Encounters : Conversations on Life and Writing

"Isn't it ? particularly difficult to 'speak' of your work?"Frédéric-Yves Jeannet asks Hélène Cixous inthis fascinating book of interviews. "[I]t's only in writing, onpaper, ? that I reach the most unknown, the strangest, themost advanced part of me for me. I feel closer to my own mystery inthe aura of writing it," Cixous responds. These conversations, which took place over three years and coverthe creative process behind Cixous?s fictional writing,illuminate the genesis and particular genius of one ofFrance?s most original writers. Cixous muses on her"coming to writing," from her first publications to her recentacclaim for a series of fictional texts that spring, as, sheinsists all true writing does, from her life: the loss of herfather when she was a child, and her relationship with her mother,now in her tenth decade, as well as with such friends as JacquesDerrida and Jacques Lacan. The conversations delve intoCixous?s career as an academic in Paris and abroad, hersummer retreats to the Bordeaux region to write uninterrupted fortwo months, her work with Ariane Mnouchkine?sThéàtre du Soleil, her political engagements and herdreams. Readers and writers who have followed Cixous?spath-blazing career as a fiction writer who crosses boundaries ofgenre and gender while posing essential questions about the natureof narrative and life will find this a book that cannot be putdown.