L'Écriture du bonheur dans le roman contemporain (review)

While much critical writing has explored literature of the last twenty years from the perspective of the 'extrême contemporain' or in terms of its so-called transgressive intent, a book that takes happiness as a starting point is a welcome, refreshing addition. Happiness is considered here as a literary theme, as phrased by Sylviane Saugues: 'une écriture du bonheur' rather than the 'bonheur de l'écriture' associated with practice (pp. 151-52). These collected articles, the products of a 2010 colloquium that took place at the University of Haifa, explore how the work of a wide range of contemporary authors has responded to the notion of what it means to be happy. This is a problematic issue for the contemporary novel since happiness, according to Martine Boyer-Weinmann, is 'devenue aujourd'hui suspecte à la doxa sur le roman français sérieux' (p. 165). Indeed, as editor Ruth Amar notes in her brief preface, which uses the work of Gilles Lipovetsky and Pascal Bruckner to provide a conceptual framework for the book, happiness, while it has been explored in terms of philosophy, sociology, and psychology, has scarcely been considered with regard to contemporary fiction. This book is helpfully structured around four axes. The first provides an overview of how happiness has been explored throughout the long twentieth century. The second section examines the work of Philippe Delerm, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Eugène Savitzkaya, and Régis Jauffret, whom Amar groups as 'minimalistes positifs' with 'simple et intime' reflections of happiness (p. 51). The third part responds to writing about the unsteady relationship of happiness and unhappiness, while the final section explores how writers, including Michel Houellebecq, have encompassed a quest for happiness in their work. Notable essays include Amar's overview of the diverse responses to happiness, which observes a 'réécriture du theme du bonheur' within contemporary fiction (p. 5). Matthijs Engelberts provides a lively reading of imagery related to bathing in Toussaint's fiction, while Jerzy Lis offers a welcome examination of Jauffret's Microfictions (although the extent to which Jauffret should himself be described as a 'minimaliste positif ' is perhaps open to debate). Stéphane Chaudier provides a thoughtful reading of Pascal Quignard's work, and Saugues's text on Christian Oster includes an illustrated examination of the writer's manuscripts. Rémy Pawin strives to demonstrate how happiness was explored in writing between 1960 and 1980 through an only partially convincing quantitative analysis of the titles of works published during that period. For the most part, the volume presents a useful overview and is particularly interesting in its scrutiny of the work of some less critically examined writers such as Savitzkaya, Régine Detambel, and André Dhôtel. It is, however, slightly undermined by its sheer breadth of scope as well as, on occasion, a frustratingly lax approach to footnotes and references. As this collection ultimately demonstrates, depictions of happiness are as diverse as our attempts to find it.