Date: 21 Jun 2000 16:51:51 -0700
Subject: Re: MB: new member


I guess your name is Janet. You don't quite say, but there's a Janet in your address. I'll call you Janet.
     I thought this was a great posting, a welcome missive from the world outside.
     My own feeling, Janet, is that you should start with Death Sentence. I think that the more overtly expository pieces may less likely grab you and keep you, and beginning there you may find it too easy to perceive Blanchot in caricature--the bloodless, hyper-academic, abstracting critic. I don't mean to say that putting him in that suit wouldn't be a mistake, but it might prove tempting, and beginning with a view of Blanchot as an actual practitioner of the craft, as they say, might help to prevent it.
     From there you'll go on eventually to levels of Blanchot where the expository and the imaginary become nearly irrelevant distinctions.
     If you're just coming to Blanchot, someone should probably level up and mention this. What you'll discover here is what one inevitably discovers, say, with the later Joyce: that if you're not in for the long haul--if you don't find you really love this shit--you'll probably give it up pretty soon. It demands--constitutes, really--a series of new ways of relating with and doing things that you've been relating with and doing all your life, maybe in the more customary ways. It's work that aggressively resists flirtation. I must say it gets pretty heavy.
     That's nothing that you can't see on your own, but possibly worth mentioning now.
     Anyway, there's no telling--you might love it. A number of people do.
     Hoping to have been a little helpful--
          empitsu


On Tue, 20 June 2000, Janetjet65-AT-aol.com wrote:

> 
> Hello,
>     I'm new to this. Please send me a suggestion as to the best work of 
> blanchot in your opinion and why you feel it is his best.
> 
> Thank You

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