The One Who Was Standing Apart from Me
1953
First Published
4.25
Average Rating
122
Number of Pages
This work takes the form of a conversation, an interview. An obsessive questioning back and forth builds up Blanchot's narrative, with its sense—shared with Kafka's famous "doorkeeper" parable—that behind each question lies the spooky possibility of a further, more imposing, more insoluble question. Thematically, powerlessness, inertia, insufficient speech, weariness, falling, faltering—everything tied to a negative or nonexistent value in ordinary discourse—is given value here by its being articulated, moved into writing and thought. What's insignificant or worthless gathers weight through its troubling persistence, its failure to disappear. The "endless" conversation of Blanchot's writing turns "fiction" toward an experience of listening—a far cry from the storytelling most fiction (still) takes itself to be.
Avg Rating
4.25
Number of Ratings
119
5 STARS
48%
4 STARS
34%
3 STARS
14%
2 STARS
4%
1 STARS
0%
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