Reading Lacan's Écrits From 'Overture to this Collection' to 'Presentation on Psychical Causality'

'It all began with an improbable wager: ask 35 scholars to each write something intelligible about every single paragraph in one of the texts included in Jacques Lacan's magnum opus, Écrits, so as to generate a commentary on the entire 800-page volume. And yet, after years of preparation, the wager has paid off: we have here some useful and at times brilliant examples of textual explication! Cryptic formulations are lucidly unpacked, and mysterious references are provided, giving the serious reader myriad keys to fascinating texts.'

Bruce Fink, Translator of Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English (2006)

'Let's face it: Lacan's Écrits, one of the classical texts of modern thought is unreadable - it remains impenetrable if we just pick the thick volume up and start to read it. Hook, Neill and Vanheule provide what we were all waiting for: a detailed commentary which does not aim to replace reading Écrits, but to render it possible. The three volumes do wonder, their effect is no less than magic: when, after getting stuck at a particularly dense page of Écrits, we turn to the corresponding pages in the commentary and then return to the page of Écrits which pushed us to madness, the same lines appear in all the clarity of their line of thought. It is thus a safe prediction that Hook, Neill and Vanheule's commentary will become a kind of permanent companion of the English translation of Écrits, indispensable for everyone who wants to find her or his way in its complex texture.' 

Slavoj Zizek, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University, Professor of Philosophy at the European Graduate School and Senior Researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana

'These essays will be an invaluable resource not only for those approaching the Écrits for the first time but also for seasoned readers. Broad in scope yet following the detail of the text, they help guide us through Lacan's difficult prose, elucidating, contextualising and clarifying, and reminding us time and again of the precision, power and originality of his rethinking of psychoanalysis.'

Darian Leader, Psychoanalyst working in London and member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research