Marcel Benabou
"Emeritus professor of Roman history at the Paris Diderot University, Marcel Bénabou's work focuses on ancient Rome, in particular North Africa during Antiquity and acculturation and romanisation processes at work in these provinces.
A member of the "Ouvroir de littérature potentielle" (or OuLiPo) since 1969, which he joined one year after his friend Georges Perec, the following year he became the definitively provisional secretary. Since 2003 he combines this function with that of provisionally definitive secretary.
His Oulipian works often focus on the genesis of literary work and autobiography.
He appears in the guise of the lawyer Hassan Ibn Abbou in the novel La Disparition by his friend Georges Perec."
“Thus I discovered that if one is the least bit welcoming in one's treatment of it, a word never comes alone. It brings along with it all those that belong to its clan...102”
Marcel Benabou
“[It's] long been known that making fun of oneself is only a way of taking oneself seriously slightly less crude than others. 97”
Marcel Benabou
“As a child, at the age when others promise to be Chateaubriand or nothing, I had written that I would be myself or nothing. I had certainly not foreseen that one day I would find myself in the position of being both myself and nothing. 65”
Marcel Benabou
“I long believed that one was born a writer, that it was enough to allow to ripen within oneself for an appropriate number of years this precious seed, and that then one day the first book would appear, as had earlier, at the appointed hour, the first tooth. 53”
Marcel Benabou