Maurice Blanchot, the eminent literary and cultural critic, has had a vast influence on contemporary French writers among them Jean Paul Sartre and Jacques Derrida. From the 1930s through the present day, his writings have been shaping the international literary consciousness.

The Space of Literature, first published in France in 1955, is central to the development of Blanchot's thought. In it he reflects on literature and the unique demand it makes upon our attention. Thus he explores the process of reading as well as the nature of artistic creativity, all the while considering the...

Modern history is haunted by the disasters of the century world wars, concentration camps, Hiroshima, and the Holocaust grief, anger, terror, and loss beyond words, but still close, still impending. How can we write or think about disaster when by its very nature it defies speech and compels silence, burns books and shatters meaning?The Writing of the Disaster reflects upon efforts to abide in disaster s infinite threat. First published in French in 1980, it takes up the most serious tasks of writing: to describe, explain, and redeem when possible, and to admit what is not...

Rue Ordener, Rue Labat is a moving memoir by the distinguished French philosopher Sarah Kofman. It opens with the horrifying moment in July 1942 when the author's father, the rabbi of a small synagogue, was dragged by police from the family home on Rue Ordener in Paris, then transported to Auschwitz-"the place," writes Kofman, "where no eternal rest would or could ever be granted." It ends in the mid-1950s, when Kofman enrolled at the Sorbonne. The book is as eloquent as it is forthright. Kofman recalls her father and family in the years before the war, then turns to the terrors and...

Herman Melville's Bartleby, asked to account for himself, "would prefer not to." Tongue-tied Billy Budd, urged to defend his innocence, responds with a murderous blow. The Bavard, by Louis-Rene des Forets, concerns a man whose power to speak is replaced by an inability to shut up. In these and other literary examples a call for speech throws the possibility of speaking into doubt. What Is There to Say? uses the ideas of Maurice Blanchot to clarify puzzling works by Melville, des Forets, and Beckett. Ann Smock's energetic readings of texts about talking, listening, and recording cast an...

In this vivid memoir, Denis Guenoun excavates his family's past and progressively fills out a portrait of an imposing, enigmatic father. Rene Guenoun was a teacher and a pioneer, and his secret support for Algerian independence was just one of the many things he did not discuss with his teenaged son. To be Algerian, pro-independence, a French citizen, a Jew, and a Communist were not, to Rene's mind, dissonant allegiances. He believed Jews and Arabs were bound by an authentic fraternity and could only realize a free future together.

Rene Guenoun called himself a Semite, a word that he felt...