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the complete review - non/fiction
A Foreigner Carrying
in the Crook of his Arm
a Tiny Book
by
Edmond Jabès
general information | our review | links | about the author
| Title: | A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of his Arm a Tiny Book |
| Author: | Edmond Jabès |
| Genre: | Non/fiction |
| Written: | 1989 (Eng. 1993) |
| Length: | 115 pages |
| Original in: | French |
| Availability: | A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of his Arm a Tiny Book - US |
| A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of his Arm a Tiny Book - UK | |
| A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of his Arm a Tiny Book - Canada | |
| Un étranger avec, sous le bras, un livre de petit format - Canada | |
| Un étranger avec, sous le bras, un livre de petit format - France | |
| Ein Fremder mit einem kleinen Buch unterm Arm - Deutschland |
- French title: Un étranger avec, sous le bras, un livre de petit format
- Translated by Rosmarie Waldrop
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Our Assessment:
B : more variations on his themes, in his usual style
See our review for fuller assessment.
The complete review's Review:
Edmond Jabès' writing is sui generis, and A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of his Arm a Tiny Book is no exception.
Here, again, is a book of fragments, dialogue, and questions, treating subjects such as writing, place, and Judaism -- yet more variations on Jabès' themes, with a particular focus here on the outsider.
The 'foreigner' of the title is actually an 'étranger'; recall that Camus' classic, L'étranger is published in English as The Stranger and The Outsider (i.e. not: 'The Foreigner').
It is the quality of foreignness, outsiderness, and estrangement that is central to this work, with Jabès presenting any number of responses to it.
The foreign(er) is subject matter, and observed and commented on; he does not partake in the dialogues.
"The foreigner remains outside. In our tastefully furnished cells, there is room only for ourselves."The foreign(er) is kept at bay:
Turning a deaf ear to appeals, noise, moans from outside, we shore up our shelters. We go from locked dwelling to one hermetically sealed.The writer is, by (Jabès') definition, a foreigner -- "because he is his words' own place" --, and the Jewish writer doubly foreign. The book (and Book) is one haven, of sorts:
The book is a "You" that temporarily makes us an "I". But the book is also something else. It is an "It" that embraces the I/You, dialogue being always in three voices.Nevertheless, every man is an island, of course, and regardless of the text: "We read only our own reading".
It's a fascinating, occasionally frustrating social-political commentary on otherness and the treatment of the Other -- with more than a whiff of the mystical-poetical to it.
Jabès' often oblique, sententious approach can be perplexing -- "The abyss is vertigo of all rebirth" ? -- but there's a good deal here that more directly addresses contemporary issues in a thoughtful and thought-provoking way. Like most of Jabès' work, A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of his Arm a Tiny Book requires a different sort of reading-approach than your general work of fiction (or non), but this is among his more approachable books, and a good starting point.
- M.A.Orthofer, 10 June 2010
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A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of his Arm a Tiny Book:
- Hanser publicity page
- Amitava Kumar's A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of his Arm a Tiny Bomb
- Rosmarie Waldrop on Recalling and Rereading Edmond Jabès in Lavish Absence
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French-writing Egyptian author Edmond Jabès lived 1912 to 1991.
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© 2010 the complete review
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