The Rules of the Game: Scraps (Volume 2)

In this second volume of his acclaimed four-volume autobiography, Rules of the Game--now available for the first time in English--Leiris comes to terms with self-reflection as disillusionment. In the midst of doubts about his own motives in writing an autobiography, he recalls that life, after all, has delights worth remembering: sights at the end of the world and the beginning of time, palm trees, breadfruit trees, colossal ferns. But even these things surrounded people living in miserable conditions. What could be said of human life, or of his own life, when his memory was unreliable, his eyesight failing, his mood in the bottom of a hole?

Eminent poet, essayist, anthropologist, art critic, and author of over twenty books, Michel Leiris (1901-1990) is one of the most important French writers of the twentieth century. He deeply influenced Lévi-Strauss and Foucault, and was a member of the celebrated group that included Bataille, Jacob, Picasso, de Beauvoir, Gris, Césaire, and Miró. Biffures [Scratches], volume 1 of his four-part autobiography, was first published in 1948, and is also available in translation from Johns Hopkins. Fourbis [Scraps], volume 2, first appeared in 1955.Lydia Davis has translated more than 25 books, including works by Sartre, Maurice Blanchot, Michel Butor, and Georges Simenon. Recipient of Ingram Merrill Foundation and NEA fellowships, and a Whiting Writers Award, she is the author of a short story collection, Break It Down, and a novel, The End of the Story.