Certainly the text sustains the virtuosities of close reading we're
accustomed to in more conventional works. For example, the narrators name,
"O." -- O. is also "I", first person I. I - O IO. Input output on off
present absent: meaning the transmission of information. (That close enough
for ya?)
But the larger point is that in coming terms with the book by relieving it
of the responsibility to "mean" (and relieving ourselves of our
responsibility to create same) we're also lending tacit acceptance to the
media sphere's homogenization of meaningful language. John's points about
the difficulties of non-representational language are well taken, but I'd
argue that those difficulties are precisely that: _difficulties_.
Yes, the book is hard. But who ever said that language oughta be easy?
"The function of the image is to be, not to mean." What happens if we read
that ironically, as a final condensed articulation of the text's extended
critique of the simulacra?
--Matt
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Matthew G. Kirschenbaum University of Virginia
mgk3k@virginia.edu Department of English
http://faraday.clas.virginia.edu/~mgk3k/ Electronic Text Center