The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Maurice Blanchot: Refusal of Philopsophy by Gerald L. Bruns
Thomas Lecky

Gerald L. Bruns. Maurice Blanchot: The Refusal of Philopsophy. Johns Hopkins, 1997. 339 pp. $39.95.

Twenty percent of Gerald L. Bruns’s study of Blanchot’s life and work consists of endnotes, a fact that would generally predict the other eighty percent to be fashioned in late twentieth-century overarticulated academic prose. Bruns does indeed have his own set of tropes and terminologies but manages to use them quite effectively in his consideration of Blanchot’s work. It must be said that Blanchot is no easy subject and Bruns readily admits this in his preface. The chapters that follow attempt to situate a writer who persistently resists situation.
Blanchot’s interest in madness, death, imprisonment, like Beckett’s, is never far from his interest in language. With this in mind, Mr. Bruns has accepted the challenge of close reading over indeterminate generalization. His ten chapters are further broken into terse sections, a structure in keeping with his subject’s admiration for the linguistic fragment.
Bruns sees Blanchot facing the relationship between philosophy and poetry as a late-Romantic, reviving this classical debate within an era of intense political and social unrest. The fragmentation of language is mirrored in the history of the time, though also in literary history. The book delves deeply into Blanchot’s reading of Heidegger and Celan to reveal the cross-pollination of linguistic, poetic and literary ideas.
As the first full English language study of Blanchot, this book is a fine introduction to the major work of this oft overlooked French master. [Thomas Lecky]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Maurice Blanchot: Refusal of Philopsophy by Gerald L. Bruns Thomas Lecky Gerald L. Bruns. Maurice Blanchot: The Refusal of Philopsophy. Johns Hopkins, 1997. 339 pp. $39.95. Twenty percent of Gerald L. Bruns’s study of Blanchot’s life and work consists of endnotes, a fact that would generally predict the other eighty percent to be fashioned in late twentieth-century overarticulated academic prose. Bruns does indeed have his own set of tropes and terminologies but manages to use them quite effectively in his consideration of Blanchot’s work. It must be said that Blanchot is no easy subject and Bruns readily admits this in his preface. The chapters that follow attempt to situate a writer who persistently resists situation. Blanchot’s interest in madness, death, imprisonment, like Beckett’s, is never far from his interest in language. With this in mind, Mr. Bruns has accepted the challenge of close reading over indeterminate generalization. His ten chapters are further broken into terse sections, a structure in keeping with his subject’s admiration for the linguistic fragment. Bruns sees Blanchot facing the relationship between philosophy and poetry as a late-Romantic, reviving this classical debate within an era of intense political and social unrest. The fragmentation of language is mirrored in the history of the time, though also in literary history. The book delves deeply into Blanchot’s reading of Heidegger and Celan to reveal the cross-pollination of linguistic, poetic and literary ideas. As the first full English language study of Blanchot, this book is a fine introduction to the major work of this oft overlooked French master. [Thomas Lecky]

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