Logocentrism

[Paul Mackin]

No, as the bookstore lady said they weren't selling books but experiences
with text. Good one, Terrance. Simpson, by the way, wasn't being 
deconstructive on TV but was merely voicing his contention that Adams
wasn't telling it like is was in Education but rather as he would have
liked it to be. The further point that "like it was" would also be fiction
was left unstated as befitting a family show. :-)

		P. 

On Tue, 20 Jun 2000, Terrance wrote:

> 
> 
> Paul Mackin wrote:
> > 
> > On the Sunday Henry Adams discussion on C-span2, Brooks Simpson the
> > author of _The Political Education of Henry Adams_ was asked what
> > he thought of _The Education of Henry Adams_ being named by Modern
> > Library to be the best NONfiction book of the century. He answered that it
> > might have been all right if they had left off the non.
> > 
> >                         P.
> 
> Were they selling books? 
> 
> Aristotle O'Modernerty:  Excuse me Sir, where is the Henry
> Adams section? 
>  
> Salesperson Joyce Bibliolatousis: That would be next to the
> Literature section. 
> 
> Aristotle: Such a fluid term. 
> 
> Aristotle's complaint that he had no single term for all the
> Kinds of literary works still holds. What's the difference
> between a play and a newspaper? About fifty bucks in New
> York. Between a science textbook and a cookbook? Between a
> child's poem and Hamlet? What is the difference between the
> ingredients listed on the back of a Greek pastry box and a
> scientific formula on a blackboard? Does it have anything to
> do with the text? Does it have anything to do with syntax,
> the sentence structure, and the language, the presence or
> absence of metaphor, allusion, character, and plot? What is
> a pastry box that Hamlet is not?
> I was in the airport, and as usual, I had time to murder.
> The last thing I wanted to do before sitting in an airplane
> for four hours reading newspapers, was sit down. So I walked
> into the bookstore and I looked around. I decided to buy
> Roth's new book. I couldn't find it. I asked the store
> proprietor to assist me. She looked it up, in a computer of
> course, and to her astonishment and mine, the book was
> listed under Self-help and Health. Well that's odd, she
> said. Not really I said, after all, a text is nothing more
> than an object of paper and ink. Until someone reads it, she
> said. Yes, I said, how else can those black marks become
> verbal symbols. Oh, being and becoming, she said. Oh, I
> said.  And those that seek the things that distinguish
> Roth's new book from Chicken soup labels in the text can
> only arrive at confusions arbitrary and partial, she said.
> And Partial too, I said. Yes, she said, that's why we don't
> just sell books, we sell experiences with texts, she pointed
> to the sign above the door, The Privileged Reader.
>