Theorists and Practitioners

[Andrew Clarke Walser]

	On Thursday, 8 July 1999, Paul Mackin wrote:

  I kind of like it  that literary theorists see themselves as creative
 artists . . .

	Yes -- although such equality has its disadvantages.
	As long as Derrida must compete with scholars and specialists, he
seems innovative and outrageous -- but he diminishes, I think, beside a
novelist like Joyce.  His imagination seems more tame, his style more
derivative, his "radicalism" somewhat academic.
	The same shrinking can occur, by the way, in the company of a
philosopher.  I would not place "White Mythology" on a level with Plato,
and I would not trade an epigram of Nietzsche's for all of Derrida's
embellishments.

				Andrew Walser