Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

It would be interesting to know how a Lacanian psychoanalyst would interpret the fictional world in which this retelling of a classical myth is set, and in which signifiers are in disorder. The protagonist, for instance, learns that he has trouble with his hypotenuse when he experiences a pain traveling from A to B; in the hospital, he meets a patient who is suffering from a condition that worsens into hendiadys. Perhaps Hoban is suggesting that in a postmodern world of alienated labor and advertising saturation, the classic trivium and quadrivium have been marginalized, and that, in a “return of the repressed,� these traditional disciplines are re-emerging in neurotic forms, as linguistic distortions. This may be part of the reason that Kleinzeit, who reads Thucydides in his spare time, begins learning to play the glockenspiel and to write poems.

Acquired Sept 23, 1998
Cheap Thrills, Montreal, Quebec