Hartman's Saving the Text shows him at one and the same time engaging with Derrida, succumbing to him, imitating him and resisting him. His writing is determinedly playful, recalling Helen Gardner's sharp comment about playfulness being a synonym for critical activity; witness his extreme verbal self-consciousness, his frequent puns and his jokey chapter headings: "Monsieur Texte", "Epiphony in Echoland", "How to Reap a Page", "Psychoanalysis: The French Connection", "Words and Wounds."…

Hartman's book presents a multiple perspective of texts: there is extended comment on Derrida's book Glas (= "knell", and also, punningly, glace = "ice or mirror") which is itself a parallel collage, with Derrida's commentary, of texts by Hegel and Genet, enacting the juxtaposition of philosophy and literature briefly indicated in Hartman's subtitle. For someone who does not believe in the self or in presence Derrida is a central enough presence in this book, as in many others; perhaps...