Explores the process of reading as well as the nature of artistic creativity, all the while considering the relation of the literary work to time, to history, and to death. This work reflects on literature and the unique demand it makes upon our attention.
Ann Smock's fluent translation retains the tone and sense of the French; her introduction situates Blanchot in the French and American cultural spectrum and outlines the history of his critical concerns. Ann Smock, an associate professor of French at the University of California, Berkeley, also translated Blanchot's "The Writing of the Disaster" for the University of Nebraska Press in 1986.
