10 Years After

Black Tongue

Last Friday I picked up a few books at lunch:

1. Derrida Of Grammatology


2. Saussure Course in General Linguistics

I really wish I had paid more attention in my Literary Criticism class. By the time we made it to these two I was already feeling swamped and just trying to keep up. Now I'm really looking forward to a chance to sit own and look into these two with much more attention.

I also picked up a book from Miami/Ohio State press FOWLES/IRVING/BARTHES - Canonical Vvariations on an Apocraphal Theme by Randolph Runyon. It's a neat academic book which looked very startling to me at the bookshop. The Inside jacket really caught my attntion:

A canon, according to a defnition offered by John Dowland in 1609, "is an imaginarie ruledrawing that part of the Ding which is not set downe out of that part which is set downe."professor Runyon finds that prescription particularly apposite in considering the work of three contemporary writers : John Fowles (The French Lieutenant's Woman and Daniel Martin), John Irving (The World Accroding to Garp and The Water-method Man), Roland Barthes (Fragments d'un discours amoureux). These three works, he argues, can all be read as variations on the same story - one ultimately traceable to a fairly widely known text int he Old testament Apocrypha, the Book of Tobit,in which an angel instructs the errant son on how he may win a bride and cure the blindness of his father by seizing and eviscerating a leaping fish.

Just for the record - I have't read any of these books or, as far asI know, anything by these authors.

What actuially made me think to pull out these books, which were set aside and forgotten was a conversation I overheard at lunch. This couple were talking about how this weekend was race weekend. The guy, whom I sat near during lunch before is one of those people that constantly thinks they are errudite and know what they are talking about. The girl usually defers to him even when it's obvious he doesn't know what he's talking about.
The guy was saying that this coming Sunday was the big local nascar race. The girl commented that Sunday was Easter. He replied that it couldn't be Easter because that was in April. It then devolved down into him prattling on about how Easter is a Catholic holiday that a few other religions have adopted from the Catholics. She inquired about Lent and he then delved into how Catholics are suppose to give up some everday thing that they could do without for something like 90 days to prove their devotion to God. The girl asked if it had to do wiht the Jews leaving Egypt for 40 days and 40 nights. Before I heard his authoritarian response I made to leave before I was heard laughing aloud.

[that is an honest paraphrase of their conversation.]