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Quote :The Telephone Book
Warning: The Telephone Book is going to resist you.
Don't shy away from risk, young readers. That's the message of Ronell's introduction to The Telephone Book. It brought deconstructionist theory to a new level of strangeness—and silliness, some might say.
Published in 1989, this book is modeled after a telephone book. It's a kind of deconstructive smorgasbord from beginning to end, as Ronnell takes on a telephone book text. And Ronell and her typesetters don't play with the content alone; they mess with font, pagination, punctuation, and just about everything else you'd take for granted in a "boring" academic book.
The cautionary sentence above puts the reader on notice that all of this textual play is deeply serious in its intent. Even while the book is kind of hilarious, Ronell isn't playing for the sake of playing; she wants her odd telephonic text to open readers' minds to questions about why literary texts often have standardized fonts and content and whatnot.
So when Ronell says that her book "is going to resist" her reader, she means that it's going to fly in the face of the reader's expectations. She's going to compel her to change her mind about what qualifies as literature and why.
This mixing of lofty intellectual goals and textual horseplay is characteristic of deconstruction. Though it is an extreme example of the movement's experimental tendencies. Ronell's work looks irresponsible to some (too much fun, how dare she?). To others, it opens up new possibilities for thought, which is what makes it so awesome.
Whatever you decide, though, you have to admire the text's inventiveness.