Scratches

La Règle du jeu (The Rules of the Game) #1

by Michel Leiris, Lydia Davis (Translator)

"For me his work is not only a document that enriches our knowledge of man, but also a personal testament that touches me deeply."--Francis BaconScratches is the first volume in Michel Leiris's monumental four-volume autobiography, Rules of the Game. In this volume, the celebrated French writer examines his inventory of memories, explores the language of his childhood, weaves anecdotes from his private life with his old and recent ideas. In the end, he so mercilessly scrutinizes what was familiar that its familiarity drops away and it blossoms into something exotic. As Leiris recollects his childhood, his father's recording machine becomes a miraculous object and the letters of the alphabet--from A (or the double ladder of a house painter) to I (a soldier standing at attention) to X (the cross one makes on something whose secret one will never penetrate)--come magically to life. Also here are evocations of Paris under the occupation, his journey to Africa, and meditations on his fear of death, which he tried to exorcise through his autobiographical writings.

Genres: France, Biography, Literature, Philosophy, Autobiography, French Literature

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1948

About the author

Born in Paris in 1901, Michel Leiris was a French surrealist writer and ethnographer. In the 1920s he became a member of the surrealist movement and contributed to La révolution surréaliste. In those years, he wrote a surrealist novel: Aurora.

After his exit from the surrealist group, he teamed up with Georges Bataille in the magazine Documents.

Reviews

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

if you are curious about the autobiographical writings of leiris, i recommend starting here and not with "manhood"; although "manhood" is an interesting work, i think it is a bit spoiled by too much of leiris' pessimistic self-scrutiny, a dark energy that is present in "scratches" but that is here put to use in new ways-- in dismantling the ludic trumpet-drum of speech and in glimpsing scraps of the tacit rules that govern language and memory, under which free association is never exactly free--

[Joseph Schreiber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Made my way through this more than once over the year, will now move on to second and third parts of this erratic and convoluted autobiographical exercise. Leiris' exploration of the connections between language and memory in his idiosyncratic way offers much food for thought about the enterprise of writing one's own life. Impossible to capture in simple terms, I will attempt to write something more soon.

[lulu.castagnette · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dès les premières pages, j’ai su que pour finir ce livre je me forcerai.
Livre qui se fait l’exemple d’une esthétique du « parler à tort et à travers », esthétique qui se révèle finalement assez indigeste, en plus, d’une part, d’une écriture extrêmement pédante, proche du bruit de fond ou du brouhaha et, d’autre part, d’une approche des rapports de classe très douteuse (le « bon pauvre » vs. le « mauvais pauvre » ???), d’une conception de la sociologie très approximative pour ne pas dire catastrophique et nocive, et qui plus est empreinte d’un mépris de classe éhonté.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Through his writing, Leiris explores how he came to be who he was, stitching together memories, the scraps, the scratches intersecting and connecting his life, the knots, the meanderings and digressions. He calls this attempt an "abridged encyclopedia" of himself and its beautiful. It was addictive to read (despite his occasional long-winded leanings). His self-deprecating nature, his uncertainty as to what it is he was actually trying to achieve, his constant questioning of his intention in writing and the productivity of his life, is a pleasure to read.

[Justin Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to enjoy this much more than I did. It has its moments, but I suspect I don't care about language in quite the same way that Leiris did, and that makes large stretches of this book entirely, entirely dull. But the good bits make me hope the next three volumes will be great.

[Rob Arnott · Rating 2 out of 5]

Essentially like reading an instruction manual.

[v · Rating 3 out of 5]

Coming into language, awareness, and knowledge -- this is perhaps the most crucial event of our lives, and those good readers among us who self-consciously dedicate their precious time in this world to books are no doubt trying to keep its glow alive. But if we investigate the memories we have from this time that we have been fortunate enough to save, don't they raise more questions than they resolve? The first book of Michel Leiris' four-volume autobiography captures this experience in his fragmentary memories, chains of associations, and contemporary experiences while writing at the end of the Nazi occupation. Truly wonderful as the attempt might be, Leiris' selection of material is temperamental and his writing is mortally wounded by clunky, theory-laden mentation.

I would never have suspected, then, that the mystery begins the moment one imagines that everything has been explained.

[Caleb · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will be thinking about (and hopefully writing, too) this book (and hopefully the next three in the series) for the foreseeable future.

Its pretty uncanny to have been writing a very specific character over the last 4 years, one who has consistently been changing over time and coming to resemble an absurd persona for myself, and to then read this book and practically find this very character to have existed, and not just to have existed, but to have tried and accomplished many of the same literary moves.

Though I have a great capacity for spirituality, a desire for wonder, I have little faith in many things. The synchronicity and serendipity of literature—and through literature, life—is not one of those things.

[michal k-c · Rating 5 out of 5]

The conference paper I would give on this if I were still in grad school… my god. Won’t do any of the Lacanian stuff here though — what I will say is that the technique here shouldn’t work but Leiris is so talented that it does anyway. Typically a memoir is about generating meaning through the technique of writing. Leiris is annihilating meaning, unlearning the fixed normality of writing. No more “established facts” in naming. You do not exist to be domineered by the signified anymore; let yourself be woven into the interlaced figures of the signifier.

[Alice Rovani · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ton écriture perséphonique trouvera sa véritable mouvance dans les prochaines années !
Tumultueux, positivement boursouflé, mais encore à l'état embryonnaire, qui ne s'épanouira à mon sens que dans les prochains écrits, Langage tangage.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautifully written memoir about not very much. I am tempted to call it Proustian, but I don’t really know what that means.

[Brenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

For Proust fans. A bit convoluted and rambling at times, but charmingly clever.