The author's book The End(s) of Ethnography: From Realism to Social Criticism is to be republished sometime this spring. While writing an introduction to the second edition, the author thought about experimental ethnographic writing from the point of view of its recent past, starting back at the time when End(s) was conceived. In this article, the author discusses what led her to write End(s) as well as her thoughts on the relationship between the criticism of ethnography and the recent experiments in ethno graphic writing.