This book is based on the author's T.S. Eliot lectures at the University of Kent and points to a line of linguistic scepticism that runs from Emerson, through the pragmatism of Willliam James, and into the 20th century, with Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens and Gertrude Stein. Poirier activates a tradition for writers who have in fact not admitted of its existence, a tradition that in this study gives birth to a radically different understanding of how writing gets written and how it deserves to be read. Central to the book is an exploration of what James calls the vague. Poirier argues that vagueness deserves a privileged place in our understanding of how language holds people together, without requiring their conformity to any fixed ideas of the truth. The author offers a redefinition of individualism that is located less in aggression than in tentativeness, casualness and silence.