Literature does not have the guarantee of immediacy which, say, the Visual Arts or Film or Music all enjoy. Its medium is the written word: there's no color, no sound, no bodies leaping to and fro - there's not even speeches to be made. The literary realm is a silent theater, spectral, a place where words roam in search bodies to inhabit. But rather then this disembodiment being a hindrance, it affords Literature a great freedom. For words are remarkable creatures and grammar an infinitely complex structure in which anything can happen. Literature may be silent but words can certainly scream, or whisper, moan, decry, they can announce and seduce - with all the subtleties and nuance of the voice. Nabakov's prose offers nibbles of nymphets, his words a caress; Melville delivers a whale in all its unwieldiness right to our doorstep; Maurice Blanchot whispers of death, haunting our every move with the inevitable's power; Montiagne's essays reveal a man more astutely than any gestures of hand or face; Homer carries us to impossible lands, letting us dance with gods. Now, other arts may offer similar possibilties, but only the word can go anywhere it may please and be anything it may desire: the word can taste of taffy, smell of sordid nights, it can whisk across your face with the vigor of a lover's slap or tickle your knees with a well-placed verb. Freed from the constraints of the body, words can meander across boundaries, through the smallest crevice, past all defenses to nestle deep within the body's skin tight fortress.