Scratches

A dazzling translation by Lydia Davis of the first volume of Michel Leiriss masterwork, perhaps the most important French autobiographical enterprise of the twentieth century Michel Leiris, a French intellectual whose literary works inspired high praise from the likes of Simone de Beauvoir and Claude Lvi-Strauss, began the first volume of his autobiographical project at the age of 40. It was the beginning of an endeavor that ultimately required 35 years and three additional volumes. In Volume 1, Scratches, Leiris proposes to discover a savoir vivre, a mode of living that would have a place for both his poetics and his personal morality. I can scarcely see the literary use of speech as anything but a means of sharpening ones consciousness in order to be moreand in a better wayalive," he declares. He begins the project of uncovering memories, returning to moments and images of childhoodhis fathers recording machine, the letters of the alphabet coming to lifeand then of his later lifeParis under the Occupation, a journey to Africa, and a troubling fear of death.