Amitava Kumar is Helen D. Lockwood Professor of English at Vassar College and the author of numerous books, including Lunch with a Bigot; A Matter of Rats; and Nobody Does the Right Thing, all also published by Duke University Press; and most recently, Immigrant, Montana: A Novel.

Introduction. The 90-Day Book 1
Part I. Self-Help
Misery 5
Good Sentences 6
Read No Secondary Literature 7
Read Junk 9
Failure 10
Running 12
Sleep 15
Kitchen Timer 16
Self-Help 17
Part II. Writing a Book: A Brief History
Rules of Writing 23
In Memory of 24
Out of Place 26
Eyes on the Ground 28
The End of the Line 30
Creative Criticism 31
How to Throw Your Body 36
I'm Feeling Myself 38
Creative Writing 39
Part III. Credos
Declarations of Independence 47
In Praise of Nonfiction 54
There Is No Single Way 56
How Proust Can Ruin Your Life 57
Reality Hunger 58
Depend on Your Dumbness 60
Blackness (Unmitigated) 62
Rage on the Page 63
On Training 68
Part IV. Form
Light Years 71
Neither/Nor 72
Criticism by Other Means 75
Paranoid Theory 77
Erotic Style 80
I Blame the Topic Sentence 82
The Sound of the Fury 83
In Defense of the Fragment 86
Kids 88
Part V. Academic Interest
Diana Studies 91
Examined Life 95
Occupy Writing 96
Academic Sentence 98
Dissertation Blah 100
Your Job Is to Know a Lot 102
Terminology 103
Anti-Anti Jargon 104
Monograph 107
Part VI. Style
But Life 111
Sugared Violets 112
Voice 113
Wikileaks Manual of Style 117
Detecting Style 118
Strunk and White 120
A Clean English Sentence 122
Trade 126
Recommendation Letter 128
Part VII. Exercises
Bad Writing 137
Prompt 139
Post-Its 141
Revising 142
Editing 144
Performing It 146
Rituals 149
For Graduate Students 152
Not Writing 161
Part VIII. The Groves of Academe
Academe 165
Stoner 167
Common Sense 169
Titles 170
Campus Criticism 172
Farther Away 176
Accountability 177
Tenure Files 179
Journals 182
Part IX. Materials
Photographs, etc. 187
"Who's Got the Address?" (a Collaboration with Teju Cole) 190
Acknowledgments 197
Appendix A. Ten Rules of Writing 201
Appendix B. PEN Ten Interview 207
Notes 211
Index 231