Climbing Back Book

	Preface	17
	Intro: The Prodigal Son jumps bail	23
1
	The Prodigal Son and the two Sinatras	27
	The Prodigal Son on Green Dolphin Street	28
	The Prodigal Son: The treadmill effect	29
	The Prodigal Son: German postcards	30
	The Prodigal Son: Kierkegaard at face value	32
	The Prodigal Son reassesses Kierkegaard	33
	The Prodigal Son edits a newsreel	36
	The Prodigal Son watches a documentary	37
	The Prodigal Son, Mr. DeMille, Norma Desmond, Billy Wilder, Claude Monet, et al.	38
	The Prodigal Son paraphrases a plagiarist	39
	The Prodigal Son gives blood	40
	The Prodigal Son in a frenzy of scarves	42
	The Prodigal Son confronting Zeno's paradoxes	43
	The Prodigal Son introduces George W. G. Ferris	44
	The Prodigal Son: Still life in slow motion	45
	The Prodigal Son deconstructs the origami language	46
	The Prodigal Son, for whom summer is a verb	47
	The Prodigal Son pulls an all-nighter	48
2
	The Prodigal Son is caught off guard by planned obsolescence	51
	The Prodigal Son, accompanied by the ideogram	52
	The Prodigal Son as understudy	53
	The Prodigal Son locates the epicenter	54
	The Prodigal Son: Notes from the epicenter	55
	The Prodigal Son paces the other half of a semicircle	56
	The Prodigal Son: Temporary trains	57
	The Prodigal Son bribes the fortune teller	58
	The Prodigal Son: Standard deviations	59
	The Prodigal Son marks his calendar	60
	The Prodigal Son swims to a barrier island	61
	The Prodigal Son learns to drown	62
	The Prodigal Son envisions nothing	63
	The Prodigal Son succumbs to secular miracles	64
	The Prodigal Son investigates the Hemingway suicides	65
	The Prodigal Son in absentia	66
3	The Prodigal Son in his own words:
	Credo (1)	69
	Bees	70
	Tipping over the actuarial tables	71
	Homage to Li Po	75
	Rhetorical answers	76
	Credo (2)	77
	Independence	78
	Captivity	79
	Free will	80
	Fate	81
	Faith	82
	Credo (3)	83
	Benedictus	84
	Prayer against Ecclesiastes	85
	Letter to the anarchists	86
	Debussy	87
	Credo (4)	88
4
	The Prodigal Son's education	91
	The Prodigal Son forgives his brother	92
	The Prodigal Son on a bus in New Delhi	93
	The Prodigal Son buries a dog named Pavlov	94
	The Prodigal Son takes up a hobby	95
	The Prodigal Son: Studies for a portrait of John Merrick	96
	The Prodigal Son is spotted on the grassy knoll	97
	The Prodigal Son, briefly suspected in the shooting of Andy Warhol, is cleared of all charges	98
	The Prodigal Son stands outside the Dakota	99
	The Prodigal Son as decoy	100
	The Prodigal Son: Science fiction	101
	The Prodigal Son in spite of himself	102
	The Prodigal Son loses his wife	103
	The Prodigal Son buys a new car	104
	The Prodigal Son: Vegas, after hours	105
	The Prodigal Son and the epistemology of chance	106
	The Prodigal Son in Pompeii	107
	The Prodigal Son: Amnesty	108
	The Prodigal Son accidentally kneels while learning to crawl	109
	The Prodigal Son considers a diplomatic career	110
	The Prodigal Son learns the word "antebellum"	111
	The Prodigal Son overhears his interrogators	112
	Coda: The Prodigal Son catches up with the bounty hunters	115
	Notes & dedications	117
	About the author	119