I drove past an artificial deer picking its way among tombstones. Where I used to walk, on a golf course, an artificial fox crouched by a pond to scare geese with its outline. Though I’ve been advised to keep an artificial man in my passenger seat, nights, I have never done it. Does the dead body in “A Rose for Emily” count as an artificial boyfriend? Emily must have gradually gotten used to the fumes. Once, I sat at the back of a lecture hall, next to a mummified John Stuart Mill.