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What is the Second Circle?
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Time and again our eyes were brought together
by the book we read; our faces flushed and paled
Dante, Inferno
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T H E S E C O N D C I R C L E
p r o f i l e
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LES EDITIONS DE MINUIT
profiled by Fin Keegan
HOW TO ENCAPSULATE the multiple achievements of the venerable Parisian publishing house, les Editions de Minuit? During the war which gave rise to its foundation, the clandestinely produced Minuit played a decisive role in keeping alive French national spirit at home and abroad. Then, in the 1950s and 60s it became nothing less than the writer's writer's writers publishing house, Vatican of the Nouveau Roman. And in the last decade a new generation of Minuit novelists have been carrying off the major French literary prizes, taking both the Prix Medicis and Goncourt in 1999.
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LES EDITIONS DE MINUIT
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Outside of France, it was Minuit's mid-century association with the Nouveau Roman which made the press famous: the stable of writers assembled by editor Jerome Lindon remains legendary, including Sarraute, Duras, Simon, Pinget, Robbe-Grillet (himself a reader for Minuit since 1954) and Butor. The greatest writer of this generation stands apart from these but shares the same publisher and counted a number of them among his friends and creative peers: it was at Minuit that Samuel Beckett's late but steady ascent onto the respectable bookshelves of the world began.
And yet, even without this crowd of turtleneck hipsters, Minuit would have earned an honoured place in the annals of European civilization for its wartime contribution to the French Resistance. In fact Anne Simenon's engrossing Les Editions de Minuit 1942-1955 runs to over 500 pages with hardly a word about the middle-period achievment. Begun by Jean Bruller ["Vercors"] and Pierre de Lescure in a necessarily shady association, Minuit's first publication was the wartime best-seller and Resistance touchstone Le Silence De La Mer by Vercors. Among other writers published in the famous opening fusillade of pamphlets were the distinctly unMinuit icons of Paul Eluard and Louis Aragon.
The key to Minuit's post-war succcess has been Jerome Lindon, Director of the press since 1948 and in charge up to his death in 2001 (daughter Irene was the annointed successor). Lindon's was a critical sensibility: the last fifty years of European letters have been decisively influenced by his soundness and dedication. His love of good prose led him to publish literature by a wide array of serious writers, from a teenage schoolgirl who matured into prodigious adulthood (Marie NDiaye), to a newspaper seller whose kiosk was an al fresco literary salon (Jean Rouaud) and an impecunious émigré who spent the last half of his life whittling his itinerant comedies down to spiritual elementals (You Know Who). As a result Minuit is the original publisher of both some of Europe's current literary bestsellers (Jean Echenoz's Je M'en Vais; Christian Oster's Mon Grand Appartement) and some of last century's best-selling books (Waiting For Godot, The Lover).
Perhaps the best way to capture the Minuit spirit is to judge the book by its cover: from phenomenological sub-malaise to wry musings on the endless rain of Loire-Atlantique, these books have all been wrapped in the consummate cool of Minuit's crisp blue type on white paper jackets--which are to this day imageless and blurbless. 
Fin Keegan
Contributions to The Second Circle by Fin Keegan
The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
The Palace of Dreams by Ismail Kadare
Omon Ra by Victor Pelevin
The "Loire-Atlantique" Cycle by Jean Rouaud
The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald
Pereira Declares by Antonio Tabucchi
Justine by Alice Thompson
Brief Reviews including Donald Antrim and John Lanchester
A Profile of the Harvill Press
A Profile of the Editions de Minuit
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