“A signal event for literary and cultural studies in the English-speaking world. As crucial essays on individual authors, as a major work of literary theory, as an important means of access to the 1940s in French culture, as an exemplary work combining reading and theory—it is of great importance to us today.”—J. Hillis Miller, University of California, Irvine

“This collection of essays and reviews from the 1940s is about the ‘fiery part’ of literary language that burns through the aesthetic illusions and the easy referentiality of everyday language. . . . This collection is indepensable to any attempt to understand the years between Heidegger/Benjamin and Derrida/Man.”—Choice