Joe Orton and the Heterogeneity of the Book

Author(s): Michael Beehler

Source: SubStance , 1981/1982, Vol. 10/11, Vol. 10, no. 4 - Vol. 11, no. 1, Issue 33-34:
Books: On and About (1981/1982), pp. 84-98
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3684533

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 Joe Orton and the Heterogeneity of the Book

MICHAEL BEEHLER

"Ye Shall Know the Truth and the

Truth Shall Make You Free."
Inscribed over the entrance to the old

library building, University of Texas at Austin.

In a 1967 interview with Giles Gordon, Joe Orton recalls the inf
book-defacing scandal of five years earlier and attacks the librar
their "endless shelves of rubbish."' The incident, he explains, rem
him "of the Bible," and he quotes a portion of Ecclesiastes 1
illustrate his rage at "so many rubbishy novels and rubbishy book
Biblical passage speaks of the endless production of books, and war
reader to beware of any books which exceed the "collected sayings"
"one Shepherd": "The sayings of the wise are like goads, and like
firmly fixed are the collected sayings which are given by one She
My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books
no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh" (Ecc. 12:
These verses distinguish between the Book of God and the books o
between the fixed and fixing purity of a writing that repeats its
origin (the "sayings" of the "one Shepherd") and the dangerous im
of all writing that exceeds or strays from that proper source. A m
here inscribed between good writing and bad writing. The prope
appears as the homogeneous, literal transcription of an original,
truth, while the improper book seems to obscure that truth by
"beyond" it, by exceeding it. Thus the sign of the dangerous, un
book is its heterogeneity, its going "beyond" or doubling of the
source. In its difference is its error.
Orton's and Halliwell's terrorist assaults on the books of the Islington
library are a scandal to this classical distinction. Alexander Connell, the
Librarian-in-Charge at Islington, catalogues the nature of the damage
done to the library books in "A Successful Prosecution," an article about
the "detective work" involved in bringing the two "culprits... to justice."2
He cites three categories of injury: first, "the addition of false blurbs
typewritten on the jackets of books published by Gollanz"; second, "the
fabrication by collage of amended jackets"; and third, the internal dam-

Sub-Stance N" 33/34, 1982 84

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 Joe Orton 85

age affected by "the collage met

times with mildly obscene result
or the writing-in of critical co
books has always been apparent:
... were charged with malicious
plates from library books."4 How
the onto-theological idea of the
either in the incident itself or,
where the classical metaphor of
becomes as dis-figured as the Is
essay will seek to point out, the
the tropes of clothing and the b
phoric Book in a manner similar
actual physical objects.
Of all the books defaced by Or
for sending them to prison was, ac
As he recalls it, "One of the int
greatest outrage, the one for wh
had stuck a monkey's face in
something called Collins Book [si
rose. What I had done was held as
probably have been birched. The
to prison for six months."5 The
of this particular book is not su
onto-theo-logical idea of the Bo
ing,"6 and Orton's actions strik
figures of writing. Like the "col
Book of roses or Nature is the n
proper: a homogeneous, literal w
source, the natural origin of its
clearly outrages the very idea o
All of the mischief done to the
outrage, for each of Connell's t
effacement of the book's natural
ral addition of excessive pictures
geneous, textual construct that s
Where the natural Book is presum
of its shepherding author, the
into play by doubling the she
univocal, the mutilated text alw
ral" and one "artificial." The pla
of the defaced books' humor. Sim
lins Guide to Roses), the Book of
its "natural" origin, and its illust
ings of divergent texts: the mon
center of the rose in another. Th

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 86 Michael Beehler

Bible" (HT, p. 13): a text that illustr

but the artificiality of all illustrativ
thus on the homogeneity of the Book
the Book's dismemberment into a
ments, an outrageous movement fro
excessive.

It also results in the dismantling of the metaphor upon which t

house of the Book, the Library, is itself constructed. Eugenio Donato
pointed out the theoretical similarities between the Book of Nature
the Encyclopedia-Library: "The Encyclopedia-Library is a lay version o
medieval metaphor of the Book of Nature. Implicit in that metaphor
assumption that the world can be completely textualized and, vice ve
that any element of the world can be treated as a textual element."
Library thus seeks to be the "mirror of a presumed World or Natu
and as such a metaphor of the ultimate referentiality of all writing
outside or "natural" referent. Orton's assault upon the Library, howe
opens the apparent closure of its referential space in a distinctly B
sian fashion. In the "unlimited and cyclical" library of Babel, texts circul
in an endless mirroring of auto-referentiality so that "the universe (
others call the Library)" is never other than a collection of texts,9 and th
the Library shows itself as "the emblem of the infinite autoreferent
of language."'' In a similar fashion, the mutilated books of Or
"library" are constructed not from Nature or the World, but rather
other books, through the intertextual layering implicit in the coll
method. His library is the site of palimpsestic heterogeneity, of the
circulation of texts that dis-closes the space of the classical Library
Both the Borgesian and the Ortonian libraries are scenes of writ
and both disfigure the onto-theo-logical metaphor of proper books
writing spoken of in Ecclesiastes and continued by the metaphor o
Book of Nature and the Library - Orton by a rewriting that is a cut
paste layering of texts, and Borges by the chance writing of the sect
"would hide in the latrines with some metal disks in a forbidden dic
and feebly mimic the divine disorder."" Gombold, in Head to Toe, sim
ly writes from the latrine, generating a library from the "specimen
his verse: "He could not get out of this place. In his pocket he had a
of pencil and there was enough toilet paper for every use. He wrot
specimen of his verse and poked it under the door" (HT, pp. 55-56)
in the latrine that Orton's disfiguring writing is meant to be read.
concludes the blurb to one of Dorothy Sayers' mysteries: "READ
BEHIND CLOSED DOORS. And have a good shit while you are r
ing!"''12 The latrine, the space always by design excluded from the L
proper but always included in it as the site reserved for the fulfillm
the most natural of needs, is for Orton the scene of the eccentric,
natural" writing that outrages all responsible Librarians. By dis-clo
them the heterogeneous play of the comic theater: "They turne

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 Joe Orton 87

the author-itative space of the Bo

library into a little theater where
production."'"
But Orton's theatricalization of
space cannot be tolerated by the
counter-attack that lands both Or
rage of the forces of the law and t
magistrate's comments at the trial
decision of this court should make
be clever enough to write critic
library books - or to deface them
understand very clearly that it
about the malice shown by both o
towards fellow users of this librar
will be denied what they might
According to Librarian-in-Charge
so that the offenders "would be c
books on the shelves."'5 The goal is
tored,' " "unnatural" books, and th
ral" Books from their defiling th
place of restricted play by ban
heterogeneity.16
The Librarian-in-Charge, howe
"undoctored" Book only through a
simultaneously denies the naturaln
" 'doctored' " seeks to distinguish
between the Book proper and the
It thus repeats the distinction bet
bad, heterogeneous writing set for
astes. But the term is marked in
scribed by quotation marks. Pre
marks to indicate that he intends
tive") - to modify or alter from an
(the "literal") - to restore to an or
diacritical: its precisely doubled an
internal heterogeneity that can b
external defacement of its play -
of quotation marks. This supplem
center of the term, stealing away
tion of a secondary and artificial h
by clothing the term in suppleme
doctor, that a determinable me
doctoring, however, also reveals t
writing effect, one constructed b
Orton in The Boy Hairdresser:

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 88 Michael Beehler

"Do you know what subreption is?"

"No."

"To obtain something by misrepresentation.""7

What is obtained by Connell's subreption of doctor's heterogeneity is t

illusion of the natural homogeneity of its meaning, an illusion crucial
the very idea of a natural, "undoctored" writing or Book. The authorit
of the Library accuse Orton of doctoring books, of destroying th
original homogeneity through intertextual collage, but as the terms o
the accusation themselves indicate, Orton actually re-opens the origin
heterogeneity of writing artificially closed by the purveyors of the fig
of the onto-theo-logical Book. The closure of the Book and the Librar
maintains itself only through such subreption, through a will to pow
over the freeplay of original difference.
The subreptive clothing or veiling of writing's more originally heter
geneous origin allows for the idea of the Book of Nature and invents t
illusionary closure of its representative space upon a "Nature" that is
fact unnaturally secondary. Even for the Librarians, the Book's textu
body is always already a clothed figure. Consider Connell's metaphors
his description of the second category of Orton's offenses: "The secon
category was the fabrication by collage of amended jackets. Almost all
our books retain their jackets under a protective p.v.c. vest, throughout the
life of the book" (italics mine).18 The image is of a clothed, living body, and
could have come directly out of Head to Toe itself. In Gombold's meeti
with Doktor von Pregnant, clothing literally becomes the space
writing:

"When you visit my cell I'll show you my life's work - A Concise History
of the World and its Interests."
"On what have you written this?"
"Upon several shirts. I invented a preparation for making clothes into
paper." (HT, p. 64)

As Gombold later discovers, von Pregnant is a clothed text, a walking

Book of the world's Natural History:

"There!" said the Doktor, "you'll find it quite simple - EGYPT (Old
Kingdom) collar. EGYPT (Middle Kingdom) and EGYPT (to Persian Con-
quest) left sleeve. EGYPT (Psamathek III to Cleopatra VII, with notes on
climate and religion) right sleeve." (HT, p. 65)

But the clothing that reveals this Natural History, the writing in which
and the cloth on which the Book is inscribed, reveals also the subreption
by which the "unity" of the Book is produced, a veiling that hides the
undecidable heterogeneity of its source. Von Pregnant's "Concise Histo-
ry of the World and its Interests" travesties the Book as Natural History
by showing the naturalness of history to be an effect of the excess of
interpolation:

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 Joe Orton 89

He never tired of adding to his

interpolated he discussed the it
"Sir Thos. Browne didn't know ev
sirens sang and the name Achilles
do. You can take it from me. Th
(adagio) ad captandum vulgus, whi
it's worth - I'd say it wasn't goo

Natural History is artificial inve

tion of a naturally occurring "re
Book. Rather, it is the reinscrip
Natural History turns out to be
labyrinth of intertextual "autho

"But you must have needed to co

invention and your history?"
"A slight effort of memory ena
books. I could recite the whole of
Saint Trimmer-Ac-Whinous, Saint
Kneetchur. I committed to memo
breath, King Lour, the chorestick
greese List of Milltongue." (HT,

The library, not "nature," is the

ry, and the book itself, like Ort
appears only as a heterogeneous
mately unreadable: "With disma
floating along the filth. It wou
script" (HT, p. 71). It is only by
that the onto-theo-logical idea
tion of a natural origin can be
Orton, a writing effect, for wri
ing is power. As Gombold expla
the enormous policewoman, is a
clothes: if he wore her clothes
p. 20).
Orton's figures of clothing often appear as metaphors of a subreption
that artificially veils an undecidable heterogeneity in an effort to domi-
nate and close that original difference. This is particularly true with
respect to the relationship between sexual difference and clothing. The
figure of Sloane, for example, is an undecidable sexual double that
continually blurs the presumably "natural" distinction between male and
female, for he is not naturally "fixed" in either category. For Kath he
signifies the masculine son/heterosexual lover, while for Ed he signifies a
homosexual masculinity that usurps the feminine sexual role. The het-
erogeneity of Sloane's sexual significance is evident in Act Three, where
he seeks to accomodate Ed by trying on both masculine and feminine
roles:

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 90 Michael Beehler

SLOANE. Let me live with you. I'd wear

for you.
ED. I eat out.

SLOANE. Bring you your tea in bed.

ED. Only women drink tea in bed.
SLOANE. You bring me my tea in bed, then. Any arrangement you
(CP, p. 135)

The play's resolution of this sliding sexual significance is no resolution at

all. Rather, it is a re-assertion of Sloane's original sexual doubleness:
"You've had him six months. I'll have him the next six. I'm not robbing
you of him permanently" (CP, p. 148).
When both Ed and Kath seek to close this doubleness and appropriate
Sloane into a strictly ("natural"?) masculine or feminine role, they do so in
terms of clothing. Since there can be no clothes proper to Sloan's sexual
indeterminacy, clothing itself appears as a subreption, a mark of the
clother's will to power over original difference. Ed would clothe Sloane in
"a uniform. Boots, pants, a guaranteed 100 per cent no imitation jacket ...
an ... er ... a white brushed nylon T-Shirt" (CP, p. 88), appropriating
Sloane's indeterminent sexual significance and stealing it away in the
direction of fixed meaning: homosexual, masculine/feminine lover. It is
in fact through clothing that Ed seeks to determine (first decide, then fix)
Sloane's sexual significance:
ED. Do you wear leather ... next to the skin? Leather jeans, say? Without ...
aah ..
SLOANE: Pants?

ED (laughs). Get away! (CP, p. 87)

Similarly, Kath's attempted appropriation of Sloane into t

heterosexual son/lover occurs in terms of clothing, first with h
of Sloane's trousers early in Act One, and then in a dialogue w
the end of that act:

KATH. Can I buy him a shirt?

ED. What do you want to do that for?
KATH. His own mamma can't.
ED. He can buy his own clothes. Making yourself look ridiculous. (CP,
89)

For both characters, clothing is power: the power to veil Sloane's sexual
heterogeneity by artificially closing its original undecidability and differ-
ence. In Entertaining Mr. Sloane, the "natural" sextual categories of male
and female appear as a clothing effect, their articulation maintained only
by subreption.1m
Clothing plays a similarly subreptive role in Orton's final play, What
the Butler Saw, in which, as John Lahr has pointed out, it protects the
characters from the duplicitous blurring of sexual distinctions unleashed

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 Joe Orton 91

by their unclothing: "Clothes ar

all seek, extensions of the psych
cravings and confusions hidden
power of clothing is the power
sions" of nakedness, not by an
tion, but rather by artificially v
an effort to determine "true" se
veyor of sexual distinction: "Th
must be faced. Your attempts a
(CP, p. 415). In this assertion he
homogeneous/unnatural-as-hete
Librarians with respect to book
that Rance fashions himself as t
representative of order, you o
author of a projected book that
the confusions of the play: "Ha
Prentice the patient replaces hi
archetypal Father-figure - the
The final chapters of my book
outrageous women and strange
tites" (CP, p. 427). For Rance,
hidden but naturally determinab
as clothing reveals the truth of

PRENTICE. He wasn't a girl. He

MRS. PRENTICE. He was wearin
PRENTICE. He was a man for all that.

RANCE. Women wear dresses, Prentice, not men. I won't be a party to

wanton destruction of a fine old tradition. (CP, p. 429)

Both clothing and writing thus appear as the unproblematic repr

tions of natural truth.
But it is against this view of clothing that the play continually moves,
showing sexual determination to be an artificial effect of clothing, an
illusion achieved by the veiling of original sexual indeterminacy, and not
the naked truth. The play's action is initiated by the stripping of Geral-
dine, and as the number of naked bodies increases, the ability of the
characters to determine each other's sexual identity decreases, with Ger-
aldine and Nick taking on both sexual roles and the other characters'
sexual identities becoming continually more blurred. Geraldine tries to
resolve this sexual confusion with an appeal to the "truth"' "I can't go on
doctor! I must tell the truth. (TO DR. RANCE.) I'm not a boy! I'm a girl!"
(CP, p. 413). This "truth," however, is what can never to told and, as
Rance's next lines indicate, is that which carries at least a doubled signifi-
cance: "Excellent. A confession at last. He wishes to believe he's a girl in
order to minimize the feelings of guilt after homosexual intercourse"

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 92 Michael Beehler

(CP, pp. 413-14). Her appeal to n

GERALDINE. Undress me then, doc
that I'm a girl.

RANCE. If he's going to carry on li

(CP, p. 414)

In What the Butler Saw, the uncloth

of sexual determinacy, but rather
geneity that can be closed only b
itself: "They pick up their clothes an
the rope ladder into blazing ligh
clothing is a subreption of sexua
such a ruse that the "natural"
appears.21
In a similar fashion, it is only through clothing with a straight-jacket
that the distinction between doctor and patient, sane and insane, can be
marked. Indeed, the standoff between Rance and Prentice can be seen as
occurring over possession of the straight-jacket, the wearing of which
would determine or certify the sanity or insanity of the wearer in the same
way that Geraldine's donning of the white hospital nightgown determines
her identity as patient:

PRENTICE (waving his gun). Stay where you are, doctor! Your conduct
today has been a model of official irresponsibility and bloody-minded-
ness. I'm going to certify you.
RANCE (quietly, with dignity). No. I'm going to certify you. (CP, p. 441)

As clothing determines the sexual identity of Orton's characters, so it

determines their sanity. Both sex and sanity, then, appear as clothing
effects, for each can be determined only if the character's body is already
clothed, its heterogeneity and indeterminacy veiled, repressed, or hid-
den. Unveiling the body reveals not a homogeneous, natural unity, nei-
ther male or female in itself nor sane or insane in itself, but rather the
irreconcilable difference metaphorically "unified" by the clothing. Dis-
robing is thus dismemberment, for it is a taking apart of the only "unity,"
artificial nevertheless, that the body ever has: "he felt her tearing at him,
removing the forbidden garments,-he felt as though he were being dis-
membered" (HT, p. 25). Clothing is for Orton the principle articulation
of a will to power over difference, operating in his works as the subrep-
tion by which the homogeneous body first appears in itself; repeating the
Librarians' subreptive clothing of writing's original heterogeneity by
which the homogeneous textual body, the Book proper, also first appears
in itself. Such clothing invents the "truth" of the body and the "truth" of
the text or, as Derrida notes, "Truth" in general: "'Truth' can only be
surface. But the blushing movement of that truth which is not suspended
in quotation marks casts a modest veil over such a surface. And only

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 Joe Orton 93

through such a veil which thu

profound, indecent, desirable.
fall a bit differently, there w
written in quotation marks. Le
Thus both the body as such
heterogeneity described by th
the "collage" of original fragm
ings, the physical body often
Head to Toe not only recounts
but also maps the reader's trav
journey from head to toe, top
whose name underscores its b
Gombold dreams of the origin
dissemination that gives "form
Fornicationists, preaching cha
combinations, the flayed skin
twelve figures armed with sic
from which energy rose was p
seed of the God gave form to
into the sewage beneath his
dream of the originating muti
the Islington books (those jack
such dismemberment as the v
original unity, but as original
on which Gombold travels thu
that veils the undecidable hete
eagle, Gombold looks down on
pects rumbled under him, di
replaced by other images, vagu
belly, the navel, the red fores
scope and structure. Immeasur
from head to toe" (HT, p. 74).
rebus, itself begins to "disinte
floated down" (HT, p. 74). It is
that clothing seeks to veil, and
body as rebus or collage that t
figure of the text as clothed,
Words, however, can be used
but, for Orton, they can also b
by mutilating (again) the body
This was the case with Orton's
dis-closed the theoretically clo
the Library (already a clothing
of the proper role of language
weapons that can either perfor
poem" - my italics; HT, p. 57)

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94 Michael Beehler

a "seismic disturbance" that di

"library" for such a "new type o
contains "accounts of the dam
149). He gives up the thought of
ably, would once again be appro
cause "that was no use. It would
the library would contain its ex
be shaken. He also gives up prin
blast was greater": with print "
verbs or nouns," thus clothing
tance and indifference. After m
form of his disseminating sente
long, with no adjectives and in t
the complete collapse of the ene
nesses the "deconstruction" of a
sentence: "On the way back he sa
she passed a group of childre
something to her. The reaction w
cracks appeared across her face,
crumbled before his eyes. Gom
sentence he had used was quite
body de-composes itself before s
ity exploded by the deconstruct
the old woman's body repeats Go
nating energy is released by c
heterogeneity of dismemberme
dissemination and deconstructiv
cal dream of an originally homo
Nearly every Orton play revol
around a body whose wholeness
energy of the plot of Funeral G
ered hand of McCorquodale's d
on, this bodily fragment is befo
although for the most part its p
"cake tin." The plot turns on the
tin hides. When Tessa wants the tin for a cake, Caulfield denies the
human origin of the hand: "I bought a plastic hand from a Novelty shop.
I put it into your cake tin." Tessa, however, looks into the tin and discov-
ers, with a "shriek of horror," that "It's real" (CP, p. 350). The hand is
necessary to "prove" Pringle's fictive murder of Tessa (it is to be taken as
Tessa's hand), a metonymic shift that would enhance Pringle's religious
standing. But when the hand is revealed at the play's end, the disclosure is
not of the illusionary "truth" but rather of the double cross that subrep-
tively supports that "truth." Paterson, the crime reporter, has replaced
Val's hand, which stood for Tessa's hand, with an artificial, plastic hand:
"This isn't a real hand. It's a fake" (CP, p. 359). The "truth" of Tessa's

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 Joe Orton 95

murder is invented by this doub

severed hand in a labyrinth of a
illusionary "truth" only by guar
dismembered. The play ends wit
metonymic relationship of hand to
this mutilation, and with the irr
center of the play.
Like most of Orton's central
whole only when it is hidden
McCorquodale's staircase. It "appe
mutilated, dismembered into the
this hand that Val's body is know
traced above, it is also by this han
and lost, doubled as it is by Tessa
the corpse of Mrs. McLeavy in L
heterogeneous body: her "vital o
replaced by artificial ones that a
text, she is a "collage" intended t
the living body, but rather marks
"natural" bodily state is made
continually displaced corpse, the
spirators seek to steal away and r
"loot." But the mutilated body c
tween the cupboard and the coff
characters conspirators in the pl
dispersed and fragmented as the
ther can it be finally re-member
contents dispersed, McLeavy ask
my wife's insides," and Truscott
acles, sir" (CP, p. 258). For Orton
of the body's unreconstructable m
ing out of the characters' will to
ludicrous and always frustrated d
"again," to doctor it back to a "n
then, the Islington Librarians cou
for like his characters they seek
"original" and proper homogen
Orton's plays continue in drama
earlier landed him in prison.
Orton most fully utilizes the fi
play, What the Butler Saw. Here
placed by an artificial represent
which seeks to memorialize, to r
land. The play turns around Ch
phallus that, as the play opens, is
box" - CP, p. 363) by Geraldine a

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96 Michael Beehler

at the play's close. This revelation

man's missing phallus, but only o
originally had. As the directio
MATCH takes from the box and hold
bronze statue" (CP, p. 447). Match th
p. 448). But the truth of this he
father's phallus, is only an inven
Match had explained earlier, an "a
"proved" the absence of the ph
remains absent throughout the p
restored at the play's end: its absen
and it is only by this veiling that
- but only as an illusionary pr
nation's "truth," protects "truth"
the "truth" is the veiling of the
appear as such. It is a "protective
Undisclosed."2:3
In a conversation with Oscar Lem
Butler Saw says that Churchill "h
serves no such unproblematic fu
much more like Lacan's symbolic
designate as a whole the effects o
by its presence as a signifier,"25
"revealing" an illusionary "truth
phallus in order to reveal its hid
and is thus the "bar which . . . s
bastard offspring of this signify
that Derrida makes about Nietz
Orton's figurative phallus: "Its s
might have no secret, that it mig
some hidden truth within its fo
phallus, its protection of "truth
dismemberment of the illusionar
doubled significance of letters an
figures of the book and the body
but, in a letter from the fictive
equation between the phallus and
you to make sure you post only '
in the right slot. It may be that
so, I would like to thank you. If n
cock out of our boxes."28
Thus the idea of the Book/body
logical system of representation
which a particular writing is pro
ality of good, "undoctored" wr
theoretical attack in Orton's wor

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 Joe Orton 97

came under his physical attack

foreshadows his theatricalizat
representational theatre: indee
tation itself. His plays ultim
through Artaud, places at the "
the abusive wielder of the logo
"endless and is repeated indef
"murder" of the Islington book
ues in the re-opening of Orton
closure of the figures of the

NOTES

1. Transatlantic Review, 24 (Spring 1967), p. 97.

2. The Library Association Record, 65, 3, p. 102.
3. Connell, p. 102.
4. John Lahr, intro. to oe Orton: The Complete Plays (New York: Grove Press, In
p. 15. This text will hereafter be parenthetically cited as CP.
5. Transatlantic Review, 24, pp. 98-99.
6. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (B
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), p. 15.
7. In Orton's novel Head to Toe, nature reads about itself in such books. As
observes, "It must be fifty years since Simple Vegetable Arrangement was publish
same author has written Vegetables for Decoration." Head to Toe (London: Ant
Limited, 1971), p. 12. This text will hereafter be cited in the essay as HT.
8. "The Museum's Furnace," in Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structura
cism, ed. Josue V. Harari (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1979)
9. Jorge Luis Borges, "The Library of' Babel," in Labyrinths: Selected Stories
Writings, ed. Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby (New York: New Directions, 1
10. Donato, p. 223.
11. Borges, p. 56.
12. This blurb is quoted in John Lahr's biography, Prick Up Your Ears: The Biog
Orton (London: Penguin Books, 1978), p. 96.
13. Lahr, p. 97.
14. Lahr, pp. 100-101 .
15. Connell, p. 102.
16. This difference recalls the Derridean sense of disruptive writing: "The i
book, which always refers to a natural totality, is profoundly alien to the sense o
is the encyclopedic protection of theology and of logocentrism against the dis
writing, against its aphoristic energy, and ... against difference in general."
Grammatology, p. 18.
17. Lahr, p. 98.
18. Connell, p. 102.
19. This point of view is shared by several researchers into the field of huma
See particularly the work of Dr. John Money of Johns Hopkins School of Medicin
in John Stoltenberg's article, "Future Genders," Omni, 2, 8, pp. 67-72, 116. Wh
no way a scientific article, its discussion of sexuality shows marked similarities to
undecidability that appears in Orton's work.
20. Lahr, p. 330.
21. In discussing Nietzsche's styles, Derrida observes that "Although there is
itself of the sexual difference in itself, of either man or woman in itself, all

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98 Michael Beehler

nonetheless, with its inspection, appropr

has resulted in concealing, even as it pres
Styles, trans. Barbara Harlow (Chicago:
22. Derrida, Spurs, p. 59.
23. Derrida, Spurs, p. 141.
24. Lahr, p. 134.
25. Ecrits: A Selection, trans. Alan Sher
26. Lacan, p. 288. Derrida also notes, in c
illumination are no longer decided in the
into its bottomless abyss as non-truth, v
27. Derrida, Spurs, p. 133.
28. Lahr, pp. 139-140.
29. "The Theater of Cruelty," in Writ
University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 2

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