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that Without both sorts of identity there is no self, as Dauenhauer and Pellauer (3.2)summarize.

Huskey, however, epitomizes one of Ricurs arguments against Parts positionas the idea of gaining oneself by losing onesel (Huskey 121), which he (Ricur)criticizes on the grounds that then the question of others [would] also cease to ma er.

is position, however, is very reminiscent of Lurias To nd the soul it is necessaryto lose it, which Powers placed right on the verso to the rst page.

In his interview with e Believer , Powers interprets it as To read anothers story,you have to lose yours ( e Believer), but when Luria wrote the sentence, he wasspecically talking about looking toward social phenomena to understand personalones (Peacock and Lustig 140), so more of a vertical form of losing as opposed toPowerss horizontal interpretation. Nonetheless, Daniels character and Karins char-acter development both limn some form of vertical losing of an identity to regain amore encompassing and rewarding one. Webers character development seems to me

less clearly denable within this framework and possibly closer to Powerss horizontalidea.If we assume for a moment that e Echo Maker itself is the honest, empathetic

account of Marks disease that Weber wanted to write, then it is also, to the degreethat he succeeded, a narrative that continuously connects the two versions of himself (and other characters) that seem so different to him, showing the interactions thatforged the second from the rst. us it illustrates the meaning of narrative to (someof) the four senses of idem that Ricur identies.

estion 2

What were your problems with the text? What passages, ideas or conceptsdid you nd unclear, unconvincing or otherwise problematic?

My problem with reading Ricur was not so much in the text as in what was notin the text. I read that he was invested not only in philosophy but also in Christiantheology, so I intuitively read his argument with the same distance with which I readDescartes. Surprisingly, however, I found nothing in the text that was susceptible tothis distancing. As a result, I read every new paragraph with the growing suspicionthat he was either successfully fooling me or that I was overly paranoid.

e Echo Maker was fascinating enough that some minor disappointments did nottip the scales toward an overall disappointment. e li le mystery plot line did havesomewhat of a twist ending, but I had been looking forward to a more encompassing

Blame Wallace.Sorry for the long citation chain.Im not sure I understand the difference between senses three and four.

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twist with effects on all plot lines. When Daniel and Barbara where rst introduced, forexample, I hoped for some twist ending where Daniel would be Karins Mr. urman,a person she could lean on and conde in when there was no one le for her to leanon and conde in, and where Barbara would be the new Karin, a new persona she cre-ates for herself according to Marks needs and idealized memories of her when Markdiscards the original her, who she wasnt all that proud of anyway. Ive sometimeschanged only when my environment changed, not so much because the new envi-ronment required it, but because the expectations of old environment had creased toconstrain me. Away from her job in a town where she has few acquaintances who couldrecognize her, Karin might have found an environment conductive to such a transfor-mation, and since the novel also works with the theme of identity as it emerges fromcharacters interactions with their environments, I had almost expected it.

estion 3What did you nd interesting about the text? What aspects of the textwould you like to know more about?

I wonder whether Powers primarily draws on his themes to write novels or whetherhe writes novels to convey his themes. If its the la er, then I want to give him a hug.

Works Cited

Dauenhauer, Bernard and David Pellauer. Paul Ricoeur. e Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . Ed. Edward N. Zalta. Summer 2014. 2014. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2014/entries/ricoeur/.

Huskey, R.K. Paul Ricoeur on Hope: Expecting the Good . Peter Lang, 2009. Print. Phe-nomenology & literature.

Peacock, J. and T. Lustig. Diseases and Disorders in Contemporary Fiction: e Syndrome Syndrome . Taylor & Francis, 2013. Print. Routledge Studies in Contemporary Liter-ature.

e Believer. Richard Powers: e Brain is the Ultimate Storytelling Machine, andConsciousness is the Ultimate Story. (2007). Print.

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http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2014/entries/ricoeur/http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2014/entries/ricoeur/