Investigating incidents of vandalism, Chief Inspector Blognard believes that the theft of her shoes may implicate Hortense

Our Beautiful Heroine

Literature & Fiction

Jacques, Roubaud

Literary

Overlook Books

Part novel and part autobiography, The Great Fire of London is one of the great literary undertakings of the last fifty years. At various times exasperating, daunting, moving, dazzling, and challenging, it has its origins in Jacques Roubaud's attempt to come to terms with the death of his young wife Alix, whose presence both haunts and gives meaning to every page. Having failed to write his intended novel ("The Great Fire of London"), instead he creates a book that is about that failure, but in the process opens up the world of the creative process, which is at once an attempt to bring order to his ravaged personal life and to construct an intricate literary project that functions according to strict rules, one of them being the palindrome. But rather than a confessional novel about himself and his wife, Roubaud follows in the tradition of the troubadours, where the objects of grief and love are identified obliquely and through literary artifice. At all times, Alix and his angui

The Great Fire of London: A Story With Interpolations and Bifurcations

Roubaud, Jacques

Dalkey Archive Press

These restless poems meditate on sleep, night, darkness, and silence. And on sleeplessness, on waking up in the middle of the night, and on silence interrupted. Making tight loops and insistent returns, the words split and dissolve into silence, just as everything falls quiet and still, just as sleep begins to wash over you―when the light comes on, or the faucet drips, or a branch scratches the window. A slightly different pattern emerges as the words are reassembled, one with its own unique pattern of interruptions. Saying Poetry is a brilliant reflection on this state of distraction, which, Roubaud suggests, is essential to poetry.

Sleep Preceded By Saying Poetry

Cole Swensen

Matthew B. Smith

Fence Magazine, Incorporated

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Books by Jacques, Roubaud