Warren Motte’s treatment of the work of Edmond Jabès argues that Jabès’s work is animated by a meditation on the idea of the book. Motte contends that despite that sustained reflection, the status of the book in Jabès’s writing remains ambiguous. Indeed, his analysis shows that Jabès always defers a coherent, functional definition of the book. Motte underscores how that process of deferral—paired
... [Show full abstract] with the constant iterative process of crafting new interrelated books—has resulted in a powerful œuvre that gives the reader the sense of an ideal book, but one that never quite exists materially.