Don't Ever Get Famous: Essays on New York Writing after the New York School Book

Irwin posits self-reflexiveness as a series that begins "n, n+1, (n+1)+1," and continues to infinity.

If you are thinking, that is thought, obviously. But if you are thinking about thinking (what you are doing now, perhaps), you have not just reached the second level, but a third. That is, there is a thought about thinking about thinking, and it just goes on and on from there-- the Russian doll par excellence.

Irwin's thesis is that Poe's "tales of ratiocination" are re-readable (unlike mysteries in which everything hinges on the solution of a crime and the reader's excitement at paralleling, perhaps overtaking, the detective in his/her pursuit of that solution) because they are, ultimately, about self-reflection, about thought, and that they continually reveal new facets with each reading. He argues that Borges's stories meant to "double" Poe's tales do in fact double those tales, by making this dimension explicit, and he does it all through really fantastic explications of some difficult concepts.

Unfortunately, he does lose himself occasionally in digression, particularly in the biographical sections of this book, which have a great deal less to do with the work of either Poe or Borges than his even own thesis claims. But he often approaches exactly that speed of thought that he is trying to explicate (that of Poe or Borges), and, as a kind of trebling of their work, this book is pretty amazing.