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This chapter examines the events that led Hal Ashby to direct the film The Last Detail. During the pre-production of Three Cornered Circle, actor Jack Nicholson told Ashby about his upcoming film The Last Detail. Nicholson recommended to producer Gerry Ayres to bring in Ashby to direct the film. This film was a clear step up for Ashby. He had his biggest budget yet at $2.6 million and salary of $95,000.

This chapter examines Hal Ashby's directorial job for the film The Last Detail. It describes Ashby's directorial style, his relationship with the cast including Jack Nicholson and Randy Quaid and the cast's observations about Ashby's work attitude. The film grossed $4 million at the box office but everyone knew it could have earned more. This chapter also mentions the death of Ashby's mother on November 9, 1973.

This chapter presents an illustrated catalogue of types of invention in ancient historiography (the sub-title echoes the famous ‘seven types of ambiguity’ of the literary critic Empson); these types cover a spectrum of cases from modest elaboration of fact to outright, even flagrant, lying. Although modern historiography also involves some creative or inventive presentation, it is claimed that the ancient genre goes much further in this respect, and often produces what we would regard as virtually historical novels. The seven types of mendacity reviewed are (1) tendentiousness, (2) myth (the miraculous or remarkable story told for its own pleasure), (3) travellers’ tales, presented as fact (4) the pervasive influence of rhetoric and drama, (5) aphegesis, story-telling for its own sake, (6) elaboration of detail to achieve vividness, (7) spareness of detail, also designed for effect.

The delegates initially seemed to accept the wide-ranging national authority the broad nationalists sought. But as the complexity of the new governing institutions took shape, the narrow nationalists gained ground with their arguments that the national government be granted only a limited range of additional policy tools, leaving most of the nation's policy authority in the states. The delegates defeated Madison's national veto of state laws, instead inserting the supremacy clause. They accepted the previously inconceivable notion that the national and state governments could share sovereignty, and they institutionalized this distinction when they defined “treason.” The Committee of Detail enumerated the powers of the national government and shifted the onus for exercising government authority from the state governments to the national government. The “necessary and proper” and the “general welfare” clauses added ambiguity to the division of authority.

Chapter 5 takes a close look at the signatures of Bihzad in the paintings of the Cairo Bustan. Each signature was concealed as a pictorial detail, taking a different form in each painting. Signatures, moreover, were unusual in Persian painting. This chapter argues that through concealment, variety, ambiguity and uniqueness, Bihzad’s signatures were designed to elicit a feeling of wonder, emphasising the painter’s virtuosity and creativity. Through excessive minuteness, they mythicized the painter and described artistic authority as transcendent, while also obscuring the participation of many other artists and artisans. Signature was thus as much a step toward visibility as it was an instrument of self-praise, and an act of appropriation.