As a great storyteller and man of letters, Barry Callaghan is also a Canadian public intellectual and cultural critic; these essays discuss his influence and assess his writerly fascination with the no-man's-land between fiction and journalism. Contributors include Margaret Atwood, Marie-Claire Blais, Hayden Carruth, Branko Gorjup, Michael Keefer, William Kennedy, Patrick Lane, Kathleen McCracken, Joyce Carol Oates, and Noah Richler.