Michel Tournier: "Le coq de bruyère" (review)

L'Esprit Créateur A Time to Remember. Special issue of Contemporary French Civilization. Nathan Bracher, Guest Editor. Vol. XIX, No. 2 (Spring/Fall 1995). Pp. 210. This volume, edited by Nathan Bracher, is an impressive collection of essays marking the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the German Occupation of France. It includes articles from American, French, and British scholars on a number of subjects, ranging from commemorative activity in France in 1994 to French cinema to François Mitterrand. Bracher provided an introduction and an article on Mitterrand. Rémy Desquesnes examines the flurry of commemorative activity that marked 1994, noting as does Margaret Collins Weitz in her contribution that history to some degree has been distorted in regard to the Liberation. Both scholars suggest that the celebration of the Liberation of Paris excluded the Allies and thereby gave the impression that the French Resistance alone drove out the Germans. André Pierre Colombat, on the other hand, presents an interesting view of French cinema during the period of the commemoration of the end of World War II. Christopher Flood and Hugo Frey note in their piece that fewer and fewer French citizens are willing to condemn Pétain and accept responsibility for Vichy. Bertrán Gordon argues in his article that despite the recent verdict against Paul Touvier, convicted for crimes against humanity, French courts have made it imperative to show that one acted on behalf of Germany before one can be convicted of crimes against humanity during the War years; this, of course, protects the French state from indictment. There are three articles on former President Mitterrand, included obviously because of his earlier ties to Vichy, as Pierre Péan revealed in his Une jeunesse française: François Mitterrand ¡934-1947 (1994). These articles are written by Richard Golsan, John Rothney, and the editor. All three are highly critical of Mitterrand, a man of many secrets. However, Rothney offers a provisional judgement and wisely stresses that Mitterrand's future reputation will depend on the direction of French society and French politics. Historians are continually rewriting history. What we learn from this volume is that there are many "varieties of history" and that history has many uses. This tome, too, reminds readers that the debate over collaboration is far from over in France and among scholars outside of the hexagon who write on the War years and the impact of this period on the past and present politics of the nation. The volume concludes with reviews of six French books on the nation during the War, including Philippe Burrin's La France à l'heure allemande; Henry Rousso's Les Années noires: vivre sous l'Occupation; and Célia Benin's Femmes sous l'Occupation. Wayne Northcutt Niagara University Walter Redfern. Michel Tournier: "Le coq de bruyère." Madison, Wl & Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1996. Pp. 138. Over the past few years, many critics have lamented the fact that Tournier seems no longer willing (or, some would argue, able) to write long, complex novels like Le Roi des Aulnes, Les Météores or Gaspard, Melchior et Balthazar. Others, myself included, see his growing predilection for the short story (and the newspaper article) and his move towards an ever-greater simplicity and limpidity of expression as evidence of a sustained philosophical and pedagogical impulse, one which leads Toumier to inscribe himself ever more firmly within the tradition of the conteur. Redfern's study is therefore to be welcomed, 104 Winter 1996 Book Reviews since it focuses attention on a volume which contains some crucial Tournier texts but which has tended to be marginalized by many critics. Redfem's procedure is to offer a short commentary on each of the stories in turn, since he can perceive no principle of organization to the collection (13-14). This poses a problem, however. Is Le Coq de bruyère simply an anthology? Or is it a volume in its own right and having an internal organic unity, as is the case, for instance, with Tournier's later Le Medianoche amoureux, modelled on Boccaccio's Decameron and Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron, or with Flaubert's Trois contes, which...