I periodically like to come back to this brief 2003 article , “To Blanchot:”
To read Blanchot was to be displaced. Not placed somewhere else, but only displaced, taken away. This was no escapism but an experience of both a leaving-behind of the average everyday as well as to see both the average everyday and the exceptional anew with old eyes…Any authority, any originality I could hope to have is always derived from him, from his, which I know he would detest. It is that detestation that I love. That was Blanchot’s gift, his gift to me who would accept it openly and without guilt. It is a gift I am always tempted to return because I do not want Blanchot’s detestation for the temptation I always feel to acknowledge him, every time I sign anything ?
