The Purloined Poe: Lacan, Derrida, and Psychoanalytic Reading Book

When I picked up The Purloined Poe, I expected to be given a new series of perspectives on Poe and Lacan. After the editor's introduction, however, I came to the first chapter - the text of "The Purloined Letter," which I don't feel the need to reread yet again. Skip.

What comes next? Jacques Lacan's famous seminar on Poe's story, which I have read both in The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book II: The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954-1955 (twice) and Écrits. Skip.

The next three chapters are detailed notes on Lacan's seminar. I don't need such editorial help, thank you very much. Skip.

Chapter 6 consisted of selections from Marie Bonaparte's book on Poe, which is completely nuts and only worth reading for the Schadenfraude.

I first became aware of Bonaparte's book from Shoshana Felman's chapter on Poe in Jacques Lacan and the Adventure of Insight: Psychoanalysis in Contemporary Culture. Guess what? That chapter is reprinted here too. Skip.

The third section of the book focuses on the deconstructionist response to Lacan's seminar. I started in on an uncannily familiar essay by Derrida - and yes, you guessed it, it was reprinted from The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond. Skip.

The chapter after that is by Barbara Johnson, a response to Derrida. I actually read that YESTERDAY in Literature and Psychoanalysis: The Question of Reading: Otherwise. Skip.

Johnson's chapter is followed by an essay by Irene Harvey. I read every last word of that dull piece, but I wish now that I had skipped it.

The final chapter in this section is by Jane Gallop, whose work on Lacan is simply brilliant. Sure enough, it was a reprint of a chapter from Reading Lacan. Gallop is always worth rereading, but I don't have time right now. Skip.

The last section of the book is clearly an afterthought by the editors, so much so that they simply titled it "Other Readings." I liked the first piece here by Ross Chambers, but the remaining chapters are anything but groundbreaking. I read them, but they can probably be skipped.

I suppose this book might be useful to someone new to this topic, but it really doesn't offer much to the more advanced reader. This is especially true if you have already read Poe, Lacan, Derrida, Johnson, Felman, and Gallop, then I strongly suggest you just, well, skip it.