Ebook: Maurice Blanchot: a critical biography

"Maurice Blanchot has inspired several generations of writers, artists, and philosophers with some of the most incisive statements of what it meant to experience the traumas and turmoils of the twentieth century. A journalist and activist, Blanchot had a public side that coexisted uneasily with an inclination to secrecy and seclusion. These public and private lives converged at some of the century's most momentous occasions: Blanchot was nearly executed during the Occupation, participated prominently in the May '68 revolution in Paris, and, more controversially, wrote for the far right in the '30s. Bident's magisterial and scrupulous biography provides the first full-length account of Blanchot's itinerary, drawing on unpublished letters and interviews with the writer's close friends. Sophisticated readings provide a genealogy of his thought and trace the strong links between Blanchot's life and an oeuvre that nonetheless aspires to anonymity. In his even-handed appraisal, Bident offers a much-needed corrective to cruder accounts, from detractors and champions alike, of a life too easily sensationalized."--Publisher's description.