Matter of the Facts: On Invention and Interpretation Book

"Tamen has an extremely distinguished mind, both as a thinker and as a reader of texts. He also has an independent mind and thinks things out for himself, though he knows, and adroitly refers to, previous scholarship. The three central chapters on works by Wilde, Nietzsche, and Kant are truly remarkable, based on brilliant interpretations of key passages that are unfolded and explicated in detail. These are dazzling readings of great originality and persuasive insight."—J. Hillis Miller, University of California, Irvine
"This brilliant book is a very thoughtful, very original, set of reflections on the nature of interpretation, and on the distinction between making and finding—between putting something into the text and finding features intrinsic to it. Philosophically sophisticated, it is a powerful and effective intervention in contemporary debates in literary theory."—Richard Rorty, Stanford University