ho is to be judged thin and anemic in his claims to validity: the self-assured author who insists that he has truth by the tail, that what he says is beyond all doubt, reasonable or unreasonable, that whoever disputes his evidence is convicted of error at best and of motivated ignorance at worst, or the author who cautions his reader, at every critical juncture, to recognize the limitations of his evidence, the conjectural character of his inferences and the provisional nature of his conclusions? The resounding firm statements of the first class of authors may seem forthright and courageous when they are, in truth, only deceptive and outrageous. The quiet and restrained statements of the second class of authors may seem excessively cautious and timid when they are, in fact, only careful and honest.
    The general reader, that recipient of universal knowledge, often seems to prefer the first kind of formulation: one that is definite, bold, and refreshingly assured. That reader does not enjoy the self-restricting statements of the scholar or scientist whose claims to knowledge are hedged in by his acute awareness that he just could be mistaken.

“Eric Kraft has spent his writing career creating a series of comic masterpieces under the general rubric of ‘The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy,’ and am I ever glad he did.  In this series of autobiographical tales and writings, Peter Leroy constructs an alternative history of his own life, from birth to adulthood. . . . The meaning of memory and the meaning of self are these novels’ themes.  Think of Proust with a sense of humor, or on drugs. . . . Kraft talks about these books as being part of a soup, say a clam chowder, in which all the ingredients are good by themselves (yum! the clams; goody! the potatoes; wow! the onions—sweet as sugar!) but together they’re even better.  The books can be read in any order, but be warned: Once you start the series, you won’t want to read anything else until you finish them all.” 

“Extract the meaning from all poetic works, and what you will have is a denial, not complete of course, but an endless series of individual examples that are based on experience, negating all valid rules, principles, and prescriptions on which society is based, the very society that is so fond of these poetic works.  Ultimately a poem, and the mystery of it, cuts the meaning of the world clear, where it is bound fast to thousands of ordinary words, cuts it loose, and so makes it into a balloon that goes floating up and away.  If we call that beauty, as it is usual to call it, then we ought to see that beauty is an unspeakably ruthless upheaval, far more cruel than any political revolution ever was.” 

elf-consciousness, in the sense of an ego that has become aware of itself, also knows the division into a producing subject and a produced object which in itself is a subject, i.e., the conscious ego.  The self, as prior to the conscious ego, can only recognize itself by reflecting itself in the ego and thereby delimiting itself in the way a frame delimits a mirror.  Only in the delimited form of a conscious annd therefor defined object (the conscious ego) can the self experience itself as an unlimited and determining subject.  Only by observing itself in the creation of itself can an individual’s self-consciousness recognize, and ultimately produce, itself.