Dump This Book While You Still Can!

by Marcel Bénabou

Book Overview

In one of the most thought-provoking and wry books by one of the most intriguing contemporary writers in French literature, readers become party to the dilemma of "challenging" literature in a singularly involving and amusing fashion. Opening a book that has mysteriously appeared amid the clutter of his desk, the narrator finds himself exhorted not to read further, to throw the book away Instead (but of course) he tries different strategies for approaching...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803261861
• ISBN13: 9780803261860
• Release Date: September 2001
• Publisher: Bison Books
• Length: 177 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.0" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Fun Book For The Imperfect Reader

A slender tome with a title that veritably calls out from amongst the stacks, M. Benabou's Dump This Book While You Still Can! is a satisfyingly unusual work of prose. There is no traditional plot line to speak of. In fact, the entire book revolves around a singular setting - a bachelor's Parisian apartment - and features a cast of vibrant characters, of whom only one (the narrator) plays a prominent role. The story itself (if we may refer to the narrative as such) revolves around the simple act of reading, only made not-so-simple by the rather obsessive narrator. An obscure, unfamiliar book surfaces in the narrator's home, which opens with a hostile diatribe against reading any further: "Come on, dump this book. Or better yet, throw it as far as away as you can. Right now. Before it's too late." Being the literary (and charmingly pretentious) sort, the narrator initially takes umbrage with this form of address and dutifully scoffs the author's feeble attempt (he says) at gaining one's attention. Before too long, though, the narrator decides that his visceral reaction is somewhat extreme, and begins to dissect the text for depths previously unseen. And it is this struggle of which the book's primary conflict is comprised. It is, in fact, quite challenging to discuss more without spoiling the story for those who have not read it (as made evident, unfortunately, by the otherwise wonderful and enlightening introduction by Warren Motte). M. Benabou plumbs the human condition in this brief tale through the somewhat detached viewpoint of a lonely man who does not see his own predicament. Written in an academic (yet ironic) vein, Dump This Book presents a character study of a special kind of bibliophile, by way of a memorably wry voice.

Some fun, some pathos

The comedy of Bénabou's book about reading, Dump This Book While You Still Can!_, is more arcane and the regret more conventionally the loss of a nubile by very elusive female (Sophie) than his (briefer) black comedy about not writing, _Why I Have Not Written Any of My Books_ (also published by Nebraska) The quotations from a wide array of western literature are less amusingly apt and less numerous than those in _Why_.The attempts to find hidden meaning in the manuscript goes on too long. Still there is some entertainment of Nabokovian/Borgian kind. (Canetti's _Auto da Fé_ popped into my mind often in reading both books, though _Auto da Fé_ has a sustained narrative rather than the many startings over of the Bénabou metafictions on writing and reading have.)The typeface is unusually and uncomfortably small in both of these books, which are not very long and have fairly large margins. Both have useful introductions explaining who Bénabou is--a task he has taken up more directly in a sort of autobiography also available in English from the University of Nebraska Press.