The Number and the Siren

Fascinating to the point of being mystical. Meillassoux has intruded a reading of Mallarme's great work that may actually be a fictional construct, but which illuminates Mallarme's project in ways that other literary "analyses" miss completely. Speculative materialism is an accurate description of Meillassoux's point of view here.

I read this book. There is a bit of hype about this book. It is Mallarme, but this fellow is no Jacques Derrida. Derrida put out an extraordinary reading of Mallarme in the early 70"s. This book claims to decipher Mallarme, and it is true that it offers an excellent explanation of one narrow aspect of "un coup de des." But so what, it is mechanical, and it is like one note of cleverness compared to genius of Derrida.

Brilliant book, enticed me at once. Much easier to read that his other work "After Finitude", which is also amazing.

A wild imagination but completely off the mark as far as Mallarme's poem is concerned. The number he comes up with is so farfetched as to be ludicrous. I' just going to throw the book in the trash.