The Review of Contemporary Fiction
Awaiting Oblivion by Maurice BlanchotIrving Malin
Maurice Blanchot. Awaiting Oblivion. Trans. John Gregg. Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1997. 86 pp. $26.00.
Blanchot is a terrifying writer. The action takes place in a hotel room; a man and woman make cryptic remarks about such subjects as waiting, writing, time, and death. But the man and woman seem to melt into other ghosts—these may or may not be another man and woman or their secretive doubles. “He” and “she”—and “I,” the author—become ambiguous pronouns so that identities remain obscure. And, to complicate matters, the author seems to intrude into the text—but isn’t the text his own creation?—and to offer circular aphorisms. Thus the text is, in effect, a philosophical inquiry “posing” as a fiction (or vice versa), a work which is more complex than Waiting for Godot or The Beast in the Jungle, James’s text about waiting for a finality, a revelation.
I want to quote one passage to indicate the terrible beauty of this shocking text: “No one likes to remain face to face with that which is hidden. ‘Face to face would be easy, but not in an oblique relation.’ ” Notice that the first statement is written by the author. “Face to face” seems to contradict hidden. How can I confront something (a state of mind) which is hidden? But how do I know what is hidden if I can see or think or write it? The second sentence is presumably spoken by the “he” of the story. It is comic and bleak because it counterpoints rational inquiry into the nature of things with “oblique relation.” The statement itself is an “oblique relation.” Blanchot’s text is full of turns and counterturns. And this strange linguistic strategy is perhaps at the heart of the text. [Irving Malin]