Awaiting Oblivion

by Maurice Blanchot, John Gregg (Translator), John Gregg (Introduction)

Overview

Maurice Blanchot has been for a half century one of France's leading authors of fiction and theory. Two of his most ambitious nonfiction works, The Space of Literature and The Writing of the Disaster, are also available from the University of Nebraska Press, as is The Most High, his third novel. John Gregg is the author of Maurice Blanchot and the Literature of Transgression.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780803261570
Publisher:	Nebraska
Publication date:	05/01/1999
Series:	French Modernist Library
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	108
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Maurice Blanchot has been for a half century one of France’s leading authors of fiction and theory. Two of his most ambitious nonfiction works, The Space of Literature and The Writing of the Disaster, are also available from the University of Nebraska Press, as is The Most High, his third novel.
 
John Gregg is the author of Maurice Blanchot and the Literature of Transgression.

Editorial Reviews

"Another of Blanchot’s almost-fictions . . . throwing into deliciously baffling high relief the enigmatic condition of a man and woman alone in a sparsely furnished hotel room who try to remember what has happened to bring them there as they apprehensively await whatever will happen next. Their reserved confusion and quiet desperation eventually impress upon them (and us) the realization that imagination (or, if you will, writing) can create reality—and offer the paradoxical solace that seems to rest at the heart of Blanchot’s writing: the sense that even language that expresses meaninglessness can’t help but contain and, therefore, convey meaning."—Kirkus

Kirkus

Awaiting Oblivion ( May 15, 1997; 88 pp.; 0-8032-1257-7): Another of Blanchot's almost-fictions (The One Who Was Standing Apart From Me, etc., not reviewed), this 1962 work mingles the briefest of narratives, cryptic dialogue, and even more cryptic aphoristic statements with the myth of Orpheus's descent into the underworld, throwing into deliciously baffling high relief the enigmatic condition of a man and woman alone in a sparsely furnished hotel room who try to remember what has happened to bring them there as they apprehensively await whatever will happen next. Their reserved confusion and quiet desperation eventually impress upon them (and us) the realization that imagination (or, if you will, writing) can create reality—and offer the paradoxical solace that seems to rest at the heart of Blanchot's writing: the sense that even language that expresses meaninglessness can't help but contain and, therefore, convey meaning.

Kirkus Reviews

"This absolutely first-rate translation will not only make Blanchot accessible to many new readers but will also encourage Blanchot scholars and students to reconsider everything they thought they knew about L’Attente l’oubli. . . . This book should be required reading, period."—Choice

Choice

"Awaiting Oblivion is one of [Blanchot’s] crowning works . . . a penetrating reflection upon human nature, language, and literature."—Translation Review

Translation Review