... Thus, when Linc initiates Kitty into the "mystery of wine" his speeches appear to have been lifted, intact, out of a wine-appreciation book&. Even Caroline's description of how she felt on losing her husband in Viet Nam is similarly generalized as are all of the programs, invocations of popular romance, popular religion, popular sexology, popular psychology and sociology. What remains, dialogue, is an attempt to reconcile time with infinity. Hence the infinite repetition of a structure which implies progress: coming and going, the beginning and ending of a conversation. The ostensible subject of this conversation, the reason for the coming and going, is always the same: a new event. However, the real subject, the faithful presentation of desire, is the coming and going itself. The mythic world of this soap opera, then, emerges through and is characterized by, a dialogue between novelty and repetition: the reopening-always to the first page-of the elaborately bound volume, entitled All My Children, which begins every episode, the return to the beginning which precedes and follows every movement toward an end. Perhaps the most prominent feature of this world is total recall. Such a repetition creates a very serviceable eternal Now, that not only reinforces whatever needs to be reinforced, but also provides a dramatic irony capable of driving its point home on even the most unperceptive. ...
