Marcel Benabou

As stubborn, as surprising, as artful as life in its refusal to conform to a particular literary genre, Marcel Benabou's book is at once a memoir and a novel, a confession and a reflection on the prerogatives and imperatives of writing one's story. At its center, forever alluring and elusive, is the beautiful and ethereal Tamara, the exact incarnation of our narrator's most enduring fantasy - a femme fatale for the lover of form. Who precisely our narrator is, is less certain: The young Manuel, who leaves his home in Morocco to study in Paris, only to encounter the enticing Tamara? Or the mature Manuel, looking back not only at Tamara but also at the younger man's reading of his experience through the pages of the literature of sentimental apprenticeship, from Stendhal's "The Red and the Black" through Flaubert's "Sentimental Education"? A heady, genre-defying high-wire act by a writer who delights in such undertakings and whose efforts consistently delight readers worldwide, "To Write on Tamara?" captures with graceful authority and assurance the now thrilling, now vexing complexities of living and writing life's stories, especially stories of love. Marcel Benabou lives in Paris and pursues his positions as professor of ancient history at the University of Paris and as the permanent provisional secretary of Oulipo. He is the author of "Dump This Book While You Still Can!" and "Why I Have Not Written Any of My Books", both published by the University of Nebraska Press. Steven Rendall, a professor emeritus of Romance languages at the University of Oregon, is the author of "Distinguo: Reading Montaigne Differently" and has translated numerous books.

As stubborn, as surprising, as artful as life in its refusal to conform to a particular literary genre, Marcel Bénabou's book is at once a memoir and a novel, a confession and a reflection on the prerogatives and imperatives of writing one's story. At its center, forever alluring and elusive, is the beautiful and ethereal Tamara, the exact incarnation of our narrator's most enduring fantasy—a femme fatale for the lover of form. Who precisely our narrator is, is less certain: The young Manuel, who leaves his home in Morocco to study in Paris, only to encounter the enticing Tamara? Or the mature Manuel, looking back not only at Tamara but also at the younger man's reading of his experience through the pages of the literature of sentimental apprenticeship, from Stendhal's The Red and the Black through Flaubert's Sentimental Education? A heady, genre-defying high-wire act by a writer who delights in such undertakings and whose efforts consistently delight readers worldwide, To Write on Tamara? captures with graceful authority and assurance the now thrilling, now vexing complexities of living and writing life's stories, especially stories of love.

"Una personalit , quella dello scrittore di La Vie mode d'emploi, tra le pi singolari del mondo dell'Oulipo in virt dell'attivit multiforme che la caratterizza, espressione di un progetto di sperimentazione che attraversa molti generi letterari".

En bok om varför boken du läser aldrig har kommit till, eller snarare möjligheten att du läser den ligger i alla andra böcker som inte har blivit skrivna men som innefattas i detta verk. Eller är boken bara en väntan på de böcker som egentligen ska bli skrivna. Hur förklara Varför jag inte har skrivit någon av mina böcker? Titeln Varför jag inte har skrivit någon av mina böcker är naturligtvis

In one of the most thought-provoking and wry books by one of the most intriguing contemporary writers in French literature, readers become party to the dilemma of "challenging" literature in a singularly involving and amusing fashion. Opening a book that has mysteriously appeared amid the clutter of his desk, the narrator finds himself exhorted not to read further, to throw the book away! Instead (but of course) he tries different strategies for approaching the book, none of which work. The narrator's tempestuous, increasingly obsessive relationship with the book he is determined to read, interwoven with the story of a real (but no less enigmatic) love affair, is, in its own challenging way, a charmed and charming, deeply provocative meditation upon reading and writing, and their inevitable discontents. Dump This Book offers a new angle on the work of this original writer and an ironic perspective on the power of reading to produce meaning.

Marcel Bénabou is quick to acknowledge that his own difficulty in writing has plenty of company. Words stick and syntax is stubborn, meaning slips and synonyms cluster. A blank page taunts and a full one accuses. Bénabou knows the heroic joy of depriving critics of victims, the kindness of sparing publishers decisions, and the public charity of leaving more room in bookstore displays. Why I Have Not Written Any of My Books (Pourquoi je n'ai écrit aucun de mes livres) provides both a respectful litany of writers' fears and a dismissal of the alibis offered to excuse them.