After Writing

Well, in an attempt to keep my mind going since I am no longer in school, I finally picked up a book my sister-in-law gave me a couple of years ago for Christmas. I almost feel bad for just now getting to it since I recall wanting is to bad at the time, but now that I have actually read some of it I don't think I could have devoted enough time to it while doing anything else (that almost includes breathing). The first ten pages took me about two hours to get through - this should give you some idea as to how difficult it is to read. It's not that I don't know the words (I just seem to have forgotten them), it's not that she is a terrible writer (though she is a bit verbose), it's just extremely heavy. It is definitely a meat and potatoes kind of book, here's the description:

After Writing provides a significant contribution to the growing genre of works which offer a challenge to the modern and post modern accounts of Christianity. The author shows how Platonic philosophy did not assume a primacy of metaphysical presence, as had been previously thought, but a primacy of liturgical theory and practice.
Catherine Pickstock also provides a significant rethinking of Christian understandings of language, temporal and bodily life, and notions of the presence of God. Through a detailed reading of Phaedrus, the medieval Roman Rite, and a discussion of the theology of the Eucharist, the book indicates directions for the restoration of the liturgical order.

So, that's the general idea of the piece. Her work falls into a group of writings put out by Blackwell Publishers and is associated with John Milbank and the Radical Orthodoxy movement. I'll post more about the book later tonight.