Bill: A Portrait of Discontinuties

Abstract

A dialogue and a reflection are offered as a way of structuring the author’s thoughts about the life and personality of a dead friend (the dialogue), and his reflection on why he wrote the first dialogue as he did. In particular, the dialogue seeks to present the dead man as confusing to ‘read’. The reflection considers how much attention is given in the first to different aspects of the friend’s life, and offers possible reasons for these choices. Reasons include the personal characteristics of the author highlighted by his friendship with the dead man, and the author’s wish to reflect obliquely something of the felt experience of being the dead man’s friend. This dialogue was submitted to EJLW on August 7th, and published on April 9th 2017. Arthur Halliday is a pseudonym.