One more week until I’m done with my midterms… But until then I’ll be working hard on my final essay for the Contemporary Writing course I’ve told you about before. For the last couple of days I’ve been all about research, reading all kinds of articles about (among other topics) The New York Trilogy, on which I’m writing my essay. I’ve also been thinking about the concept of truth a lot, since I’m going to try to prove that The New York Trilogy challenges the idea of “truth”, and the idea of there being any such thing as “universal truth”.
On my travels toward writing a decent essay I’ve been reading a lot of theories and criticism as well (Derrida, anyone? I’m starting to develop a personal grudge against that guy) and I encountered a Roland Barthes quote, which I thought was nice (although I’m not completely sure I agree with him – the jury is still out on that one). I thought I’d leave you with that for today…
Rereading, an operation contrary to the commercial and ideological habits of our society, which would have us “throw away” the story once it has been consumed (“devoured”), so that we can then move on to another story, buy another book, and which is tolerated only in certain marginal categories of readers (children, old people, and professors), rereading is here suggested at the outset, for it alone saves the text from repetition (those who fail to reread are obliged to read the same story everywhere).
– Roland Barthes
Do you have any ideas about truth? I’d love to hear ’em! And what do you think about Barthes’s statement about rereading?
I’m not sure if I’ll be able to post anything on Thursday — I’ll probably be in full essay frenzy by then!
Books Baking and Blogging 
Ahhhh, “truth.” I definitely don’t think there is any such thing, and now I am interested in these novels. But I guess I fall in the post-structuralist/postmodernist camp. I’ve not read much Derrida, as I spend my days immerse in Foucault, but I’d be interested to hear tidbits of what you come up with for the essay!
I agree with you about truth! It’s proving to be quite difficult to write about, though, but I’m doing my best. My essay has to be finished on Friday, if you like I could send you some interesting parts of it (or the whole thing) then!
The New York Trilogy is pretty amazing, and I like it even better now I’m investigating the whole concept of truth in it. It’s actually three novellas in one book, it’s about 300 pages long in total and definitely worth the read! 🙂