The Station Hill Blanchot Reader: Fiction & Literary Essays

by Maurice Blanchot

A major collection of writings from one of the most important twentieth century French authors, "The Blanchot Reader" includes six works of fiction ("Death Sentence, The Madness of the Day, When the Time Comes, Vicious Circles, Thomas the Obscure", and "The One Who Was Standing Apart from Me") and extended selections of critical and philosophical essays from his major book, "The Gaze of Orpheus".

Genres: Fiction, Philosophy, France, French Literature, Literary Criticism, Essays, Short Stories

556 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Maurice Blanchot was a French philosopher, literary theorist and writer of fiction. Blanchot was a distinctly modern writer who broke down generic boundaries, particularly between literature and philosophy. He began his career as a journalist on the political far right, but the experience of fascism altered his thinking to the point that he supported the student protests of May 1968. Like so many members of his generation, Blanchot was influenced by Alexandre Kojeve's humanistic interpretation of Hegel and the rise of modern existentialism. His “Literature and the Right to Death” shows the influence that Heidegger had on a whole generation of French intellectuals.

Reviews

[v · Rating 4 out of 5]

The strangest writing, where every word is alone

[Alex Obrigewitsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

This text is amazing. Being made up of the majority of Blanchot's récits, as well as a few essays, this is a great place to start wih Blanchot (if you haven't started reading Blanchot then do so as soon as possible), as well as a nice collection of texts for those already interested in Blanchot's writing.
I'm not going to get into Blanchot's writings or thoughts here. Just know that his writing is special, it will change you and your reading.
Get this, and let it consume you.

[Peter Crofts]

I'm only reviewing the fiction found within this anthology. The initial impression is of Kafka, and this proved to be a bit of a problem for me, not because I dislike the work of that author but find most who emulate his style, since it is so unique, end up sounding exactly like him.

Where Blanchot heads out on his own, and that's an understatement, is the incoherence of the characters' experiences. Sure, these are outsiders, but outside of most anything, in terms of worn, accepted symbols and tropes. Why are these symbols rejected? Because he rejects the world of the French bourgeois, which French writers have been doing pretty much since Baudelaire.

The author may strike the reader as a creator of extraordinarily abstract, remote worlds, but he is also a writer of his times. The world presented in the fiction is not recognizable physically, but it should be mentally to anyone familiar with the interwar period and the struggle for some other system of ordering and expression beyond liberal democratic notions of the individual, society and the "good life".

That's how I interpreted the texts and I've posted this review with more than a bit of misgiving, as it could very well be I've totally misinterpreted what I've just read, since they are hermetic, dry and at times, for me, completely inscrutable. What I read I liked, but did I understand it? I'm not so sure....

I'm not rating the book, I don't think I'm capable of doing so for something so challenging to read.

[Andrew]

Anthologies are often disappointing, it seems... however, this one seems fairly solid. The literary theory portion of the book is consistently incisive, smart, and prescient, especially the essay "Literature and the Right to Death." Shit's proto-deconstructivist, kinda phenomenological, and generally dope. The fiction, however, seemed a bit lacking. With the notable, unsettling exception of "Thomas the Obscure," I found most of it pretty boring. That said, the nonfiction side and the highlights of the fiction make the work worth reading.

[Charlie Mansfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

Useful for Blanchot’s concept of le récit. I used this in my PhD thesis for the concept of the toureme in Researching Literary Tourism