The title of this book is Art and Argument, however, these two subjects are treated in reverse order, first argument, then art. Art and Argument is an engagingly written work about how words work in the world and in art. Its freewheeling considerations range from everyday examples to speculative metaphysics, touching along the way on written works from columns by the advice doyenne Ann Landers to literature by D.H. Lawrence, the Japanese Modernist Soseki, and the Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet Steven Dunn.

"The book attempts to analyze how language works and how it fails and how we might manage to deal with it, provided we see it as succeeding and failing in communication. In generally straightforward language, and with examples from ordinary acts of communication, Fleming attempts to find out what is at the root of the multidimensionality of communication. We do need more such readable books in this subject." - Review of Metaphysics

"This work contains some wonderful insights into everyday occurrences and helps make certain life experiences seem simple again, in a field that tends to complicate some of the most basic such experiences." - Philosophy in Review