SOURCE: “Maurice Blanchot, the Story, and the Vicious Circle,” in New Orleans Review, Vol. 15, No. 2, Summer, 1988, pp. 35-40.

In the following essay, Everman provides an analysis of The Madness of the Day, drawing attention to the paradoxical circularity of its premise and elaborations. According to Everman, “Blanchot's text establishes itself, repeats itself to infinity, and cancels itself at the same time by establishing its own impossibility.”

The act of writing is interminable, incessant.

—Maurice Blanchot

Like Finnegans Wake, Maurice Blanchot’s brief text La Folie du jour (The Madness of the Day) is a circle and, as such, the scene of its own infinite repetition. But it is an imperfect circle which turns in upon itself and yet transcends itself at the same time to question not only itself and its own possibility but also the very possibility of storiness and of all that storiness implies for our...