In this little book, Harry Mathews, poet, novelist, and the only American member of the experimental literary group Oulipo, deconstructs and reconstructs familiar proverbs in ways that are witty, engaging and unfailingly inventive. Whether composing an entire short story solely of words found in a list of common proverbs or splicing and dicing the same proverbs into strange combinations he terms "preverbs" from which he generates remarkable "paraphrases" and short poems, Mathews never ceases to entertain as he sheds new light on some very hackneyed material. While neither as "experimental" nor as rigorous as some of his other work, 'Selected Declarations of Dependence' is nonetheless charming, playful, and original and often thought-provoking too. ( )