Literary Nonfiction. Translated from the French by Jeanine Herman. This first English-language edition of En lisant en écrivant will mark a turning point in the public reception of Julien Gracq. Here he emerges as the ideal critic, a reader who accompanies himself in his reading like a "polite third party." Every reader is a potential writer and every writer is a reader in actuality. READING WRITING is a subjective history of fiction and poetry and a personal meditation on the links between literature and two visual arts: painting and cinema. Gracq's poetics is founded upon the basic acts of reading and writing and on the relationship between the writer and his language.

Author City: Saint-Florent-le-Vieil FRA

Born in 1910 at Saint-Florent-le-Vieil, where he lived until his death in 2007, Julien Gracq was one of France's eminent postwar writers. His oeuvre includes essays, criticism, journalism, and novels. Gracq was a majestic, retiring, and misunderstood figure in French literature. He refused the Goncourt Prize when it was awarded to him in 1951.