The Book to Come (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics)

During the last half of the twentieth century in France, Maurice Blanchot was a key figure in exploring the relation between literature and philosophy. He developed early on a distinctive, limpid form of essay writing, and his essays, in form and substance, left their unmistakable imprint on the work of the most distinguished French theorists. The writings of Barthes, Foucault, and Derrida, for example, are hardly imaginable without Blanchot. The Book to Come gathers together essays originally published in La Nouvelle Revue Française; almost all of them appear in English for the first time. Not a random collection of essays, this book is organized into four sections: "the secret of literature"; literature as exigence and as meaning; literature and the novel; and the future of writing and of the book. The authors discussed constitute a veritable repertoire: Rousseau, Proust, Artaud, Brach, Musil, James, Beckett, Bataille, Mallarmé, Joubert, and Claudel, among others.

Literature & Fiction

Charlotte Mandell

Maurice Blanchot

History & Criticism

Stanford University Press

Fragments of the Artwork (Meridian, Crossing Aesthetics)

Fragments of the Artwork brings together Jean Genet’s critical writings and open letters on art and aesthetic issues. This collection testifies to Genet’s enormous influence on the modern theater, on the development of the novel, and on the representation of crime, sex, gender, and race. In lyrical essays and one candid interview, these works present an untutored, original, defiant Genet, displaying his provocative insights and acuities on a range of topics.Genet wrestles with the athletic genius of Rembrandt, adores the intricate criminal resurrections of Dostoevsky, challenges our easy readings of Brecht, and, in what is one of the most exalting art historical essays ever written, provides us with his detailed personal account of the work and presence of Alberto Giacometti. Altogether these essays comprise a series of engrossing meditations on the central motives of theatricality and art.

GENET, JEAN

Essays & Correspondence

Fragments of the Artwork brings together Jean Genet's critical writings and open letters on art and aesthetic issues. This collection testifies to Genet's enormous influence on the modern theater, on the development of the novel, and on the representation of crime, sex, gender, and race. In lyrical essays and one candid interview, these works present an untutored, original, defiant Genet, displaying his provocative insights and acuities on a range of topics. Genet wrestles with the athletic genius of Rembrandt, adores the intricate criminal resurrections of Dostoevsky, challenges our easy readings of Brecht, and, in what is one of the most exalting art historical essays ever written, provides us with his detailed personal account of the work and presence of Alberto Giacometti. Altogether these essays comprise a series of engrossing meditations on the central motives of theatricality and art.

War, Evil, and The End of History

From the maverick author of the international bestseller Who Killed Daniel Pearl? — "a gripping blend of reportage and philosophy," according to The New York Times — comes another startlingly original work of literature. In WAR, EVIL AND THE END OF HISTORY, Bernard-Henri Lévy continues his daring investigation into the breeding grounds of terrorism with a series of riveting first-person reports from five of the world's most horrific "forgotten" war zones. In Sri Lanka, he conducts a clandestine interview with a terrified young woman escaped from a suicide-bomber training camp . . . he journeys, blindfolded, into the Colombian jungle to interview a psychotic drug lord who considers himself the successor to Che Guevara and fronts a bloodthirsty "guerilla" army . . . Lévy surreptitiously observes the nameless slaves working the diamond mines that fund an endless war in Angola . . . airdrops into a rebel stronghold in the blockaded Nuba mountains of the Sudan . . . and reports on the ongoing carnage in Burundi between Hutus and Tutsis. But Lévy is more than just a journalist: as France's leading philosopher, he follows the reports with a series of intensely personal and probing "reflections" considering how, in an enlightened, cultured, and well-informed society, these wars have acquired such a perverse "non-meaning." He considers war literature from Stendhal, Hemingway, Proust and others, and issues an excoriating response to those who have glorified it. He reconsiders his own background as a student revolutionary in Paris in May 1968, and as a 22-year-old war reporter in Bangladesh. And, in one of the book's most moving passages, he recounts his travels with Ahmad Massoud, the anti-Taliban Afghan leader assassinated hours before the September 11 attacks. Already a huge bestseller in Europe, WAR, EVIL, AND THE END OF HISTORY is the work of a scintillating intellect at the height of its powers. Bernard-Henri Lévy's previous book foresaw today's headlines about Pakistan's secret trading of nuclear technology and the nexus of terrorist groups behind the murder of Daniel Pearl. WAR, EVIL, AND THE END OF HISTORY is his brilliant foray into the next danger zones.

War, Evil, and the End of History

History

LÉVY, Bernard-Henri

Africa

Melville House

Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form beloved and practice by literature's greatest writers. In the ART OF THE NOVELLA series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time. With an attention to the details of bourgeois life considered almost scandalous at the time, A Simple Heart will remind many why Gustave Flaubert was acclaimed as the first great master of realism. But this heart-breaking tale of a simple servant woman and her life-long search for love meant something else to Flaubert. Written near the end of his life, the work was meant to be a tribute to George Sand—who died before it was finished—and was written in answer to an argument the two were having over the importance of realism. Although the tale displays his virtuosic gift for telling detail, and is based on one of his actual servants, Flaubert said it exemplified his belief that "Beauty is the object of all my efforts." This sparkling new translation by Charlotte Mandell shows how impeccably Flaubert achieved his goal.

A Simple Heart (The Art of the Novella)

Arts & Photography

Gustave. Flaubert

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Books by Charlotte Mandell