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Characters in Tailspin

Jacqueline and Jemima are instructing Zeno, who has returned the purloined GRE documents and is thus restored to dull respectability, in Postmodernism. Postmodernism, they tell him, has turned its back on the world, is not about the world but about its own processes, is masturbatory, certainly chilly, excludes readers by design, speaks only to the already tenured, or does not speak at all, but instead—

Zeno, to demonstrate that he too knows a thing or two, quotes the critic Perry Meisel on semiotics. “Semiotics,” he says, “is in a position to claim that no phenomenon has any ontological status outside its place in the particular information system from which it draws its meaning”–he takes a large gulp of his Gibson–“and therefore, all language is finally groundless.” I am eavesdropping and I am much reassured. This insight is one I can use. Gaston, the critic who is a guard at the Whitney Museum, is in love with an IRS agent named Madelaine, the very IRS agent, in fact, who is auditing my return for the year 1982. “Madelaine,” I say kindly to her over lunch, “semiotics is in a position to claim that no phenomenon has any ontological status outside its place in the particular information system from which it draws its meaning, and therefore, all language is finally groundless, including that of those funny little notices you’ve been sending me.” “Yes,” says Madelaine kindly, pulling from her pocket a large gold pocket watch that Alphonse has sold Gaston for twenty dollars, her lovely violet eyes atwitter, “but some information systems are more enforceable than others.” Alas, she’s right.

—Donald Barthelme, Not-Knowing

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