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"I was only thirty-four when I died,’ Bird said to me. ‘Thirty-four!’ At least I think he was saying it to me. Since we were the only two people in the room.

I didn’t know how to respond. It’s hard in dreams to do the right thing. So I stayed silent, waiting for him to go on.

‘Think about it …

[...] The opening scene stages the very common modern confrontation between an individual who identifies his most precious self with his inner "feelings and beliefs" and a society that treats that human being like an automaton, "bred for a function." The confrontation, Wallace suggests, is mutual…

At the same time that Hal's speech indicates his philosophical intelligence, it suggests the failure of philosophy to help him, therapeutically speaking. If it represents a graduate student's defense of his humanity, it also signals the poverty of the version of humanity being defended. If we as …

At the same time that Hal's speech indicates his philosophical intelligence, it suggests the failure of philosophy to help him, therapeutically speaking. If it represents a graduate student's defense of his humanity, it also signals the poverty of the version of humanity being defended. If we as …

Toril Moi, in her essay "Nothing Is Hidden", identifies this difference between the kind of criticism practiced by many in her academic discipline and philosophically therapeutic criticism: whereas the suspicious literary theorist presumes that the "text is hiding something from us," she writes, th…