Dr.Beitchman has created a variety, a plethora of interconnections and links and lines that connect many seemingly unconnectable literary elements and forms. Take for example the two "political" chapters ...the first Shakespeare's King John and the last Jean Baudrillard's vision of 9/11; both deal with periods of crisis and loss of confidence/credibility of and in society conjuring a derangement that has become a syndrome. Drugs and literature connect Coleridge and Burroughs/ Kublai Khan and Naked Lunch and they in turn connect with Platonism and the Russian Symbolist Theatre of the 20th century; Cabala obtrudes on the French writers discussed and the otherworldly ambiance of Villier's play Axel. And so the component essays and approaches play of against each other and enrich our view of a literature that transcends rather than merely compares.

The transformation of Western civilization into a planetary society of information and communication compels us to pose some philosophical and political questions about the influence of these new technologies on education. This author, a philosopher, journalist, literary critic, and also a member of the board of Les Temps Modernes, has concluded that Information Science and Internet do represent grave dangers for education, since they rather show us a way of avoiding the teacher and teaching (""how not to teach"") than help teach. They 'send the message' to teacher, student and public alike that education is merely a matter of accumulating and classifying (triage) information; training and conditioning the students for a lifetime of sitting in front of computer screens at the only time in their lives when they should have the leisure to pace their studies according to the development of their knowledge and understanding. In this process the human presence of the teacher is a vital element, but one that 'wiring up our schools' will reduce, if not eliminate completely, turning the human teacher into the technical instructor and advisor. Underlying the author's reflection on the damage the technologies of information do to school and education is an even more troubling question: must everything that can be done (technologically) be done?

Alchemy of the Word is a study of the literary, philosophical, and cultural ramifications of Cabala during the Renaissance. Important intellectual figures from 1490 to 1690 are considered, including Agrippa, Dee, Spenser, Shakespeare, Browne, and Milton; Cabalas more recent impact is also discussed. Cabala, a hermeneutic style of Biblical commentary of Jewish origin, is based on the notion that, along with an inscribed Decalogue, Moses received a secret, oral supplement that provides a symbolic, allegorical, and moral qualification of the literal law of religion.

Building on the work of Gershom Scholem, Joseph Blau, Harold Bloom, Francois Secret, Michel de Certeau, and Arthur Waite, Beitchman takes a fresh look at the "mystical" text through the lens of postmodernist theory. In a model developed from Deleuze-Guattari's "nomadology" to explore issues related to the Zohar, he shows that Cabala was a deconstruction of Renaissance authority. Like deconstruction, Cabala presents familiar material from novel and sometimes provocative perspectives. It allows space for modifiability, tolerance and humanity, by widening the margins between the letter of the law and the demands of an existence whose rules were so rapidly changing.

An exercise in the literary analysis of "sacred texts" and an examination of the mystical element in literary works, Alchemy of the Word is also an experiment in new historicism. It shows how the reincarnation theories of E M. Van Helmont, which impacted heavily on the seventeenth century English cabalistic circle of Henry More and Ann Conway, demonstrate at once the originality and boldness of Cabala, but also its desperation, constituting a theoretical parallel tothe continental "acting out" of the Sabbatian heresy.