Stanisław Lem, Michael Kandel (translator) · 1971 · PDF · Calibre ID 7480
Resurfaced in Nothing, Reviewed (2026-10-17).
Role in the triad
Anchor: the impossible blank book, reviewed; the extreme position (nothing reached only by language’s self-annihilation)
Why this book
The ‘Rien du tout, ou la consequence’ review is a pure thought experiment: a novel of total negation whose critic admits the reader supplies everything (railway station, erotic encounter). Supplies the review form and the claim that a decent literature must cease rather than end.
Quotations
Verified against the book’s own text on the day of the reading.
- “It was necessary, then—and herein is the consequence—to write nothing.” (p. 71)
- “Total freedom is total paralysis in literature.” (p. 72)
- “Instead of a print we obtain an exact negative, that is all. The nature of an innovation must be ontological, and not simply grammatical!” (p. 74)
- “Nonbeing is already known to us in literature, but only as a certain Lack—of Something—for Someone.” (p. 75)
- “How can a thing be in bad taste which is not there at all?!” (p. 76)
- “The novel does not end: it ceases.” (p. 79)
- “a critique of a book that not only does not exist but also cannot.” (p. 4)
Themes
antinovel · Barthes degree zero · Borges’s Pierre Menard · erotics of the blank · imaginary books · negation · nouveau roman · ontological vs grammatical nothing · pseudo-review · reader’s responsibility · Solange Marriot