Consists of articles and essays mainly written between 1996 and 2008.

Desertshore. Barbara Kruger: the war at home -- Kindergarten governor -- Murdering the dead -- Pretty vacant -- Gavin Lambert (1924-2005): the goodbye person -- The infernal evidence. Even cowboys get the blues -- The madness of the day -- Testosterone express -- Homicide can be such a drag -- About Mary Woronov: puzzle-headed woman -- Daniel Schmid's La paloma -- William Seward Burroughs (1914-1997) -- That awful mess at the governor's mansion -- Surrealisms and the power of emotion. Of Caroline Blackwood -- Wurlitzer's wiles -- Bulle Ogier, phenomenon without a pause -- Cunning, exile, contingency -- Germany inside him: Rainer Fassbinder and the spell of dystopia -- Vienna III, kundmanngasse 19 -- Major motifs -- Curzio Malaparte -- Conjuror of St Germain -- Emmanuel Carrère's counterfeiters -- And the fog comes rolling in. The excremental republic -- Überdolls -- The gearworks of doom -- Don't buy us with sorry after burning down the barn -- Sublime pariah: Céline's voyages into the whirlwind -- Amnesia and its double -- Blame it on brio -- No such thing as paranoia: on the culture of conspiracism -- Opus heyday -- Disorganized conspiracy -- Utopia's debris. Barbet Schroeder's Terror's advocate -- Susan Sontag (1933-2004) -- Robert Bresson: hidden in plain sight -- Simenon l'incroyable -- Weill, Brecht, Mahagonny.

Desertshore. Barbara Kruger: the war at home -- Kindergarten governor -- Murdering the dead -- Pretty vacant -- Gavin Lambert (1924-2005): the goodbye person -- The infernal evidence. Even cowboys get the blues -- The madness of the day -- Testosterone express -- Homicide can be such a drag -- About Mary Woronov: puzzle-headed woman -- Daniel Schmid's La paloma -- William Seward Burroughs (1914-1997) -- That awful mess at the governor's mansion -- Surrealisms and the power of emotion. Of Caroline Blackwood -- Wurlitzer's wiles -- Bulle Ogier, phenomenon without a pause -- Cunning, exile, contingency -- Germany inside him: Rainer Fassbinder and the spell of dystopia -- Vienna III, kundmanngasse 19 -- Major motifs -- Curzio Malaparte -- Conjuror of St Germain -- Emmanuel Carrère's counterfeiters -- And the fog comes rolling in. The excremental republic -- Überdolls -- The gearworks of doom -- Don't buy us with sorry after burning down the barn -- Sublime pariah: Céline's voyages into the whirlwind -- Amnesia and its double -- Blame it on brio -- No such thing as paranoia: on the culture of conspiracism -- Opus heyday -- Disorganized conspiracy -- Utopia's debris. Barbet Schroeder's Terror's advocate -- Susan Sontag (1933-2004) -- Robert Bresson: hidden in plain sight -- Simenon l'incroyable -- Weill, Brecht, Mahagonny