Using Dostoevsky's Diary of a Writer as a springboard, Gary Saul Morson examines a number of key topics in contemporary literary theory, including the nature of literary genres and their relation to interpretation. He convincingly argues that genre is not a property of texts alone but arises from the interaction between texts and readers.

• Contents 
• Preface
• 1. 
• Dostoevsky's Icon of Chaos
• A Work of Paradoxes
• Poetics of the Underground
• Stories That Cannot Be Told
• Annexing the Boundaries: Sketch and Feuilleton
• “A Petersburg Chronicle”
• “Petersburg Visions in Prose and Verse”
• Winter Remarks on Summer Impressions
• Transforming the Periodical into Literature
• Literature as Algorithm
• Dostoevsky's Utopianism
• 2. 
• Threshold Art
• Literature
• Fiction
• Boundary Works
• Threshold Literature
• Framing: Shklovsky's Zoo
• “The Journal as a Literary Form”
• Reading between the genres: The Dairy as Metaliterature
• 3. 
• Utopia as a Literary Genre
• Identifying a Class
• Criteria for Literary Utopias
• The Literary Significance of Nonliterary Utopias
• An Intra-generic Dialogue: The Status of Women
• An Inter-generic Dialogue: The Nature and Proper Function of Literature
• Structure: Questions and Answers
• Structure: Dream and Reality
• The Masterplot
• Utopia as Threshold Art
• The Poetics of Didactic Literature and Fiction
• Reading as Journey
• The Self-Implicating Question
• What Is to Be Done? and What Is to Be Inferred
• Periodical Apocalypse
• 4. 
• Recontextualizations
• PART 1: 
• Theory of Parody
• Parody and Intertextuality
• Criteria
• The Etiology of Utterance
• PART 2: 
• Anti-utopia as a Parodic Genre
• Anti-genres
• Parody and History
• Certainties and Skepticisms
• Counterplot #1: Systems and Labyrinths
• Counterplot #2: The Madman
• Questions and Inquisitors
• Counterplot #3: Escape to the Cave
• We and the Rebirth of the Novel
• Anti-utopian Metafiction
• Utopia, Anti-utopia, and Their Readers
• PART 3: 
• Meta-utopia
• Metaparody
• “Each Commenting on the Other”: Wells' A Modern Utopia
• Dialogue: The Tempest and From the Other Shore
• Ambiguous Framing: Diderot's Supplement to Bouganville's “Voyage ”
• More's Utopia: Texts and Readings
• The Diary: Generic Risks
• The Diary: Belief in the Incredible
• Notes
• Index