Love in the Post
by Joanna Callaghan, Martin McQuillan
A film and companion book that turns Derrida's The Post Card into a tangle of letters, lives and theory, worth it for readers who like philosophy staged as drama.
What It's About
Love in the Post is a hybrid: a film by Joanna Callaghan paired with a book-length companion in which Martin McQuillan joins her. Its starting point is Jacques Derrida's The Post Card, a 1980 work built from letters, addresses and fragments that resists being read in a straight line. The story follows a literature scholar whose department faces closure, his enigmatic wife who is in analysis, and a filmmaker struggling to make her own film about Derrida. Their lives are drawn together by a sequence of letters.
The approach is deliberately blurred. Fictional strands sit beside an interview with Derrida and philosophical commentary, so the reader is rarely sure which material is factual and which is invented. The book adds the original screenplay, McQuillan's extended commentary on Derrida's text and on the making of the film, and Callaghan's reflections on working as a director with philosophy.
Reading it is closer to watching an essay argue with itself than following a conventional story. Expect slow passages, repetition and long stretches about meaning, address and misdelivery. Readers who enjoy theory shown in unfamiliar forms will find it rewarding. Readers who want plot and character development will find it withholding.
Read this if you…
- are already interested in Derrida or deconstruction and want to see his ideas explored in a new medium
- enjoy experimental films and essayistic books that break conventional narrative rules
- want a companion text that explains a difficult philosophical work through commentary and scholarly conversation
Skip it if you…
- want a clear plot, strong characters, or a satisfying resolution
- have never read Derrida and are looking for an easy introduction to his thinking
Key Ideas
- 1
Letters that may never arrive
Derrida's text is about how a card can be sent, read, and misread, and whether a message ever truly reaches its addressee. The film uses letters as a device for the whole story, so the characters' connections depend on messages that could easily go astray. It turns a theoretical question about communication into something the viewer watches unfold.
- 2
Fact and fiction blurred on purpose
The project refuses to separate documentary from invention, which mirrors Derrida's own refusal of tidy genre boundaries. Viewers and readers have to decide for themselves what counts as evidence. That uncertainty is the point, and it is what makes the work feel more like an argument than a biography or a drama.
- 3
Theory as a lived situation
The characters' jobs, marriage and therapy place philosophy inside ordinary institutions and private life. A university closing, a marriage under strain and a stalled creative project show what is at stake when ideas are someone's livelihood. This grounding gives the abstract material a human texture that a plain lecture would lack.
- 4
The making as part of the work
Callaghan's reflections on her practice and McQuillan's commentary turn attention to how the film was made. The interviews with five Derrida scholars function much like a seminar. Together these extras show the decisions behind the film, which many readers will find more useful than the core narrative.
Limitations
The book assumes familiarity with Derrida and with academic theory, so newcomers may feel shut out. Critics may find the fictional strands thin and the self-referential structure more absorbing for the filmmakers than for the audience. Its focus on one 1980 text and on the academic life of 2013 means some references will feel dated. The commentary is valuable but can repeat points, and readers who want a single authoritative account of The Post Card will need other sources.
Questions Readers Ask
- Do I need to read The Post Card before this book?
- You do not strictly need it, but the book is far easier to follow if you have read Derrida's text or at least know its basic concerns with letters, addressing and misdelivery. Without that background, the film's allusions and the commentary can feel opaque. Reading the original first makes the companion material much more rewarding.
- Is Love in the Post a film, a book, or both?
- It is both. The package centres on a feature film by Joanna Callaghan, and the book contains the original screenplay, McQuillan's extended commentary, Callaghan's reflections on her practice, and interviews with Derrida scholars. Many readers will want to watch the film and read the book together, since each explains and complicates the other.
- Published
- 2014
- ISBN
- 9781783480050
- Difficulty
- advanced
- Category
- Literary Criticism
Book details and cover from Google Books.
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