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JOYCE CAROL OATES
The Accursed
for my husband and first reader, Charlie Gross;
and for my dear friends Elaine Pagels and James Cone
From an obscure little village we have become the capital of America.
—ASHBEL GREEN, SPEAKING OF PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY, 1783
All diseases of Christians are to be ascribed to demons.
—ST. AUGUSTINE
CONTENTS
Postscript: “Ash Wednesday Eve, 1905”
Angel Trumpet; Or, “Mr. Mayte of Virginia”
Author’s Note: Princeton Snobbery
Author’s Note: The Historian’s Confession
Part Two - THE CURSE INCARNATE
Postscript: The Historian’s Dilemma
“God’s Creation as Viewed from the Evolutionary Hypothesis”
Part Three - “THE BRAIN, WITHIN ITS GROOVE . . .”
“A Narrow Fellow in the Grass . . .”
Dr. Schuyler Skaats Wheeler’s Novelty Machine
Part Four - THE CURSE EXORCISED
Postscript: On the Matter of the “Unspeakable” at Princeton