The question posed by Herman Rapaport, in the title of this book, is intended both seriously and ironically. It is not Rapaport's purpose to debate whether or not truth resides in art. The title points rather to his belief that truth needs to be reconceptualized in the light of continuing efforts to deconstruct and to discredit the notion of truthfulness in art. The question of art's truthfulness persists because truth in art is neither an entity or content that has been injected into the work, nor a transcendental concept or ground that exists outside it. Moreover, when used in relation to art, Rapaport says, truth means something quite different from conventional definitions of the term. Indeed, a central question that informs the book is the return of truth at the far side of its deconstruction. IS THERE TRUTH IN ART? includes chapters on atonal music, environmental art, modern German and French poetry, contemporary French fiction, experimental French film, and a photograph taken by the National Socialists during the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto. Determining how truth can be said to occur in these examples, Rapaport maintains, requires analysis in each instance. He draws chiefly on the thinkers who have radically reformulated questions about truth-Nietzsche, Heidegger,Derrida, and Lévinas-and uses their writings to explore the works under analysis. JOHN G.HANHARDT,director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, says about this book that it is "A superbly crafted collection of essays that link such works as Richard Long's installation pieces, Paul Celan's poems, and Marguerite Duras's films in an incisive assessment of modern and contemporary art's relevance to philosophy and our times". RAPAPORT has used the writings of MARTIN HEIDEGGER, JACQUES DERRIDA,and EMMANUEL LEVINAS as clues or guides that are expanded and developed in the context of intepreting various cultural works whose philosophical implications are at least as important as those of the philosophies from which RAPAPORT takes his bearings. This book is a rigorous philosophical inquiry and is necessary reading for every person interested in Literary Theory, Cultural Studies-Philosophy-Aesthetics. JAN A. MORTELMANS