The One Who Was Standing Apart From Me
This work takes the form of a conversation, an interview. An obsessive questioning back and forth builds up Blanchot's narrative, with its sense—shared with Kafka's famous doorkeeper parable—that behind each question lies the spooky possibility of a further, more imposing, more insoluble question. Thematically, powerlessness, inertia, insufficient speech, weariness, falling, faltering—everything tied to a negative or nonexistent value in ordinary discourse—is given value here by its being articulated, moved into writing and thought. What's insignificant or worthless gathers weight through its troubling persistence, its failure to disappear. The endless conversation of Blanchot's writing turns fiction toward an experience of listening—a far cry from the storytelling most fiction (still) takes itself to be.
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The One Who Was Standing Apart From Me
This work takes the form of a conversation, an interview. An obsessive questioning back and forth builds up Blanchot's narrative, with its sense—shared with Kafka's famous doorkeeper parable—that behind each question lies the spooky possibility of a further, more imposing, more insoluble question. Thematically, powerlessness, inertia, insufficient speech, weariness, falling, faltering—everything tied to a negative or nonexistent value in ordinary discourse—is given value here by its being articulated, moved into writing and thought. What's insignificant or worthless gathers weight through its troubling persistence, its failure to disappear. The endless conversation of Blanchot's writing turns fiction toward an experience of listening—a far cry from the storytelling most fiction (still) takes itself to be.
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The One Who Was Standing Apart From Me

The One Who Was Standing Apart From Me

by Maurice Blanchot
The One Who Was Standing Apart From Me

The One Who Was Standing Apart From Me

by Maurice Blanchot

Overview

This work takes the form of a conversation, an interview. An obsessive questioning back and forth builds up Blanchot's narrative, with its sense—shared with Kafka's famous doorkeeper parable—that behind each question lies the spooky possibility of a further, more imposing, more insoluble question. Thematically, powerlessness, inertia, insufficient speech, weariness, falling, faltering—everything tied to a negative or nonexistent value in ordinary discourse—is given value here by its being articulated, moved into writing and thought. What's insignificant or worthless gathers weight through its troubling persistence, its failure to disappear. The endless conversation of Blanchot's writing turns fiction toward an experience of listening—a far cry from the storytelling most fiction (still) takes itself to be.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780882681511
Publisher: Barrytown/Station Hill Press, Inc.
Publication date: 06/01/1995
Edition description: First Edition
Pages: 94
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.70(h) x 0.20(d)

About the Author


Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003) was a French writer, philosopher, and literary theorist. His work had a strong influence on later post-structuralist theorists such as Jacques Derrida. He is one of the most enigmatic and influential figures in modern French writing yet no interview, no biographical sketch, and hardly any photographs have ever been published of him.
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Fiction
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Literary Fiction
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Literary Fiction

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