Marcel Benabou's Books

Why I Have Not Written Any of My Books

By: Marcel Benabou

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Why I Have Not Written Any of My Books

By: Marcel Benabou

Marcel Bénabou is quick to acknowledge that his own difficulty in writing has plenty of company. Words stick and syntax is stubborn, meaning slips and synonyms cluster. A blank page taunts and a full one accuses. Bénabou knows the heroic joy of depriving critics of victims, the kindness of sparing publishers decisions, and the public charity of leaving more room in bookstore displays. Why I Have Not Written Any of My Books (Pourquoi je n’ai écrit aucun de mes livres) provides both a respectful litany of writers’ fears and a dismissal of the alibis offered to excuse them.

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Page Count

140

Publisher

U of Nebraska Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

080326139X

ISBN 13

9780803261396

Jacob, Menahem, and Mimoun

A Family Epic

By: Marcel Benabou

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Jacob, Menahem, and Mimoun

A Family Epic

By: Marcel Benabou

1998 National Jewish Book Award Winner for Autobiography/Memoir "A dry wit and surprising pathos infuse this "family epic," which turns out to be "merely" the telling of Benabou's failed attempt at creating his literary masterpiece. . . The reader shares his initial hopefulness as he details his younger self's ambitious plans for a family epic, founded in memory, supplemented by ever-growing mountains of scholarly documentation . . . and formally grounded in a literary model of the past that, ultimately, eludes him. In telling the stories of his three selected ancestors, Jacob, Menahem, and Mimoun, Benabou notices that his youthful project has not disappeared. He's decided to let his book tell itself; he'll merely hitch himself to the story and go along for the ride in this artistic tour-de force, by turns playful and serious."--Kirkus Reviews Jacob, Menahem, and Mimoun delves into Marcel Bénabou's uncommon family history while reflecting on the mysteries of memory, the past, and writing. Born in Morocco in 1939 to a Jewish family, Bénabou left his home at age seventeen to study ancient history in Paris. Bénabou's memoir returns to his childhood in Morocco--to his parents, their home, and the Jewish community in Meknes. At the same time he accounts for all that has changed, including his very different life in Paris and the disappearance of the world of his childhood. He notes how he has turned from his family's wish that he become a rabbi to his absorption, as an adult, in several millennia of secular literature. And he worries about how his "family epic"--an epic meant to include the history of Morocco's Jews--has become a book about himself and his inability to write the great book he has long imagined--the book one owes oneself and the world. The impossibility of fully recovering the past hovers over his memories. And the impossibility of writing a book about that past is also there--an impossibility that Bénabou acknowledges, delineates, and, in a real if also provisional sense, transcends. In his inspired attention to that impossibility, Bénabou has written a book that transforms absence into presence and the past into rich matter for the present. Marcel Bénabou lives in Paris and pursues his current positions as professor at the University of Paris and as the permanent provisional secretary of Oulipo, that unsettling association of indefatigably innovative writers. Steven Rendall is a professor in the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Oregon. He is the author of Distinguo: Reading Montaigne Differently and the translator of many books including Jürgen Habermas's Berlin Republic (Nebraska 1997). Warren Motte is a professor of French at the University of Colorado. He is the author of several books including Playtexts: Ludics in Contemporay Literature (Nebraska 1995).

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Page Count

248

Publisher

U of Nebraska Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0803261934

ISBN 13

9780803261938

Dump this Book While You Still Can!

By: Marcel Bänabou

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Dump this Book While You Still Can!

By: Marcel Bänabou

The narrator discovers a strange book on his desk. He opens the book and it tells him to stop reading and throw it away.

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Page Count

216

Publisher

U of Nebraska Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0803213190

ISBN 13

9780803213197

To Write on Tamara?

By: Marcel Bänabou

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To Write on Tamara?

By: Marcel Bänabou

As stubborn, as surprising, as artful as life in its refusal to conform to a particular literary genre, Marcel Bänabou?s book is at once a memoir and a novel, a confession and a reflection on the prerogatives and imperatives of writing one?s story. At its center, forever alluring and elusive, is the beautiful and ethereal Tamara, the exact incarnation of our narrator?s most enduring fantasy?a femme fatale for the lover of form. Who precisely our narrator is, is less certain: The young Manuel, who leaves his home in Morocco to study in Paris, only to encounter the enticing Tamara? Or the mature Manuel, looking back not only at Tamara but also at the younger man?s reading of his experience through the pages of the literature of sentimental apprenticeship, from Stendhal?s The Red and the Black through Flaubert?s Sentimental Education? A heady, genre-defying high-wire act by a writer who delights in such undertakings and whose efforts consistently delight readers worldwide, To Write on Tamara? captures with graceful authority and assurance the now thrilling, now vexing complexities of living and writing life?s stories, especially stories of love.

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Page Count

200

Publisher

U of Nebraska Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0803213360

ISBN 13

9780803213364

The Germany Illusion

Between Economic Euphoria and Despair

By: Marcel Fratzscher

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The Germany Illusion

Between Economic Euphoria and Despair

By: Marcel Fratzscher

Europe is in a period of transition and there is great uncertainty about its direction. No country plays a greater role in influencing Europe's future path than Germany, which is either seen as overbearing or indecisive in its imposition of policies-and sometimes is seen as both at once. In The Germany Illusion, Marcel Fratzscher provides a distinctive corrective to common misunderstandings of Germany's domestic political economy and how it affects its European and global roles. Fratzscher's trenchant analysis sheds light on the true state of Germany's economy, which is neither as rosy as optimists believe nor as hidebound as pessimists fear. He covers the breadth of the German economy, from its deceptive employment miracle, the sources and underlying problems of its export strengths, its large investment gap, and not least the differences between east and west that continue since reunification. Understanding the domestic scene in Germany is crucial to understanding its relationships with other European countries, the European Union, and the United States. Fratzscher traces the sources and implications of the differences and conflict between Germany and its neighbors on European policymaking generally and in particular during the European economic and financial crisis, the Brexit debate, the refugee crisis, the rising populism and protectionism in the United States and in Europe, and over fundamental reforms of European institutions. The Germany Illusion is a balanced and nuanced examination of pressing and complex issues that enhances our understanding of German policies-the strengths and weaknesses, the possibilities and the limits. It also proposes a realistic path for Germany to re-engage with its European neighbors and with the United States, and to help re-build Europe's future.

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Page Count

233

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0190676590

ISBN 13

9780190676599

Rural Poverty, Risk and Development

By: Marcel Fafchamps

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Rural Poverty, Risk and Development

By: Marcel Fafchamps

This book investigates the relationships between rural poverty, risk, and development. Building upon the author's work in the area, it summarises the contributions of recent theoretical and empirical work to our understanding of how risk affects rural poverty levels in developing countries. In particular the book examines what we do and do not know about risk coping strategies among today's poor rural societies. Ways in which these strategies may be re-examined and improved by governments and international organisations are proposed.

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