Volume 22, Number 1 · February 6, 1975
One-Man Language
By Paul Auster
Le Schizo et les langues
by Louis Wolfson, with a preface by Gilles Deleuze
Gallimard, 268 pp., 28.50F
In the preface to his novel Le Bleu du ciel,[1] Georges Bataille makes an important distinction between books that are written for the sake of experiment and books that are born of necessity. Bataille argues that the books that mean most to us are usually those which ran counter to the idea of literature that prevailed at the time they were written. He speaks of 'a moment of rage' as the kindling spark of all great works: it cannot be summoned by an act of will, and its source is always extraliterary. Self-conscious experimentation is generally the result of a real longing to break down the barriers of literary convention. But most avant-garde works do not survive; in spite of themselves, they remain prisoners of the very conventions they try to destroy. The poetry of Futurism, for example, which made such a commotion in its day, is read by hardly anyone now except scholars and historians of the period.
Review, 2568 words
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