These essays begin with a survey of television from adaptations of the classics through soap operas to chat shows and commercials. The author examines the notion of realism in the arts, the self-referring tendencies of television and its role in the AIDS debate. He discusses the question of television's influence on our attitudes and actions. The author looks at the disappearance of the word evil and the persistence in popular entertainment of the Dracula and Frankenstein myths. He contrasts television's meagre involvement of the imagination with books which do not lend themselves to other media. He considers writers such as Grass, Kraus, Singer, Milosz and Robertson Davies who, he argues, are not afraid of employing fantasy in their exploration of reality. The last section of the book deals with language, its usage and potency. D.J. Enright is a poet, critic and author of The Alluring Problem. Some of the central sections of this book on literature and language are revised versions of reviews written for NY Review of Books and other journals.