What Is The Alphabetical Order In The Bedford

In Percival Everett's Zulus, a clear alphabetical order is laid out for the format of the book, seen through each lettered chapter. This order is similar to that of an archival structure. A prime example of this archiving of information is seen in Murfin and Ray's Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms. Similar to Zulus, The Bedford applies a clear alphabetical order. However, unlike Zulus, The Bedford cannot be read as though it were an actual story. Page one starts off with the word “Absence: the idea that authors are not present in texts”. The next word is “Abstract: terms and statements describing ideas, concepts or qualities”. Reading The Bedford as though it were a story would be absurd. Accordingly, reading Zulus as a reference

Inadvertently, this is actually her first instance of rebellion, as the set order of her society demands sterilization of all women, an order which she has gone against by avoiding sterilization. In addition, Alice’s inexplicable predisposed size already marks her as an outcast from the thin society which she inhabits. After being raped, Alice finally begins her rebellion overtly, by rebelling against her neighbor as previously described. Mrs. Landers spots her, yelling “I see you, you fat cow! I’m calling the police and they’ll come take you away!” (page 30). It is in this instance that Alice is acting against her society intentionally, and to give context to her society, it is important to understand that it is somewhat of a post-apocalyptic society of extreme order. Food is rationed out to citizens out of food trucks, everyone is assigned a mundane job, and the religions of each citizen are documented; this is the job that Alice works. All of this extreme order loops back to the significance of archives, and it is through the character Alice, that Everett shows that an orderly, archive-like society is not only incredibly vulnerable to disorder, but it must face opposition. This disorder is shown through Alice’s actions, hopping from society to rebels, rebels to society, and finally from rebels and society to going against the

However, it becomes challenging to determine whether or not these errors are intentional. And even if these errors were done on purpose, pinpointing their exact relevance is challenging. Wrought with grammatical errors, Zulus starts off with a spelling mistake on the very first page, saying "Well, if he thought that, he had another think coming" (Zulus, page 7). The obvious spelling error here being the use of the word "think", instead of thing. There are several other mistakes made throughout the book, ranging from missing quotation marks (page 133), to using "perissted" instead of the correctly-spelled term persisted (page 190). This was of course, an intentional device on Everett’s part. He applies these mistakes intermittently throughout the text in order to disorient the reader. Attracting attention to these flaws strengthens the theme of disorder. Another way in which Everett applies disorder through textual anomalies is through each letter in every chapter accompanied by a paratext, often times going against its own alphabetical structure. Again, from the very start, the first chapter “A” has a paratext with an already existent discrepancy: “So, A is for Solomon, for there are better for S” (page 7). Everett has set up his own clear archival structure, only to go out of his way to dismantle it, enforcing his point of rebellion against