Description
Book SynopsisCelebrates the particular communication of thoughts that takes place by means of the business of writing, producing, and selling books. This book features a semiology of the cultural practice that begins with the character of the writer's voice and culminates in a customer's crossing the bookstore threshold, package under arm, on the way home.
Trade Review"Delights the mind with its turns of phrase, its creative reinterpretations of ordinary concepts, and its remarkable rigor." -- -Sander van Maas Utrecht University and University of Amsterdam "More than an eloge to books and bookstores, or to the book or the bookstore, Jean-Luc Nancy's evocative essay reminds us of the crucial link between reading and politics that keeps open the possibility of enlightenment. Nancy touches suggestively on the book as what Stephane Mallarme called 'a spiritual instrument,' illuminating the epochal philosophical and religious developments for which books have been the indispensable material support. Nancy's book contains the philosophical weight and literary flair that has made him one of the most important thinkers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. As David Wills helpfully points out in the preface to his excellent translation, Nancy's thoughts on books and bookstores extend his reflection on the possibility of the truly singular plurality of community." -- -Kevin McLaughlin Brown University "Opening this little 'Aleph' of a book is a most extraordinary adventure; the universe and how we know it unfolds in startling profundity. I thought I knew what a book was until I read this, but Nancy has set me off again in search of the million things a book can be." -- -Lewis Buzbee author of The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop
