Désirs de disparaître: une traversée du roman français contemporain par Dominique Rabaté (review)

With this excellent essay Dominique Rabaté becomes the sixth writer to join Tangence's well-conceived 'Confluences' collection of short studies by notable French literary scholars. At around 15,000 words, it is closer to a journal article than a standard monograph, but uses its brevity to make a focused and convincing argument, judiciously referencing literary, philosophical, and sociological theory where appropriate. Rabaté identifies the theme of the missing person, and the desire to become such, as one that runs through much contemporary fiction. It is found in popular as well as literary writing (Gone Girl receives a mention), and its preponderance is enough to make it a 'véritable cliché fictionnel' (p. 35) of the last decade. It is in French literary fiction, principally of our century though with some earlier examples, that Rabaté wishes to explore the phenomenon, and he does so with reference to Christian Garcin, Patrick Modiano, Pascal Quignard, Jean-Benoît Puech, Marie NDiaye, Sylvie Germain, Emmanuel Carrère, and Jean Echenoz. It is a broad and well-chosen selection, with room in the essay for discussion of one or two texts by each, although it is a shame that other contemporary authors who might bolster his thesis—Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Marie Darrieussecq, and Christian Gailly among them—are not given at least a passing mention for context. Rabaté argues that the hypervisibility of our modern lives, tracked as we are by surveillance cameras, traceable phones, and digital footprints, creates an urge to flee, hide, and re-invent ourselves. At the same time, the very difficulty of disappearing creates a fascination with those who vanish, especially when the disappearance remains unexplained. The study begins with an exploration of this ambivalence in representation, with the desire to flee set against the anguish of loss, before moving through a number of perspectives on the topic, such as the 'spectral' fading away of characters in fantastic fiction by his chosen women writers, and a 'géographie de la disparition' (p. 52) in stories of deliberate rupture with all social ties by Quignard and Echenoz. As with so many overviews of contemporary French fiction, the long shadow of Georges Perec is cast across the current generation, with both W and La Disparition suggested as influences. The essay is a fascinating and very readable account of how extraordinarily pervasive this theme has become in contemporary culture.