On Blanchot’s AMINADAB
My only former point of reference for Blanchot’s fiction has been The Last Man, which, while stunning, was incredibly dense, and at times a real chore to get through (which is ultimately a positive quality for a book to have, far more affective in this case). Aminadab, however, has more of a narrative to its core which allows a reader to actually get through it rather quickly, and the narrative progression provides something to hold on to (I mention these things not to presuppose that Aminadab is better than The Last Man, rather to just differentiate). This is an entirely different experience than The Last Man.
There is still, I think, just as much thought present here. Though Aminadab is earlier in Blanchot’s career, before things had become as articulated perhaps, but certainly after he had already set out his task in approaching literature.
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March 22nd, 2011 / 12:29 pm
March 22nd, 2011 / 12:29 pm
Google Searches & Maurice Blanchot
At his blog, Mathias Svalina’s many screen-captures offer a better argument for Flarf than it ever dreamed of making for itself.
And over at his blog, today Dennis Cooper is all about the amazing Maurice Blanchot.
My speech is a warning that at this very moment death is loose in the world, that it has suddenly appeared between me, as I speak, and the being I address: it is there between us as the distance that separates us, but this distance is also what prevents us from being separated, because it contains the condition for all understanding. Death alone allows me to grasp what I want to attain; it exists in words as the only way they can have meaning. Without death, everything would sink into absurdity and nothingness. (Blanchot, The Work of Fire, 323-24)