After the war, Blanchot began working only as a novelist and literary critic. In 1947, Blanchot left Paris for the secluded village of Èze in the south of France, where he spent the next decade of his life. Like Sartre and other French intellectuals of the era, Blanchot avoided the academy as a means of livelihood, instead relying on his pen. Importantly, from 1953 to 1968, he published regularly in "Nouvelle Revue Française". At the same time, he began a lifestyle of relative isolation, often not seeing close friends (like Levinas) for years, while continuing to write lengthy letters to them. Part of the reason for his self-imposed isolation (and only part of it – his isolation was closely connected to his writing and is often featured among his characters) was the fact that, for most of his life, Blanchot suffered from poor health.