Marianne Alphant's 'Petite nuit' Blends Reading and Psychoanalysis

Marianne Alphant's book 'Petite nuit' (published by artpress) explores the intertwining of childhood reading, literary memory, and psychoanalytic experience. The work, described as a novel rather than an essay, draws on Proust's famous text 'Journées de lectures' but diverges from a conventional humanist praise of reading. Instead, it immerses the reader in a nocturnal realm where reading and analysis merge, transforming personal and family history into a dreamlike collage of text fragments and memories. The book references authors from Virgil and Homer to Virginia Woolf and Claude Simon, with a decisive emphasis on Victor Hugo, evoking a descent into evening where the dead speak. The narrative concludes with the question of what to cling to after shipwreck, answered by the imperative 'Take care of yourself. And who will do it if not books?' Philippe Forest contributed a review.