I found Nelson's discussion of the nature of writing very intriguing, especially noting the time that has passed since its publication, and its ideological and chronological similarities with Poststructuralism. Nelson posits a written text as something in which meaning "gradually takes place" (87) and subverts the notion of the author as a central authority of the text by changing his position to "one of rearrangement and reprocessing" (87), merely two years before Roland Barthes would proclaim the "death" of the author.

Furthermore, Nelson's discussion of the supposed origin of a written text, the outline, seems to display the theme of mimetic reversal pertinent to deconstructionist thought. That what was supposed to produce the writing, the outline, is created "after the fact" is provocative.