FRANCE AUTHOR · BIOGRAPHY · FICTION
Michel Butor
Also known as: Michael Butor, M. Butor
Most acclaimed
A change of heart
How did a celebrated theological liberal of the mid-twentieth century have such a dramatic change of heart? After growing up in the heart of rural Methodism in Oklahoma, Thomas Oden found Marx, Nietzsche and Freud storming into his imagination. He joined the post-World War II pacifist movement and became enamored with every aspect of the liberal 1950s Student Christian Movement. Ten years before America's entry into the Vietnam war, he admired Ho Chi Minh as an agrarian patriot. For Oden, every turn was a left turn. At Yale he earned his PhD under H. Richard Niebuhr. Later during his academic year in Heidelberg he met with some of the most formidable minds of the era -- enjoying conversations with Gadamer, Bultmann and Pannenberg, as well as a lengthy discussion with Karl Barth at a makeshift office in Barth's hospital room. Being in Europe allowed Oden to attend Vatican II as an observer and to get his first taste of ancient Christianity. He traveled with his family in a VW microbus through Turkey, Syria and Israel. But slowly he stopped making left turns. His enthusiasm for pacifism, ecumenism, and the interface between theology and psychotherapy were all ambushed by varied shapes of reality. It was a challenge from a Jewish scholar, his friend and mentor Will Herberg, that precipitated his most dramatic turn -- back to the great minds of ancient Christianity. Later a meeting with then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Benedict XVI) planted the seeds for what became Oden's highly influential Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. Thomas Oden's fascinating memoir walks us through not just his personal history but some of the most memorable chapters in twentieth-century theology. - Jacket flap.
Correspondance
1994
How to reconcile the necessary loneliness of the creator and the need to build a community of spirits that are close to the neighboring requirements? For Yves Bonnefoy, sharing is the meaning of the poetic experience, in his eyes different from mere literature. One of the moments is that of writing a letter. The edition of his Correspondence associates the letters he has written with those he has received. It brings out the fabric of a life of man and poet, with its network of friendships, constant or mobile, according to alliances, chances and crumples. This first volume, begun with the collaboration of Yves Bonnefoy, brings together more than nine hundred letters exchanged in the second half of the twentieth century, to which are added some e-mails.^ The dialogues, with forty-nine correspondents, are organized around two axes: on the one hand, links from surrealism - André Breton, Pierre Alechinsky, Gilbert Lely, Christian Dotremont, George Henein, Raoul Ubac, Jacqueline Lamba, André Pieyre of Mandiargues, Hans Bellmer, Jean Brun; on the other hand, the friendships which after fifteen years led to the creation of L'Éphémère (1967-1972), the magnificent magazine published by the Maeght editions: André du Bouchet, Jacques Dupin and Gaëtan Picon , Louis-René des Forêts and Paul Celan.^ The other authors of the letters are in no way secondary characters, neither in themselves, nor by the place they occupied in the world of Bonnefoy: Gaston Bachelard, Jean Wahl and Andre Chastel, his masters; then Gilbert Lely, Salah Stétié, Pierre Jean Jouve, Gabriel Bounoure, Christiane Martin du Gard, Philippe Jaccottet, Boris Schloezer, André Frenaud, Michel Butor, Emil Cioran, Monique Wittig, Paul Benichou, Jean-Pierre Richard or Henry Corbin, for to name only them. Here you will find a wealth of information about the poet's work and the sensibility of an era, with notes enriched with excerpts from the writer's Chronology by himself, also unpublished.--Translation of page 4 of cover by Fabula.