Jean Giraudoux, The Legend and the Secret by Jacques Body (review)

Book Reviews JACQUES BODY, Jean Giraudoux, The Legend and the Secret, Translated by James Norwood. London and Toronto: Associated University Presses 1991. pp. 152. $27·5°· Jacques Body's critical biography of Jean Giraudoux does more, says more and promises more in its brief 152 pages than other more extensive and more ambitious studies of the writer. He states his purpose as follows: There has been a Giraudoux mystery - or rather two Giraudoux mysteries, since there were two Giraudouxs: the public man and the private writer. The goal of the present essay is to build a bridge between the two and to provide a preliminary biographical sketch along with a study of the innennost sources of the work. By fulfilling this quest for the legend and the secret of a supremely elusive writer without succumbing to the obvious trap of reducing the mystery of Giraudoux to a banal set of conclusions, Professor Body has remained true to the spirit oJ his subject. Indeed he has gone further: he proceeds, by allusion and paradox, respecting the contradictions and ambiguities which make for the complexity and fascination of Giraudoux. This does not mean that Body has avoided the issues. On the contrary, he has tackled the thornier ones head-on without, nonetheless, allowing himself to be drawn into simplifications. The question of "racism," for example, is dealt with squarely and the conclusion reached that Giraudoux sought an antidote to it when he suggested "adapting immigration quotas to the limits of employment and to the needs of the economy, defining a policy for population, and unifying the optimum conditions for sociability." Similarly with Giraudoux's "frivolity," his complex relations with women, and other enigmas that have elicited criticism over the years: Body Modern Drama, 36 (1993) 582 Book Reviews examines them all, and without putting up a stoO[ defence of Giraudoux, holds them up for the many lights of hard scrutiny to play on them. Giraudoux's «nationalism," "elitism," "plagiarism" all have their reverse side whether it is (a) the supreme importance of the Limousin inspiration for much of his sensibility, or (b) the desire to be always "first," always new, at the beginning or, finally. (c) to be at the centre of a conjunction of cultural allusion which makes him the "champion of second-order narrative." The chapters of Body's book deal, in order, with "The Amhor-Character" present throughout his work where the process of self-creation coincides with creation itself; "The Limousin Utopia," "The Player" (an engaging account of the ludic element), ''The Feminine Singular" where Body explores the multiple representations of women and the tangled theme of love in the work. In the final chapter, "The Presence of One Now Absent," Body slyly' adopts Giraudoux's own stratagem so succinctly stated in the paradox "[He] knew and p~cticed absence as a way of being present elsewhere." In this way, Body reveals and·conceals at the same time, leaving the reader with his or her own Giraudoux to discover and yet armed with essential suggestions on how to proceed. A final but not insignificant virtue of this admirable little book is the skill with which Body has managed to include the most recent theoretical approaches to the literary text while avoiding those unassimilaled extrusions that so often keep the reader at ~ 's length. The theory of the "subject," of the ludic, representations of women, lexical analysis aU have their place alongside more traditional thematic and philosophical discussion. While being little more than an extended essay. then, Jacques Body's Jean Giraudoux has the breadth and insight of much more ambitious studies. However, the reader must 'not expect to find in it detailed and definitive readings of the work nor a final statement about the man. JOHN K. GILBERT, UNIVERSITY OF TOROJ'IITO KATHERINE E. KELLY. Tom Sroppard and the Craft o/ Comedy: Medium alld Genre at Play. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press 1991. Pp. 179· $27.95. Katherine Kelly's introduction focuses on Stoppard's distrust of single-minded truths. His craftsmanship, "the 'how' of artistic production," exemplifies a stance that is "both active and detached," committed to a conservative humanism yet wary of certitudes. "The...