For Work / Against Work
Debates on the centrality of work

Thomas the Obscure

by Blanchot, Maurice (1988)

Abstract

Before Sartre, before Beckett, before Robbe-Grillet, Maurice Blanchot created the "new novel, " the ultimate post-modern fiction. Written between 1932 and 1940, Blanchot's first novel contains all the remarkable aspects of his famous and perplexing invention, "the ontological narrative"-a tale whose subject is the nature of being itself. This paradoxical work discovers being in the absence of being, mystery in the absence of mystery, both to be searched for limitlessly. As Blanchot launches this endless search in his own masterful way, he transforms the possibilities of the novel. First issued in English in 1973 in a limited edition.

Key Passage

What strange light is this which falls upon me? Could the effort to expel my­self from every created thing have made of me the supreme creator? Having stretched all my strength against being, I find myself again at the heart of creation. Myself, working against the act of creating, I have made myself the creator. (p.108)

Keywords

Literature, Artwork, Novel, Writing, Creation, Creator

Themes

Work in Literature, Thomas the Obscure

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