What Is There to Say?

Herman Melville's Bartleby, asked to account for himself, "would prefer not to." Tongue-tied Billy Budd, urged to defend his innocence, responds with a murderous blow. The Bavard, by Louis-René des Forêts, concerns a man whose power to speak is replaced by an inability to shut up. In these and other literary examples a call for speech throws the possibility of speaking into doubt. What Is There to Say? uses the ideas of Maurice Blanchot to clarify puzzling works by Melville, des Forêts, and Beckett. Ann Smock's energetic readings of texts about talking, listening, and recording cast an equally welcome light on Blanchot's paradoxical thought.

Author: Ann Smock
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Published: 03/01/2003
Pages: 208
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.54lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.44d
ISBN: 9780803222380

About the Author
Ann Smock is a professor of French at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of Double Dealing. She translated Maurice Blanchot's The Space of Literature and The Writing of the Disaster, as well as Sarah Kofman's Rue Ordener, Rue Labat, all published by the University of Nebraska Press.

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