Expecting the unexpected in Coetzee's master of Petersburg and Derrida's recent writings
pp. 21-40
in: John Brannigan, Ruth Robbins, Julian Wolfreys (eds), Applying: to Derrida, Berlin, Springer, 1996Abstract
The author is familiar to me, the book is new. Not just new to me, but newly published, recently written, so that it comes to me without the filter of commentary that so quickly surrounds a work when it enters the public domain; that filter through which almost everything we read is coloured and constrained. It is a work of my time, not yet a part of history. It might be a new novel by a writer whose previous novels I know and value, or a new philosophical work by a philosopher whose earlier writings I admire. What is my responsibility as a reader of such a new work? Is it different from the responsibility I have to works already received within a tradition? How am I to do justice to whatever originality and singularity the new work possesses?
