![]() ![]() ![]() She is exposed to an assault of apparently disconnected fragments, punctuated with drawings imitating those of a child, with isolated, proverb-like or just mysteriously allusive phrases, and with paragraphs written in an almost unidentifiable language, in a challenge to her both analytic and synthetic abilities. The shock experienced by the reader is due to the topic of the book - torture - as well as to the violence of form. The Exposed ReaderĢReading The Water Cure is most uncomfortable. The dynamic relationship between the two notions of exposure and overexposure will help me show how Everett plays on representation in order to interrogate - in keeping with the central topic of this novel on torture - the relations between reality and language, in a book of an innovative genre, which calls for the invention of new reading modes. ![]() ![]() 1 The Water Cure (2007), Percival Everett’s latest published novel, is a complex and disturbing work yet the twin notions of exposure and overexposure, as applied to the analysis of the manipulation and dismantlement of words, and to the game of hide-and-seek carried out with the reader, provide openings into this all but daunting book, by shedding light upon the reading experience it offers, as an evolving process of discovery, depending on the specific structures of the book as well as on the minute work to which language is submitted. ![]()
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