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What
is the Second Circle?
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Time
and again our eyes were brought together
by
the book we read; our faces flushed and paled
Dante,
Inferno
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T
H
E S E C O N
D C I R C L
E
p
r o f i l e
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LES EDITIONS DE MINUIT
profiled
by Fin Keegan
HOW TO ENCAPSULATE the multiple achievements of the venerable Parisian
publishing house, les Editions de Minuit? During the war which gave
rise to its foundation, the clandestinely produced Minuit played a
decisive role in keeping alive French national spirit at home and
abroad. Then, in the 1950s and 60s it became nothing less than the
writer's writer's writers publishing house, Vatican of the Nouveau
Roman. And in the last decade a new generation of Minuit novelists
have been carrying off the major French literary prizes, taking both
the Prix Medicis and Goncourt in 1999.
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LES EDITIONS DE MINUIT
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Outside of France, it was Minuit's mid-century association with the
Nouveau Roman which made the press famous: the stable of writers
assembled by editor Jerome Lindon remains legendary, including
Sarraute, Duras, Simon, Pinget, Robbe-Grillet (himself a reader for Minuit
since 1954) and Butor. The greatest writer of this generation
stands apart from these but shares the same publisher and counted a
number of them among his friends and creative peers: it was at Minuit
that Samuel Beckett's late but steady ascent onto the respectable
bookshelves of the world began.
And yet, even without this crowd of turtleneck hipsters, Minuit
would have earned an honoured place in the annals of European
civilization for its wartime contribution to the French Resistance.
In fact Anne Simenon's engrossing Les Editions de Minuit 1942-1955
runs to over 500 pages with hardly a word about the middle-period
achievment. Begun by Jean Bruller ["Vercors"] and Pierre de Lescure in
a necessarily shady association, Minuit's first publication was the
wartime best-seller and Resistance touchstone Le Silence De La Mer by
Vercors. Among other writers published in the famous opening fusillade
of pamphlets were the distinctly unMinuit icons of Paul Eluard and
Louis Aragon.
The key to Minuit's post-war succcess has been Jerome Lindon, Director
of the press since 1948 and in charge up to his death in 2001 (daughter Irene
was the annointed successor). Lindon's was a critical
sensibility: the last fifty years of European letters have been decisively
influenced by his soundness and dedication. His love of good
prose led him to publish literature by a wide array of serious
writers, from a teenage schoolgirl who matured into prodigious
adulthood (Marie NDiaye), to a newspaper seller whose kiosk was an
al fresco literary salon (Jean Rouaud) and an impecunious émigré who
spent the last half of his life whittling his itinerant comedies down
to spiritual elementals (You Know Who). As a result Minuit is the
original publisher of both some of Europe's current literary
bestsellers (Jean Echenoz's Je M'en Vais; Christian Oster's Mon Grand
Appartement) and some of last century's best-selling books (Waiting
For Godot, The Lover).
Perhaps the best way to capture the Minuit spirit is to judge the book
by its cover: from phenomenological sub-malaise to wry musings on the
endless rain of Loire-Atlantique, these books have all been wrapped in
the consummate cool of Minuit's crisp blue type on white paper
jackets--which are to this day imageless and blurbless.
Fin Keegan
Contributions to The Second Circle by Fin Keegan
The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
The Palace of Dreams by Ismail
Kadare
Omon Ra by Victor Pelevin
The "Loire-Atlantique" Cycle by Jean Rouaud
The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald
Pereira Declares by Antonio Tabucchi
Justine by Alice
Thompson
Brief Reviews including Donald Antrim and John Lanchester
A Profile of
the Harvill Press
A Profile of
the Editions de Minuit
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