La Veille by Roger Laporte

La Veille Reviews

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  Alex Obrigewitsch

  This book is a writer's book, a writer's reading - reading for writers, reflecting on their own impossible endeavor. Laporte, more than any other (excepting, of course, Blanchot) is the writer's writer - the life of writing, the bios of graphe here opened in the work of (re)inscribing biography.
  
  And what is this wake, this watch, occurring without occurring in this evening, as La Veille? A waiting, wakeful, watchful, as Blanchot has (later) attested, au neutre - that is, outside of the self, in the lifeless life, the spaceless space which writing opens in its suspension of time? What is it besides the interminable instant or instance of writing - of a radical passivity in act, of being absolutely open so as to close in on an intractable prey, only to find that one has, in writing, already succumbed to its trap? Is it any wonder that Pierre Madaule quotes from this work in the exergue to the first section of his Une tâche sérieuse?
  
  This work is, in a manner, nothing but an attempt - a failure, faltering, in attempting to watch over, to trap, lying in wait for the instant at which to strike and capture writing in its being-written. An impossible endeavor, as Laporte came to realize. And yet, so very important a realization. How has this work not yet been translated into English? Have we even yet, even now, begun to approach writing?