Hiding (Religion and Postmodernism)

"To read this book right, you have to read it wrong," writes Jack Miles in the foreword to Mark C. Taylor's Hiding, the first indication that what lies within is not your typical work of philosophy. Become distracted by its surface charms rather than convinced by its argument, in other words, and you've grasped the author's intent. Hiding aims to seduce as much as convince, Miles writes, and in that aim it succeeds.

A professor at Williams College, Taylor is a truly interdisciplinary thinker whose work draws on theology, art and architecture, linguistics, literary criticism, fashion, technology, and even tattoos. In Hiding, he takes these diverse influences and weaves a virtual web of postmodern delights. Even the book's striking graphic design is part and parcel of Taylor's thought, eliminating the dichotomy between what is said and how it is presented. Indeed, throughout Hiding Taylor explores the hypnotizing play of surfaces that characterizes late-20th-century life, holding that this play leads not to meaninglessness but an infinite expansion of meanings. In his final chapter, he speculates about a possible nontotalizing yet holistic system--a structure he visualizes not as "a universal grid organizing opposites nor a dialectical system synthesizing opposites but a seamy web in which what comes together is held apart and what is held apart comes together...."