Derrida, Woolf, and the pleasure of reading

Published: Nov. 23, 2020, 9:45 a.m.

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\\u2018A text is not a text unless it hides from the first comer, from the first glance, the law of its composition and the rules of its game. A text remains, moreover, forever imperceptible\\u2019. So wrote the superstar philosopher Jacques Derrida. But what does it mean to question and deconstruct everything we think we know? In a new biography of Derrida titled An Event, Perhaps, Peter Salmon explores the life and works of one of the most enigmatic of thinkers. He questions how far Derrida\\u2019s ideas have led to today\\u2019s \\u2018post-truth\\u2019 age?

Virginia Woolf's essay \\u2018How Should One Read a Book?\\u2019 posed the question: \\u2018\\u2018Where are we to begin? How are we to bring order into this multitudinous chaos and so get the deepest and widest pleasure from what we read?\\u2019 The English professor Alexandra Harris looks at whether Woolf\\u2019s answer stands the test of time.

Bernhard Schlink\\u2019s literary career took off in 1995 with the publication of his novel The Reader, which became an international bestseller. His latest work, Olga (translated into English by Charlotte Collins), is a story of love set in Germany against the backdrop of the traumas of the 20th century.

Producer: Katy Hickman

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