Book Reviews: "Derrida" and "Leven Thumps"

If one must be awake at this time of night, then a hot drink without caffeine offers both the comfort of sipping and the possibility of slumber to follow. In this case, the beverage is Celestial Seasonings' "Mandarin Orange" - not that you are really interested in my liquid intake, but here it is for the record. Help yourself, the water is still hot.

Introducing Derrida (Collins and Mayblin, Totem Books, 1996) looked like a comprehensible introduction to this philosopher (or anti-philosopher, take your pick), so I picked it up used for $4. It's part of a series by Totem Books, heavily illustrated, and not quite 200 pages. If you can imagine a comic book that focuses on philosophic disputes, you have a pretty good idea of the approach this book takes. Other topics in the Introducing series include Kant, Wagner, Quantum Theory, and Astrology.

Derrida is associated with the development of post-modernism and especially "deconstruction" in literary criticism and philosophy. The biggest idea behind all of it seemed to be that writing can always be misunderstood, be it ever so carefully couched in clear diction and specific context. Surely that is a grotesque oversimplification that would make Derrida cringe, but that was the impression it made on me. But then, it was only writing, and I may have misunderstood it.

Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo (Obert Skye, Simon & Schuster, 2005) was much lighter, but it had better pictures and a faster story line. Skye probably won't make the impression on modern literature and criticism that Derrida has, but he's more accessible. It's not a great book. Although the author occasionally uses some very funny wit ("And the flags that only days before had hung majestically on the top of local flagpoles no longer looked majestic, they looked like multicolored pieces of cloth that had climbed up and tragically hung themselves."), even there the wording could be tighter. The disasters are a bit overdone, the bad guys are often two-dimensional, and I'm not sure if the repeated expressions of confidence in "fate" to provide what the good guys need are merely vacuous or intended to be funny. I gave the author the benefit of the doubt and took it for humor. I still didn't see quite enough development of the central characters to make them deeply likeable, but they're nice enough kids and they have potential.

T&T