Awaiting Obvilion

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by Maurice Blanchot,

Translated by John Gregg

University of Nebraska Press

Due/Published May 1997, 96 pages, cloth

ISBN 0803212577

At $26 and 96 pages (at least here you can get it at a 20% discount) you might have to really want to read Blanchot before you buy this one. But . . . if you do read Blanchot and have to rely on English translations, note that this is what Foucault said of this book: "The distinction between 'novels', 'narratives', and 'criticism' is progressively weakened in Blanchot until, in (Awaiting Oblivion [L'attente l'oublui]), language alone is allowed to speak." Nebraska says it is daring, innovative, a strikingly original experiment in literary form at the crossroads of fiction and philosophy--one of Blanchot's crowning works. It takes place in an anonymous hotel room, furnished with only a bed, an armchair, and a table. There is a man and a woman present who's relationship, as we are privileged to see it, is a penetrating reflection on human nature, language, and literature.