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What can one say in general of a text by Ben Marcus which would not already be somehow compromised by the radicalism of the writing? What can one say in particular of Notable American Women which would not already be disclaimed or “un-said” by the fiction of its very language? A fiction that makes this self-referential piece of writing—self-referential in a sense that would have to be redefined, along with the very notion of “sense” itself—hover above emptiness and verge on silence. Yet precisely, can one set limits to silence and emptiness, can one keep them at bay? Or rather, does this absence not keep any critical contribution at a distance? What form then can one bestow on the silence and vacancy that permeate the text if not that of superfluity, until both fiction and criticism converge in a same refusal, authoritarian as it may appear, of authority itself, i.e., the authority of their own presuppositions and their very language?