Are we rising again? No. On the contrary. Are we descending? Worse than that, captain! we are falling! For Heaven's sake heave out the ballast! There! the last sack is empty! Does the balloon rise? No! I hear a noise like the dashing of waves. The sea is below the car! It cannot be more than 500 feet from us! Overboard with every weight! . . . everything!
In the picturesque village of Branscombe, New Hampshire, the townsfolk are all pitching in to prepare for the first (and many hope annual) Festival of Joy. The night before the festival begins, a group of employees at the local market learn that they have won $160 million in the lottery. One of their co-workers, Duncan, decided at the last minute, on the advice of a pair of crooks masquerading as financial advisers, not to play. Then he goes missing. A second winning lottery ticket was purchased in the next town, but the winner hasn't come forward. Could Duncan have secretly bought it?
"What is Literature?" challenges anyone who writes as if literature could be extricated from history or society. But Sartre does more than indict. He offers a definitive statement about the phenomenology of reading, and he goes on to provide a dashing example of how to write a history of literature that takes ideology and institutions into account.
