Dump This Book While You Still Can! (Stages)
Benabou writes like Borges in love. The book's title is a ruse:  this is a playful, gentle, and wondrous tale of a writer in  search of both true love and truth in print. Benabou is a cult  author in France, where he is "definite provisional" secretary  of the experimental writers' group OuLiPo (which has boasted  Marcel Duchamp and Italo Calvino as members); American academic  journals have devoted whole issues to him. This book is a  chamber piece in four movements, framed by a clever overture and  stunning coda and telling the story of a man obsessed with the  meaning of an obscure text. Like Umberto Eco's sprawling  mysteries, Benabou's slim volume is packed with witty references  to various other texts, whether arcane, obvious, or entirely  invented. But erudition here does not get in the way of a strong  narrative voice. This sweetly melancholic book is a real find  for anyone who considers reading an activity and who rejoices in  the fusion of high modernism, cabala, textual sleuthing, and a  healthy dose of self-irony. Recommended for larger public  libraries and all academic libraries. Ulrich Baer, NYUCopyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.