Unreading “Reloaded”

Unreading “Reloaded”
I’ve been told that coffee grounds, packed on top of cocaine, throw off the drug dogs. It’s only the clever sleuth who, combining intellect with instinct, can pick out the real Colombian Supremo from the wan commercial stuff brewed and filtered for general consumption.
The adage is, of course, as true for the critic as [...]

I’d Like That Jouissance to Go, Please

Is not the most erotic portion of a body where the garment gapes?
¬– Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text
In 1999, the Modern Library Press published its – by all accounts publicity-stunted – list of “The 100 Best English-Language Novels of the 20th Century,” with James Joyce’s Ulysses occupying the top spot. The mainstream press [...]

(The Lack of) Leisure in America (October 2003)

Arrogance is a terrible thing. Not so much because it makes those whom it afflicts obnoxious, or as experience would have it, nationalistically minded, but because it dulls their analytical skills.
The above sentence isn’t an excoriation of the Bush administration’s Iraq policy – the most natural and obvious route from the enunciation of “arrogance” these [...]

Of Weasels and Whales: Iraq (October 10, 2002)

HAMLET: Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?
POLONIUS: By th’mass and ‘tis — like a camel indeed.
HAMLET: Methinks it is like a weasel.
POLONIUS: It is backed like a weasel.
HAMLET: Or like a whale.
POLONIUS: Very like a whale.
“The world changed on September 11.” Yes, surely, of course.
But which September 11 would [...]