On Liberty Book

"Good gracious!" said Alice, "I do believe I'm inside a review!"

She turned to the Hatter and the March Hare.

"Well, let me see. Here is the title, and here is the date I read it. That must be today. Now I need to explain the plot and the overall point."

"There is no plot," said the March Hare disagreeably.

"And there is no point," agreed the Hatter.

He poured a little hot tea on the Dormouse's nose, making it wake with a start.

"The book breaks new ground," it said rapidly in a high, sing-song voice. "Intentionally eluding easy assignment to any traditional category, it anticipates the twentieth century's fascination with the relationship between the signifier and the signified, and wittily deconstructs the primacy of meaning and the rationality of thought." Then it went back to sleep again, and began to snore gently.

"Whatever did that mean?" asked Alice, surprised.

"Why is a Derrida like a derrière?" replied the Hatter.

"I don't know," said Alice.

"I don't know either," said the Hatter triumphantly.

"It would be reasonable", said Alice, in the grown-up tone she had sometimes heard her sister use, "It would be reasonable for you to explain what the book is about, so that I could put that in my review."

"It would be reasonable," said the Hatter, "to expect hot premarital sex in a Stephenie Meyer novel. But don't imagine you'll find any."

Alice couldn't think of anything to reply to this, so she turned away without another word. When she was almost out of earshot, she thought she heard the Hatter shout something after her that might have been "Foucault!"