"This first English-language edition of En lisant en ecrivant will mark a turning point in the public reception of Julien Gracq. Here he emerges as the ideal critic, a reader who accompanies himself in his reading like a "polite third party." Every reader is a potential writer and every writer is a reader in actuality. Reading Writing is a subjective history of fiction and poetry and a personal meditation on the links between literature and two visual arts: painting and cinema. Gracq's poetics is founded upon the basic acts of reading and writing and on the relationship between the writer and his language."--Publisher's website.