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the complete review - literature

Why I Have Not Written
Any of My Books

by
Marcel Bénabou

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

A- : enjoyable meditation on the (not) writing of books

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "In very few pages, Benabou, addresses conflicting impulses between writing and reading, writing and living, following great models and being original. And he has a great deal of gentle self-deprecating fun while doing it. But this isn't just about the wordplay beloved of French modernists. At base it is a lovely book about the love of books and of language and all that goes into making them" - Publishers Weekly
  
  
• "Wrapped in hilarious self-ironizing waffle, it is a serious, largely autobiographical account, by one of the leading members of the Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle, of how difficult it is to write a book. (...) Much of this book is in fact a meditation on the other tradition that Benabou carries within him, the one that he acquired from his Moroccan Jewish childhood, and which fetishizes not just The Book, and books in general, but books in French in particular. (...) David Kornacker’s version is solidly faithful, sometimes almost word for word; unfortunately, Benabou’s amusing rhetoric can sound arch, even pompous, in English" - David Bellos, Times Literary Supplement
  
  
• "Wie Proust, der aus Angst, sein Werk nicht rechtzeitig beginnen zu können, Seite um Seite seiner Recherche füllt, an deren Ende er bereit ist, das geschriebene Buch zu schreiben, wie Mallarme, der unzählige fliegende Zettel, rätselhafte Kryptogramme seines Universal Buches hinterließ, hat Marcel Benabou ein unmögliches Werk vollbracht. Er hat ein Buch geschrieben, das kein Buch ist. Das reine NichtBuch. Eine Art mahnendes Demonstrationsgerippe, ein Buch von beeindruckender Blöße auf dem Laufsteg der bunten Herbstmodelle." - Iris Radisch, Die Zeit

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Why I Have Not Written Any of My Books is chronicle of the attempt to write a book and a meditation on the inevitable failure to do so (even, as, of course it meets with some success: there is a finished book to show for it, after all; note also that Bénabou is the author of numerous other books, published both before and after this one). Bénabou aims very high: as Warren Motte notes in his Preface, he wants it not to be: "merely a book but rather be the book, something like the Book of all books."
       Bénabou is torn between his aspirations -- he knows what he wants his book to be -- and the difficulties of actually creating what he envisions; he's also keenly aware of the futility of the task he sets himself. Part of what holds him back is a kind of super-literacy: so familiar is he with books and their creation, that he can not help but compare his efforts to those that came before him -- and, of course, finds his wanting. So, for example, each section of Why I Have Not Written Any of My Books is prefaced by one or several epigraphs -- each of which, of course, perfectly (and succinctly) express what Bénabou struggles to convey.
       His ideal of the book is clear enough -- in the abstract --, from what a title should be to how it should begin -- but he gets completely caught up and ultimately tangled in his ideal(s). An Oulipian master, he does so beautifully and very cleverly, the text constantly reflecting and refracting what he is writing about.
       Bénabou reports that he's managed: "a great quantity of first pages", and even, a few times, completed some first chapters, but the grand whole eludes. While it's the follow-through to the end that he has the most trouble with, beginnings, in particular, are important to him, and Bénabou breaks down the writing of his book into some of its basic pieces, with sections devoted to the 'Title' and 'First Page'.
       Even at the most basic level he finds himself tripped up, as when he just considers the use of words:

     As today, I particularly loved those moments when language appeared to me naked. It was enough for a slighty unusual word to issue from a mouth where I wasn't expecting it to leave me feeling somewhat overwhelmed. The word would immediately disarticulate the discourse that was bearing it, invalidate the logic of the reasoning in progress, and, having created a void around itself, surface alone, filling all the senses with its unusual sonority.

What good are books that can by definition be only rough sketches for the one that one wishes to write !

- M.A.Orthofer, 21 June 2012

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Links:

• University of Nebraska Press publicity page
• Seuil publicity page
• Anagrama publicity page

• Kirkus Reviews
• main tenant (French)
• Il Mattino (Italian)
• Publishers Weekly
• www.wo(lfgang)del(seit).de (German)
• Die Zeit (German)

• Reading Marcel Bénabou by Warren Motte

• Official site

• Dump This Book While You Still Can !
• To Write on Tamara ?

• See Index of Oulipo books at the complete review
• See Index of French literature
• See Index of Literary Essays

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About the Author:

       Marcel Bénabou is a member of the OuLiPo and has written several books.

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