...an English-language translation of Bident's "critical biography" of Blanchot has been due for quite some time, given that it was published in France in 1998. And now we have John McKeane to thank for stepping up to the task, lucidly translating over 600 pages that pursue the intricate twists and turns of Blanchot's long vocation as an author. The book tracks his metamorphosis from a far-right political journalist in the 1930s into a writer of literary-philosophical fiction and criticism positioned on the far left, all the way up to The Instant of My Death at the close of the millennium.-- "Los Angeles Review of Books"
An essential addition to the library of anyone seriously interested in Maurice Blanchot and the evolutions of literary and philosophical thinking in twentieth-century France.---Lydia Davis
Bident has scored a double triumph with his biography: It situates a major writer squarely in his time, and it extends and enriches our understanding of that time by revealing a diverse tradition of original writing that for too long has remained in the shadows. Bident's prose is clear and sinewy, with a lightness of touch when it comes to close analysis, yet with a capacity to burgeon briefly into telling metaphors and pithy turns of phrase. As one of his correspondents wrote to Blanchot when the book appeared in French, 'It has the immense merit of finally obliging the readers of your work to face up to their responsibilities. From now on there can be no excuse for invoking some veil of secrecy. In that sense, the post-Bident era should be very different from the pre-Bident one.'---Michael Holland, Oxford Unviersity
Finally available in English, John McKeane's crisp and elegant translation of Christophe Bident's Maurice Blanchot is an event of the first magnitude. Illuminating the life and writing of perhaps the most compelling, unsettling, and wondrously enigmatic author of the last century, Bident discerns in Blanchot what he calls narrative writing. Either neglected or shrouded in secrecy and silence, the oeuvre is taken up and studied exactingly in view of the difficult and shifting contexts in which it took shape. In its method and execution Bident's critical biography stands as a major point of reference in twentieth-century studies.---Tom Conley, Harvard University
Navigating his way through the private life of a man who, more than any other writer of his era, shunned publicity and erected a protective wall around himself, Bident attempts to respect that fiercely guarded privacy while at the same time including all the detailed information about Blanchot's austere personal life that he was able to gather over years of intensive research.-- "The New York Review of Books"