ABSTRACT
If there is a literary system its existence has likely gone unnoticed by writers, the very people whose work supplies its elements. They are concerned with generating texts. For any first-order observer, a system of which she is a part is of no account. Only second-order observers find value in system descriptions. The circulatory system proceeds, and blood cells could not care less. A cardiologist cares. A writer writes; she is in the writing. A literary critic observes the writing from outside the writing. It is from that displaced position I make the observations that follow.
