The Frame

by Patricia Duncker

A Cambridge graduate student working on the novels of (fictional) French writer Paul Michel seeks out the author, who is now in a mental institution, first of all to question him about his literary relationship to (real) philosopher Michel Foucault, but eventually to try to get him out of the institution. I enjoyed the exploration of the relationship between author and reader (Foucault and Michel didn’t really know each other, but they were each other’s most valued reader–when Foucault died, Michel stopped writing entirely), but beyond that wasn’t terribly intrigued.
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