ABSTRACT
Myth, Truth and Literature is a further instance of the ‘series’ outlined by Derrida, in which the resistance to literary theory becomes an explicit hostility.1 ‘Antitheoretical’ publications continue to proliferate, particularly those seeking to oppose, denigrate, or travesty the work of what has become known as ‘deconstruction’.2 In so far as these publications imply a prior refusal or inability to read what they attack, their argument tends to remain limited to a kind of propaganda. But the temptation to respond to such instances of aggression with further aggression, or indeed with silence, ought nevertheless to be avoided. Analysis of the defensive misunderstandings involved here could shed considerable light on the practice of literary theory itself. Whatever the deficiencies of the book under review, it has to be said that there is no transcendental point of reference from which its misrepresentations could be definitively corrected. It is rather a question of trying to read more carefully than Falck, trying to give an impression of what has been distorted and ignored in Falck’s account of modern literary theory.
