The work reflects the author's extensive and first-hand experience with the modern French theater and with those artists who have written and staged for it and whose work has revolutionized the way we think of "theater.".

The book contains a distillation of Bishop's best original writings on such pivotal figures as Beckett, Cocteau, Jean-Louis Barrault, Ionesco, Jean Genet, Sartre, and Camus in theater and Alain Robbe-Grillet, Claude Simon, Robert Pinget, and Philippe Sollers in fiction. Bishop knew these creative artists, and his insightful analyses provide an informative and entertaining insider's look at the development and workings of the avant-garde that is both fascinating and unique.