected essays are a broad demonstration of 'new critical' techniques that otherwise have been muted in today's criticism. In an attempt to re-establish formal and contextual 'perspectivism' in the face of today's reigning relativism and nihilism, the author reaffirms and vindicates techniques which grasp the objective text and meaning. Contents: Stendhal's The Red and the Black: Existential Psychology in a World Class Novel; A Century of War and Peace: Gone, Gone with the Wind; The Bravest Volcano and Under the Boat: The Two Lowrys'; A Lost Canadian Work: James Benson Nablo's The Longest November; The Higher Criticism-or Flash Gordon Revisited; The Masterpieces in Science Fiction: Power or Parody? Cobb and Kubrick: Author and 'Auteur' (Paths of Glory as Novel and Film); Writers Don't Know It All; The Sense of Sound; Poe's 'The Raven': The Values of Negative Teaching; In Defense of Roth; O'Hara's Appointment of Samarra: His First and Only Real Novel; Jake Barnes, Cockroaches, the Trout in The Sun Also Rises; 'Bless You, Chile': Fiedler and 'Huck Honey' A Generation Later; Henry James' 'The Jolly Corner': The Writer's Fable and the Deeper Matter; Melville's 'The Fiddler' Reconsidered; Lapsarians on The Prairie: Cooper's Novel; Weberism, Franklin, and Transcendental Style; Benjamin Franklin: Guilt and Transformation-The Man Behind the Myth.