Second-Person Address and the Failure of Reading: A Feminist Reading of How Do You Do, Dolores by Yoel Hoffmann

Abstract:This paper explores the poetics of Israeli author Yoel Hoffmann (b. 1937) and his perception of language by examining his unique use of the second-person address in his book How Do You Do, Dolores (1995). Hoffmann views language as a constant failure, a guaranteed miscommunication, and employs a double interpellation throughout the book in order to get his readers to experience language as such. By addressing the readers in the second-person, the first interpellation encourages identification with the heroine's addressees (her imagined friend Dolores and her son Michael). The second, which occurs at the end of the book and is facilitated by a dramatic shift in the plot, has been largely ignored by critics, who focus mainly on the sense of wonder produced by the text and therefore read each of the text's fragments separately. This interpellation shifts readers' perception not only of the heroine, but also of themselves and their reading process. The readers come to realize that their initial reading position was immoral as a result of an empathy failure, that they projected their gendered expectations upon the heroine, thus duplicating the same gaze that caused her suffering in the first place.