** Named a Best Book of 2007 by Ready Steady Book, an independent book review website, working in association with The Book Depository, which is devoted to reviewing the best books in literary fiction, poetry, history and philosophy. "An invaluable guide to new literary territory, Taylor is equally good in discussing writers whom the reader already knows." -- Raphael Rubenstein, Rain Taxi "The paths that John Taylor invites us to walk in this book are inviting ones: fifty-five luminous essays devoted (...) to the broad avenues and the seductive byways of contemporary writing in France. John Taylor is opinionated but his opinions are rigorously argued ones. He strikes a canny and productive balance among a variety of competing concerns: the will to instruct his readers, the desire to share with them some very real pleasures, the imperative to interpret critically, and so forth. What emerges here is the image of a rare reader, one who is always willing to engage literature on its own terms, and that of a literature that is mobile, ambitious, provocative and deeply invested in the process of becoming. -- Warren Motte, Review of Contemporary Fiction "In this great introduction to some 50 French writers and poets little known outside of France, Taylor (The Presence of Things Past; The World As It Is), winner of the Three Oaks Prize for Fiction, invites his readers on an interesting journey."--Library Journal "Here it is under one cover: a deeply informed, delightful, and provocative stroll' through the literature of postwar France. From the chroniques of Cingria to the mythologies of Barthes, John Taylor introduces us to the prose and poetry of dozens of French authors, many of them regrettably never translated into English. Taylor is a skillful and witty guide, able to locate a writer between the traditions of Catullus and Pavese or to identify a style borrowing equally from Hlderlin and Hemingway. Working across every genre from autobiography to poetry to fiction to travelogue to the essay, these French authors, well known and obscure, have plumbed the quintessential French problem' of subjectivity. Tired of the culture wars? The language-lyric debate? The post-game analysis of post-structuralism? I suggest you dive into any one of John Taylor's Paths' for a reminder of the astonishing breadth and depth and complexity of which literature is capable."--Erica Funkhouser, author, Pursuit "Here we have vast erudition revealed in graceful, arresting sentences, writing that provides confidence and pleasure. John Taylor's writing strongly evokes Henry James' writing about French literature in his own day. Like James, Taylor is both generous and astute, never relinquishing admiration for the intricate process of analysis, analysis that he does so penetratingly and eloquently. However brilliant Taylor's observations, behind them rests a deep esteem for the writer, for his or her work, and for the tradition from which it comes. This is critical writing that is satisfying at every single level."--Richard Goodman, author, French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the South of France "As they stroll through forgotten quartiers of Paris, wander in memory through the fields of a Norman childhood, reflect on a poem's resemblance to the salt marshes of the Breton coast, mourn the death of a beloved young wife, or look for answers in questions to which the only answers are more questions--France's most celebrated and, in some cases, still uncelebrated contemporary writers are exquisitely captured by John Taylor in a prose both limpid and lapidary and through a host of finely wrought essays, each a small jewel of critical insight, poetic sensitivity, and meticulous interpretation. Like a message in a bottle cast up on the shore, this work offers the English-speaking reader an original and poetic way to understand, appreciate, and love French. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Playtexts: Ludics in Contemporary LiteratureWalter E. BromanPlaytexts: Ludics in Contemporary Literature, by Warren Motte; 233 pp. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995, $31.50.When readers early encounter such stuff as “Thus in the category of agôn, for example, hide-and-seek would tend toward paidia, whereas chess would tend toward ludus” (p. 7), they suspect that this book will be a rugged and humorless read, in spite of the fun (...) hinted at in the title. Much of the book turns out to fulfill this dread. There is no escaping the sour smell of academic jargon: “to privilege,” “to foreground,” “to marginalize,” “diegetic frame,” etc., or the tangled infelicities of academic prose.Professor Motte sets out to examine a series of texts, “... each text considered a different ludic economy with its own rules and norms, but all texts defined as language games” (p. 15). While struggling through the discussions of Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke, André Breton’s Nadja, or Albertine Sarrazin’s Astragal, one catches glimpses of a book that might have assumed sumptuous flesh. This is especially true in the chapter on Nabakov’s Pale Fire, which is quite interesting and well written. Nabakov’s is “an agonistic game that pits Kinbote against Slade, the Sladeans against Kinbote, Kinbote against us the readers, Nabakov against Kinbote, we the readers against Nabakov” (p. 81). This is a game in which Nabakov offers his readers “a full partnership in the creative process” (p. 82). I was forced to recognize that I had enjoyed reading Pale Fire, all the while only being aware of a minim of these ludic convolutions!A major problem with this book and with the books Professor Motte discusses can be shown most vividly in the chapter on Georges Perec’s La Disparition, where the game is to write an entire novel without using the letter “e.” This “literary machine” is supposed to be geared for expressing the iron impositions of life and its ineluctable loss and lack. I suspect that this semantic juice is squeezed out only by critical legerdemain. The discussion merely succeeds in convincing me that this literary tour de force might be suitable for Guinness’s Book of Records, but would likely be a boring read. It reminds me of a Rube Goldberg contraption or of Johnson’s dog walking on its “hinder legs.” Calling this a lipogram linked to Greek antiquity does little to rinse away the sweaty scent of useless exertion.Professor Motte includes a quotation from Eco referring to Swift’s book-making machine in the Grand Academy of Lagado, which provides a sinister and ludicrous image of much of this ludic literature. Eco sees the text as a “combinatory, ludic machine” (p. 191). This literature as machine and game is remarkable for its lack of any concern for the reader: “... the game is finally less vital for us than it seems to have been for Gombrowicz” (p. 68). Compare this with Dryden who took it as axiomatic that the audience’s “concernment” is of vital importance. Now, though, the readerly text is supplanted by the writerly (p. 163). René Bellato builds up “a narrative technique based on the systematic [End Page 243] frustration of the reader’s expectations...” (p. 166). A kind of apex of readerly boredom is devised in Harry Matthew’s literary machine “Matthew’s algorithm”—exemplified by the permutational poetics in Le Savoir des rois, where the same verse is given endless alterations of word order. There lurks a sniffy implication that if you don’t go along with this sort of game you aren’t a good reader. I don’t mind straining to be a good reader if the reward is commensurate with the effort. Professor Motte never explains why we ought to bother.Professor Motte presents various interesting theories of play, as diverse as Huizinga’s Homo Ludens and Freud, but his own position is not easy to discern. He seems to be sympathetic with Calvino’s notion that “all literature is play” (p. 142). For this to be true, the definition of ludics or play would have to have a Humpty Dumpty squishiness. It would have to be ample... (shrink)

Cette etude suppose un releve exhaustif des occurences d'aporia, et de douze autres mots etymologiquement apparentes, dans la litterature philosophique des Grecs, depuis les debuts jusqu'a Aristote. Les divers textes, que se sont repartis les collaborateurs du volume, sont etudies du point de vue de la grammaire et de la semantique. Chaque chapitre s'acheve sur des conclusions d'ordre philosophique, comme font aussi les trois grandes parties de l'ouvrage: philosophes preclassiques, Platon, Aristote. On trouvera en outre a la fin du volume (...) des etudes relatives au vocabulaire de l'aporia aussi bien dans la tradition arabe que chez les latins. Bibliographie et index des mots grecs etudies. (shrink)

Pendant 26 années, la couverture annuelle de Kernos a seulement varié par la tomaison, le millésime et la couleur. Le moment était donc venu de confier à un graphiste le toilettage de la revue… Sans renoncer à la forme du kernos qui nous suit depuis le début, fût-il minoen, nous avons choisi de rapprocher la ligne graphique de la revue de celle des suppléments. Vous avez le résultat entre les mains! Ce changement de graphisme ne modifie en rien nos ambitions (...) qui sont toujours de fournir, une... (shrink)