I feel that way every time you and some of the other folks start going on about literary theory, but I thought it meant I'm stupid, not that you're all drunk on absinthe.

Now I know the truth!

I certainly won't deny having been in the coffee shop too long.

No, no! Insane propositions expressed in ornate and gaudy language is the BEST part of French literary criticism! That's where all its giddy madness and delightful heady bizarre kookiness is.

If you try to read Derrida and Foucault and Kristeva as if they were prim, logical, Anglo-American philosophers, you'll only make yourself frustrated and miserable. Whereas if you read them as kin to Daffy Duck, e.e. cummings, and Antonin Artaud, you'll have a great deal of fun, and afterwards you feel larger, even though you can't quite explain what it was they were talking about...

Or that's been my experience, anyhow.