"Not only one of the frankest of autobiographies, but also a brilliantly written book, Leiris' "Manhood" mingles memories, philosophic reflections, sexual revelation, meditations on bullfighting, and the life-long progress of self-discovery." "Washington Post Book World "
"Leiris writes to appall, and thereby to receive from his readers the gift of a strong emotion the emotion needed to defend himself against the indignation and disgust he expects to arouse in his readers." Susan Sontag, "New York Review of Books "
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A dazzling translation by Lydia Davis of the first volume of Michel Leiris's masterwork, perhaps the most important French autobiographical enterprise of the twentieth century

Michel Leiris, a French intellectual whose literary works inspired high praise from the likes of Simone de Beauvoir and Claude Levi-Strauss, began the first volume of his autobiographical project at the age of 40. It was the beginning of an endeavor that ultimately required 35 years and three additional volumes.

In Volume 1, Scratches, Leiris proposes to discover a savoir...

The second volume of Michel Leiris's hugely influential four-volume autobiographical essay, available to English-language readers in a brilliant and sensitive translation by Lydia Davis

One of the most versatile and beloved French intellectuals of the twentieth century, Michel Leiris reconceives the autobiography as a literary experiment that sheds light on the mechanisms of memory and on the way the unconnected events of a life become connected through invented narrative.

In this volume, the second in his four-volume epic autobiographical enterprise, Leiris...