Joyce’s Phantom Power
by David Reddall on March 17, 2013
I am prepared to affirm this proposition: only James Joyce could read Finnegan’s Wake. It is not my desire to assert that only James Joyce could read it insofar as that verb can signify studying it closely in order to ascertain its meaning. Instead, I would invite you to consider the possibility that the characters who speak, for example, in the scene whose improbable, necromantic reading we owe to …
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David Rakoff and the Bloody Saliva
by David Reddall on August 11, 2012
David Rakoff died. The very day that took place, I noticed some blood in my saliva. For various reasons that will become clear shortly, you will understand that I am obviously not the sort of person who would resort to an insipid, New Age, pseudo-mystical false limb here, as in “everything happens for a reason,” or “all things are connected.”
What is so stunningly stupid about truisms of this kind …
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The Purity Test
by David Reddall on October 23, 2011
“Rare is the union of beauty and purity.”
–Juvenal
Is ideological purity desirable? Recently, on this site, a debate has gotten underway with regard to the problematic political and historical implications of the verb cum noun, “occupy.” I find this to be a rather risible scenario, were it not for the fact that it might well have a deleterious effect upon those who could be considering an enthusiastic move to …
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Yeal! ~ The Mad Methods of Jon Ronson
by David Reddall on June 25, 2011
Jon Ronson’s The Psychopath Test is mesmerizing. In order to argue for this verdict, I will begin with an odd claim and assert that devising and then employing a stylistic or rhetorical technique with grace and dexterity marks one as a very accomplished prose stylist. One of the disadvantages of this same talent, though, is that the dazzling splendor of the first salvo can so impress not only the reader …
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