The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Rules of the Game, Volume One: Scratches and Rules of the Game, Volume Two: Scraps by Michel Leiris
Irving Malin

Michel Leiris. Rules of the Game, Volume One: Scratches. Trans. Lydia Davis. Johns Hopkins, 1997. 258 pp. Paper: $15.95; Rules of the Game, Volume Two: Scraps. Trans. Lydia Davis. Johns Hopkins, 1997. 244 pp. Paper: $15.95.

Surely the paperback publication of these two volumes of Leiris’s autobiography Rules of the Game is a significant cultural event. The entire autobiography runs to four volumes; we can look forward to the remaining volumes which will be published in 1998.
Leiris is, with Blanchot and Bataille, one of the important French writers who, in part, influenced or anticipated the criticism of Cixous and Derrida and their American disciples. Aurora, his surrealist novel and Days as Nights, Nights as Days, his text of dreams, stand as two of the great works of modern French literature. Leiris understands that autobiography is an odd genre. Memories are, of course, selective and fictional because they transform the events they try to capture.
He structures his work in a fascinating way, recognizing that as a writer he was influenced by linguistic events. He muses: “One doesn’t say . . . remusement but heuresement [happily, fortunately, luckily]. This word, which I had used until then without any awareness of its real meaning but simply as an interjection was related to hereux and the magical power of this relation suddenly inserted into a whole sequence of precise meanings.”
Leiris establishes a “life of words,” a magical transformation of the self through language. His sentence structure—which reminds me of the convoluted ones of Proust or late James—is one of the circling shades of perception of a “series of waves” (Leiris’s phrase). And the sentence structure disolves clear-cut distinctions; one phrase gives birth to another. From the chapter “Alphabet,” Leiris writes: “I look at the alphabet: a succession of symbols on pages or a small book that I study, a slender construction of white pages where various linear constructions stand out in black, constructions I must assimilate at all costs.” He uses the present tense to suggest that his childhood fascination with language is filled with luminous power. But he is writing the sentence in the “real” present. Thus there is a kind of “game.” “Past” and “present” seem to melt or dissolve. Leiris wants us to be seduced by the mental assimilations. He wants to draw us into his artwork. And he succeeds brilliantly; we follow his turns of phrase—as we do Proust’s—and recognize that we are saved by linguistic structures, hypnotic arrangements of words.
I have no doubt that this translation captures the magical power of the French. Lydia Davis, one of our most interesting fiction writers, deserves our gratitude for her rendition of Leiris’s “scratches.” [Irving Malin]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Rules of the Game, Volume One: Scratches and Rules of the Game, Volume Two: Scraps by Michel Leiris Irving Malin Michel Leiris. Rules of the Game, Volume One: Scratches. Trans. Lydia Davis. Johns Hopkins, 1997. 258 pp. Paper: $15.95; Rules of the Game, Volume Two: Scraps. Trans. Lydia Davis. Johns Hopkins, 1997. 244 pp. Paper: $15.95. Surely the paperback publication of these two volumes of Leiris’s autobiography Rules of the Game is a significant cultural event. The entire autobiography runs to four volumes; we can look forward to the remaining volumes which will be published in 1998. Leiris is, with Blanchot and Bataille, one of the important French writers who, in part, influenced or anticipated the criticism of Cixous and Derrida and their American disciples. Aurora, his surrealist novel and Days as Nights, Nights as Days, his text of dreams, stand as two of the great works of modern French literature. Leiris understands that autobiography is an odd genre. Memories are, of course, selective and fictional because they transform the events they try to capture. He structures his work in a fascinating way, recognizing that as a writer he was influenced by linguistic events. He muses: “One doesn’t say . . . remusement but heuresement [happily, fortunately, luckily]. This word, which I had used until then without any awareness of its real meaning but simply as an interjection was related to hereux and the magical power of this relation suddenly inserted into a whole sequence of precise meanings.” Leiris establishes a “life of words,” a magical transformation of the self through language. His sentence structure—which reminds me of the convoluted ones of Proust or late James—is one of the circling shades of perception of a “series of waves” (Leiris’s phrase). And the sentence structure disolves clear-cut distinctions; one phrase gives birth to another. From the chapter “Alphabet,” Leiris writes: “I look at the alphabet: a succession of symbols on pages or a small book that I study, a slender construction of white pages where various linear constructions stand out in black, constructions I must assimilate at all costs.” He uses the present tense to suggest that his childhood fascination with language is filled with luminous power. But he is writing the sentence in the “real” present. Thus there is a kind of “game.” “Past” and “present” seem to melt or dissolve. Leiris wants us to be seduced by the mental assimilations. He wants to draw us into his artwork. And he succeeds brilliantly; we follow his turns of phrase—as we do Proust’s—and recognize that we are saved by linguistic structures, hypnotic arrangements of words. I have no doubt that this translation captures the magical power of the French. Lydia Davis, one of our most interesting fiction writers, deserves our gratitude for her rendition of Leiris’s “scratches.” [Irving Malin]

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