The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This book was twenty years in the writing. All chapters except the last appeared as articles in journals. One chapter was published in 1954, another in 1975. Since my recurring interest over the years has been the nature of human communication and, in particular, the consequences of man’s unique discovery of the symbol, a certain repetitiveness in the articles is inevitable. Some of the repetition has been preserved here, for example, the “Helen Keller phenomenon,” if for no other reason as evidence at least of the longevity of my curiosity and my inability to get rid of it. This particular bone, I thought, needed worrying.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the following journals for their permission to reprint the articles: The Southern Review, University of Houston Forum, Sewanee Review, Partisan Review, Katallagete, Thought, Psychiatry, The New Scholasticism, The Modern Schoolman, The Journal of Philosophy, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.