I was impressed by how he was able to tell the truth but make his - TopicsExpress



          

I was impressed by how he was able to tell the truth but make his life sound coherent, precisely arced. An intriguing concept, but I remain convinced that this ability is restricted to fiction, where the author can construct the characters life events to match the precise arc desired... And thats the key to why I have a love-hate relationship with using literature to reflect on social science topics: the constructed truthiness of it is an intellectual trap. Fiction is signifier without reference to the signified, which lets you drift ever further away from from any underlying substance. (Of course, this seems to be the basic and ironic thrust of the book (as of the first 70 pages): what happens to thought when language is no longer signifier but actually the signified? How do you think of something that hasnt happened? How do you lie? What happens to writing? But thats only from the first couple pages, so who knows where itll go from here...)
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 16:26:07 +0000

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