Someone Called Derrida: An Oxford Mystery

by John Schad

Someone called Jacques Derrida, someone called him on the phone, someone who was dead -- this was August 22nd 1979. A mystery, he thought; but it is a mystery that began more than ten years earlier, in 1968, when Derrida, a philosopher, visits Oxford and there, before the very eyes of the Philosophy Sub-Faculty, he dies, several times. Murder, he thought. And so I shall investigate, and begin with a sign that the philosopher says he left within a book from the thirteenth century, a strange fortune-telling book that he had found in the oldest part of Oxford's Bodleian Library. In the book are a host of cryptic questions, but the philosopher directs us to one in particular, a peculiar question about a boy, and the question is Does the boy live? The philosopher will not, though, give the answer; he requires, instead, that we go to Oxford to open the book for ourselves.

211 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2007

About the author

Head of the English and Creative Writing Department at Lancaster University, England.

Reviews

[Ivan Labayne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Turned a bit to this book for this blog post: https://ivanemilabayne.wordpress.com/...

For finales, some flightier connections (AKA: my way of keeping records of the past week’s events, processing recent reads): from John Schad’s Someone Called Derrida*: “Philosopher and pastor, an odd couple, it is true; but the philosopher says that haunting has no limit, that we may all (all of us) be haunted by each other.

Also this: https://nordis.net/2021/07/25/article...

From John Schad’s “Someone Called Derrida,” The child is not so much baffled by a strange house if… its banisters feel to his hands like those he knew at home.”

At first, it felt like a strange occurrence, receiving a text from ‘Lara,’ ‘Lara’ texting me, asking me to save her number. I thought of Pam, nestled atop some ordinary-looking Northern mountain, resting, old, keypad phone in hand, texting us, both to inform us of her new number, and to ask how we are. Then I felt less baffled, some kind of comfort wafted in the air, sent electronically, waves traversing unseen paths, energies communicating with my skin.

[Ishita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Using Derrida's Envois to read his father's last words, Schad cleverly weaves a narrative based on his own close readings and additional research. Blurring the line between criticism and creative writing, Schad investigates Oxford's role in World War II, revealing undeniable strains of anti-Semitic thought. A must read for Derrida fans.