"[And] she stared at me, but in a strange way, as if I had been in back of myself, and infinitely far back."

Precious: sending plaster casts of a hand to a palm reader. Decadent the first time, but when it happens twice in the same novel (against all odds!) one thinks this surely must be a trope of Huysmans's (Huysmans sentenced to death the same year Blanchot sentenced to be born), or is the mechanical conveyance of plaster a conceit to avoid the dread-ful fortune-teller scene (Impossible to pull off in literature, not even by Kleist.)

Compared to the stupefied physicians of the early 20th century, overwhelmed by the pathophysiology of disease and an obligation to tonal fidelity at bedside, modern physicians are perhaps better on the margins. (Surely more accurate at prognostication than the palm read, though likely hardly less halting.)

"[Infidelity's] merit is to keep [a] story in reserve,"
On infidelity to a tone. A sad moment becomes happy, or there is a moment of comedy or delirious-transcendence ("A perfect rose"), but only to return to a greater silent despair; though Blanchot may not be aware that the sadness turned to humor turned to sadness can become (burnt) humor again at the final moment. (Compare this to the vision of 'silence beyond silence beyond silence.')

"[But] the road wants to see if the man who is coming is really the one who should be coming: it turns around to see who he is. [. . .] Unhappy is the path that turns around to look at the man walking on it;" ( )

我甚至有理由这样设想：如果我当时就可以像现在这样，更经常地与之为伴，给它坐在我桌边、躺在我身旁的权力，而不是满足于只与它进行片刻的亲密接触（在那些短暂的接触里，它展示出不可一世的力量，而我的力量则以一种更大的傲慢擒住它），那我们之间不会如此陌生，双方悲伤的程度不会如此不同，亦不会缺乏绝对的坦诚，我对它的意图或许也会有所了解。这执念自己都不曾了解自己的意图，我的疏离使它变得如此冷漠，这冷漠又将这执念压在玻璃板下，沦为顽固梦想的猎物。

我把自己锁在房间，整栋房子都无旁人，房外亦几无一人，但孤独本身开始张口说话，我则不得不反过来言说这一说话的孤独。不是想要嘲弄它，而是因为有一个更大的孤独盘旋于它之上，而在这更大的孤独之上，还有更大的孤独。每个孤独都相继接话，想要压制那话语，让它沉默，结果反而都在无限重复它，并使无限变成它的回声。

Eh....? your guess is as good as mine. I have almost no idea what that was all about. It feels like the literary equivalent of a David Lynch film. I gave 3-stars just because it does cause some reactions in the mind which is more than you can say about every book.

My theory is that its about a 'Lars and the Real Girl' type situation in which the protagonist is in a relationship with a sculpture of his dead girlfriends head and hands, or possibly 2-different womans sculptured parts but i mean, i really don't know what else to make from it.
My original thought was that he was a necrophiliac and had the dead women embalmed and was keeping them in a closet. :lol . ( )

This book barely made sense. I think that was intentional, actually, and it certainly came across as a very artsy novella, with lots of 'deep' introspection, and occasionally an idea that was pretty good. Most of this novella though is so vague that it drags like a dead weight. Considering the death theme in this story, that may be appropriate too, but it doesn't make for a very enjoyable read. ( )

I have been rendered somewhat speechless by this book. It is so surreal that I really don't know what happened or what to say about it. It appears to be written in two sections. In the first, the narrator details his interactions with J., a dying young woman. The second part takes place during the bombing of Paris during WWII. The first part is much more lucid with something that resembles a story. The second part is not -- reading summaries/reviews it apparently revolves around three women, but I only remember one.

Part of my frustration is that early on Blanchot teases the reader with hints of what is to come: "{This story} could actually be told in ten words. That is what makes it so awful. There are ten words to say." A few pages later, he describes a mysterious attack a woman has after she attempts to open a closest door where the narrator kept "proof of these events". As the narrator continued to drop hints about the awful events, I found myself reading faster and faster to discover what happened. However, the narrator is never able to say those ten words or describe "the events". I believe this is the authors intention - to meditate on the impossibility of language and words to convey one's experiences. However, I needed a few more markers, a few more bread crumbs to help me follow his tortuous intent.

It is a book that would have been greatly helped by an introduction or a translators note -- something that frames the book and sets realistic expectations. I think if I reread it, I will enjoy it tremendously. ( )