"Erasure" by Percival Everett

[James Kyllo]

Sitting reading this over dinner in the Indian restaurant this
evening, and came upon the following (page 42):

"Then I heard my name being shouted from outside.  It was a bit
embarrassing as I turned to find the hotel staff and a couple of
guests staring at me.  I stepped out and on the narrow path leading
through the yard was Davis Gimbel.

'A screaming comes across the sky.  It has happened before, but there
is nothing to compare it to now,' he said.

The words had little effect on me, save to announce Gimbel's
disturbed, certifiable, and agitated post-modern state."

Context: protagonist has just given a paper at a meeting of the
Nouveau Roman Society about his novel in progress which "treats this
critical text by Roland Barthes, S/Z, exactly as it treats its
so-called subject text which is Balzac's 'Sarrasine'"

(I never knew that Keith M's handle was a Barthes reference - thought
it was a contraction of "Schwitters", which he'd previously posted
under)

the novel, 100 pages in, is not as insufferable as the above might
lead you to believe.

J


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