260 Derrida 1963–1983
and Martyr – which Derrida criticizes several times – Derrida never
claims to be giving ‘the “keys” to the-man-and-the-complete-work,
their ultimate psychoanalytico-existential signifi cation’.^7
Glas poses real diffi culties for reading: literally, the reader does
not know where to start. It is impossible to follow the two columns
in parallel, page by page, since the argument soon starts to dissolve.
But it would be even more absurd to read one column as a whole
and then the other: this would be to deny the profound unity of the
volume and fail to recognize the ceaseless echoes that bounce from
side to side. So it is up to readers to invent their own rhythm, to
read the pages in sequences of fi ve, ten, or twenty, then to retrace
their steps, constantly glancing across at the other column. Readers
must construct the relation, implicit in the text, between the family
according to Hegel and the absence of family according to Genet,
between the reproductive sexuality theorized in the Principles of the
Philosophy of Right and the homosexual expenditure of the Thief’s
Journal or the Miracle of the Rose.
Glas is a permanent challenge to traditional reading – whether
philosophical or literary – and is addressed to an unlocatable reader,
as much at ease in Hegel’s as in Genet’s texts. This can be stated in
more Derridean terms: this is a reader to come, as if invented by the
book.
While most booksellers were puzzled, not really knowing what to
do with this book of unusual format and uncertain genre, the criti-
cal reception was positive. On 1 November 1974, in La Quinzaine
littéraire, Pierre Pachet devoted a double-page spread to this
‘disturbing endeavour’. A few weeks later, at the beginning of the
Figaro littéraire, Claude Jannoud benevolently referred to ‘The
Gospel according to Derrida’, though he did wonder whether it
was still philosophy. But for Jean-Marie Benoist, in L’Art vivant,
it was exactly in this challenge that the force of the project lay:
‘[P]hilosophical writing, religious writing, poetic writing, body, sex,
and death, everything explodes at the tolling of this knell [glas], a
unique enterprise in today’s current French textual production.’
Le Monde was openly enthusiastic: on 3 January 1975, Christian
Delacampagne hailed the ‘qualitative leap’ represented by this
volume:
Finally, Jacques Derrida has given us his fi rst book. Yes, you
read me right: his fi rst book. His previous works – from Speech
and Phenomena to Dissemination, via Of Grammatology – were
merely collections of articles. Glas, however, is the fi rst book
conceived and composed by Derrida as a book. Not that it is a
smooth, unifi ed text, continuous and linear: in reality, it is the
complete opposite.^8