Relire: enquête sur une passion littéraire by Laure Murat
Each of Laure Murat’s books is a gift in itself, mostly because of the pleasure it gives. As Laure Adler wrote in this book’s foreword: “what’s special about Laure Murat’s books is that the way they approach their topic is always strikingly original, and they stay personally disturbing in the questions they raise, questions we would probably never have thought of on our own. Laure Murat wakes us up, unsettles our habits and invites us to question ritual practices that seem banal to us.”
A common practice in teaching and the publishing professions, reading a text multiple times is a key activity in the training of a reader, yet one that is largely ignored by research subjects. Laure Murat’s survey of more than two hundred intellectuals raises questions that are as fundamental as they are inexhaustible.
What does it mean to reread? Is there really repetition when we reread? Questioning Deleuze’s concepts of difference and repetition, and Kierkegaard’s and Borges’s of reprise, Murat pursues a dialogue at the summit with the great works, and draws us in, captivated, to follow her.
Is rereading possible? “It’s in the same that we find the new, because in the new, we risk finding only the same” implied Barthes.
Does the text change? Have we, the readers, changed in-between our multiple readings? What are we looking for when we reread? To rediscover the past? Understand a text better?
With answers from two hundred leading readers (writers, university professors, publishers, etc.) including Annie Ernaux, Philippe Forrest, Jean Echenoz, Tiphaine Samoyault… Laure Murat takes us to the heart of the text as it develops in an uninterrupted dialogue with the reader; an unexpected journey to the heart of writing.
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Relire: enquête sur une passion littéraire by Laure Murat, Champs essai
