I have given papers at a number of specialist conferences, treating them as opportunities to confront a work—or an idea—in progress with a living, competent auditorium. The feedback I receive becomes then a prompt suggesting how the idea must (or must not!) be processed to have a chance to develop into a “Work that might live” (Wordsworth’s phrase). This is one of the reasons why the published versions of my papers are often very different from their earlier, oral variants; sometimes one paper develops into more than one text.