As the most salient and original quality of this work, I would cite the author's probing insistence on linking narrative not to one context, but to several: in this way he explores a range of theoretical perspectives while remaining sympathetic and attuned to the demands of embedded narrative itself (such as attention, focus, frames, listening, etc.) He sensitively regards the narrator's accessibility to and manipulation of the listener/reader's sensorium as a multi-layered process. In doing so, he also teaches the reader a great deal by coordinating theories with practices of reading. Richard Shryock accedes rapidly to the limits of critical categories and criticisms. By exploiting in an original way Austin's notion of perlocutionary act in the context of embedded narrative, he helps us to read the very structures of modern self-fashioning with new eyes. (James Winchell, Stanford University) ukryj opis