The Word From Paris: Essays on Modern French Thinkers and Writers

by John Sturrock, Charles P. Sturrock

An elegant guide to twentieth-century French literature and thought. The Word from Paris is a lucid and accessible guide to the literature and thought of twentieth-century France. John Sturrock ranges over the broad landscape of French writing, clarifying the various intellectual movements that have marked its recent history. In a series of definitive essays, John Sturrock discusses writers such as Proust, Celine, Sarraute and Perec; thinkers such as Foucault, Althusser, Lacan and Derrida; and that peculiarly French figure, the writer/ Sartre, Camus and Barthes. He analyses such developments as Existentialism, the New Novel, Structuralism and the OuLiPo. This elegant and illuminating journey through both celebrated and sometimes relatively neglected texts is an invaluable initiation into French intellectual and literary culture this century.

Genres: Philosophy, Essays, France

224 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1998

About the author

John Anning Leng Sturrock was an English writer, editor, reviewer and translator who was closely associated with the Times Literary Supplement and later the London Review of Books.

Reviews

[Theediscerning]

The introduction here claims the book settles in a ground between the journalistic and the academic, and yet admits the contents almost wholly come from the TLS and the LRB. Anyone who has experienced those – or these pages – knows there is a lot less of the journalistic, and far too much of the academic. And so this proves. The first half has a bit of a Thinkers 101 about it, where you get a snapshot of the theories of the French philosophers and suchlike, but that's buried in the mishmash of academe. The second half turns to writers, from Proust up to Perec (and yes, it's typical that what was of least interest to me came in a triple dose, that which had most interest came last). This is much more readable, more understandable, and hitting a sense of summary and less of high-falutin' discourse. It might be the word from Paris, but it's an obscurantist one, and the title may be said leave out the sub-phrase "...the ivory towers of…".

[Vik]

Great idea to write a book on contemporary french intellectuals but badly executed.