On Bataille and Blanchot

An in-depth analysis of two of Sartre’s contemporaries, Bataille and Blanchot. Iconic French novelist, playwright, and essayist Jean-Paul Sartre is widely recognized as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, and his work has remained relevant and thought-provoking through the decades. The Seagull Sartre Library now presents some of his most incisive philosophical, cultural, and literary critical essays in twelve newly designed and affordable editions. “There is a crisis of the essay,” begins Sartre as he ventures into a long analysis of the work of one of his contemporaries who he argues might save this form: Georges Bataille. From there, Sartre moves on in this compact volume to consider Aminadab, the most important work of another hugely influential philosopher, Maurice Blanchot, through whom, writes Sartre, “the literature of the fantastic continues the steady progress that will inevitably unite it, ultimately, with what it has always been.”