Description

Books are central to the work of Jean-Luc Godard, avid reader of pulp fiction and philosophical treatises, classical drama and modernist novels, scientific tomes and Maoist doctrine, comic books and volumes of art history. Books inform Godard's thinking and inspire his work in a manner unlike that of any other filmmaker. Godard and his characters quote from books incessantly, altering and inflecting them in ways which provide an entry into his thoughts and his aesthetic, derived in large part from its literary component. How are viewers of his films to navigate this dizzying subterranean world of quotations, adaptations, references, homages and borrowings? In this one-of-a-kind volume, 50 specialists working in a dozen countries engage with 109 individual books by 90 authors found over nearly 70 years of Godard's films and writings. Each of these readable three-page mini-essays explores a corner of the extraordinary breadth and depth of Godard's reading, introducing the volume to the reader and unlocking its importance to Godard. Reading with Jean-Luc Godard is not only an invaluable tool for the study of Godard's films; it sheds new light on cinema's longstanding dialogue with the printed word and makes an original and lively contribution to writing the history of ideas. Fredric Jameson contributes both a preface and a coda to bookend Reading with Jean-Luc Godard. An extensive bibliography rounds out the volume to encourage readers to seek out some of the books they will discover and want to explore on their own as they read along with Godard.