Behold an Animal: Four Exorbitant Readings

The animal is a lure: an unfinished figure fleeing the frame,crossing bounds of period,genre,even medium and language. Its flight traces an exorbitant (self-)portrait in which thinking admits to its commerce with life and flesh.

Format: Hardback
Length: 312 pages
Publication date: 30 June 2023
Publisher: Northwestern University Press

Behold an Animal: Four Exorbitant Readings delves into the enigmatic presence of incongruous animals in the works of four prominent contemporary French writers. Jean-Philippe Toussaint's novel features an airborne horse, Éric Chevillard explores extinct orangutans, Marie NDiaye portrays stray dogs, and Marie Darrieussecq weaves a narrative centered around vanishing hedgehogs. Thangam Ravindranathan challenges the conventional notion that an animal in a story is merely a literal or metaphorical entity, instead suggesting that it serves as a catalyst for something absent. The animal, he argues, emerges as an unfinished figure, traversing boundaries of time, genre, medium, and language. Its flight traces an extravagant self-portrait, where thinking confesses its entanglement with life and flesh. Within the realm of literature, it is through its animals that we may find ourselves closest to philosophy, as they exist simultaneously in a realm of unbearable realism and exquisite unreality.

This book primarily explores the contemporary French novel and engages with the works of Jean de La Fontaine, Eadweard Muybridge, Edgar Allan Poe, Lewis Carroll, Samuel Beckett, and Francis Ponge. Through these diverse literary and philosophical lenses, Behold an Animal: Four Exorbitant Readings offers a profound exploration of the animal's role in shaping narratives and the philosophical implications it carries.

Weight: 633g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780810140721