Coen's psychoanalytic study of literature promulgates the thesis that certain writers are “dependent authors” whose works reveal that they “sought intense imaginary contact with their readers.” The works of these writers, including Genet, Céline, Sade, and Freud, show “need, dependency, and the dangers or rage and destructiveness [which] take priority in the relationship between author and reader” (p. 5). Further, “such writing seeks the temporary illusion that one's badness had been mastered by magical transformation into something good and poetic” (p. 50). While Coen also provides a review of recent psychoanalytic literary criticism, his book is of interest primarily for a thesis that focuses on the