My last book review, you may recall, I bemoaned the fact that Pale Fire (by Nabokov) had a lovely fo
My last book review, you may recall, I bemoaned the fact that Pale Fire (by Nabokov) had a lovely format but such an unfortunate air of bigotry. Quite by accident, the next book I read, The Body: An Essay, followed a very similar format. Boully, the author, has given us an essay sans the body, leaving only the footnotes.The reader is left pondering the nature of the actually body of the text. Boully obviously has a fascination with Derrida’s différance; the footnotes are the sign, and the body is the signified. The footnotes may give the reader hints as to what the essay may be about, but the true content is ultimately unknowable. One of the more amusing twistsis that all of Boully’s allusions are forced to be overt; the reader is given an author, title, and page number for nearly every reference to another work. This makes the resulting work much more approachable than it might have been. Instead of having to tease out which writer, scientist, or philosopher inspired her, the reader is handed Nabokov, Einstein, and Derrida on an easily accessible level. I’ve only read it once, thus far, but it was a very quick read, and I plan on revisiting it soon, once I’ve given it some space. I absolutely recommend reading it with Nabokov’s Pale Fire; The Body: An Essay serves as a delightful spiritual successor. -- source link
#book review#liara roux#jenny boully#derrida