End of Story: Toward an Annihilation of Language and History

151 Pages·2000·0.42 MB·English

by  Crispin Sartwell

End of Story
State University of New York Press
END OF STORY
E N
D
O F
S TO RY
toward an annihilation of
language and history
C r i s p i n S a r t w e l l
State University of New York Press
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Published by
State University of New York Press
Albany
© 2000 State University of New York
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Production and book design,Laurie Searl
Marketing,Anne Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sartwell,Crispin,1958–
End of story :toward an annihilation of language and history / Crispin Sartwell.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7914-4725-1 (alk.paper) — ISBN 0-7914-4726-X (pbk.:alk.paper)
1.Language and languages—Philosophy. I.Title.
P106 .S226 2000
00-038769
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is for my son,
S a m u e l A b e l l S a r t w e l l

I’ve lost the thread of the story I was telling.
My elephant roams his dream of Hindustan again.
Narrative,poetics,destroyed,my body,
a dissolving,a return.
—Rumi
The long waiting silence was utterly gone,the long tension—
a kind of grave,quiet anxiety with each man very much alone—
annihilated;and this was a continual enormously active present.
—Patrick O’Brian
Note, in the last left-hand example, how swiftly meaning
departs when words are wrongly juxtaposed.
—William Strunk and E.B.White

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction:Putting Language in Its Place 1
1 Telos and Torture 9
2 Sign and Sin 39
3 History and Multiplicity 69
4 Presence and Fate 99
Index 135