If Kafka had been a woman. If Rilke had been born a Jewish Brazilian born in the Ukraine. If Rimbaud had been a mother, if he had reached the age of fifty. If Heidegger had been able to stop being German, if he written the Romance of the Earth.

Thus Cixous waxes on Clarice Lispector. Lispector is a recurring theme throughout this collection of essays. Her first bane becomea becalmed verb. I have always wanted to read Lispector and these essays didn't really affect that. I liked Stigmata much more than Coming To Writing, though the titular piece does reach the incredible. Cixous broaches other arts here, music and painting and I was left unable to prosper. Underfunded and footsore. So it goes. When you're down and out.

There appears to be two thrusts of Cixous' work: the "fictional" narrative pieces and these more abrupt meditations. I am not sure where to place her works on Derrida: somewhere outside of genre walls, clinging to hyphens entwined in great vats of distilled bliss. That would be my technical assessment, anyway.