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  • La Relation écriture–lecture. Cheminements contemporains: Éric Chevillard, Pierre Michon, Christian Gailly, Hélène Lenoir
  • Simon Kemp
La Relation écriture–lecture. Cheminements contemporains: Éric Chevillard, Pierre Michon, Christian Gailly, Hélène Lenoir. By Elin Beate Tobiassen. (Critiques littéraires). Paris: L'Harmattan, 2009. 182 pp. Pb €17.50.

Elin Tobiassen's study brings together five of her articles on contemporary French fiction, previously published in academic journals (including French Studies). The articles have been revised for their re-publication and given an Introduction and Conclusion to draw out their common themes. 'La relation écriture–lecture' forms a loose connectivity between the articles, where, as the Introduction makes clear, the emphasis is on the variety of relationships that might exist, from the construction of implied readers within the text to the influence of literary forebears on later generations. What [End Page 269] we are offered, then, is five largely independent chapters on different aspects of the reading–writing relationship, which are further linked by the focus on the contemporary novel and a recurrence of the ideas of Barthes and Genette in the analytical approach. The first two chapters examine Éric Chevillard's 2003 novel Le Vaillant Petit Tailleur. In the first, a detailed reading of the opening pages considers the text's use of reflexive digression to 'read itself ', arguing that this self-consciousness leads not to sterile formalism but to a return of the subject. In the second, Tobiassen sketches the different potential readers that Chevillard's novel evokes for itself, concluding that the novel invites a reading that goes beyond the intellectualism associated with postmodernist metafiction. For the third chapter, Tobiassen moves on to Pierre Michon's Vies minuscules (1984) and with it inaugurates a topic that will dominate the last three essays: the début novel. With Michon, Tobiassen takes up Barthes's term scripturire — the will to write — and explores how the desire to write and the obstacles opposing it are dealt with in Michon's text. She focuses on the figure of Michon's grandmother, who is represented as his mentor and inspiration during his development into a writer. The penultimate essay looks at the first two novels published by Christian Gailly, Dit-il (1987) and K.622 (1989). Tobiassen sees in them the drama of Gailly's difficult transition from musician to novelist, exploring how Gailly's writing on music develops towards the representation of 'une écoute', the unique, subjective appreciation of a piece of music by an individual. Hélène Lenoir's first novel, La Brisure (1994), is the subject of the final chapter, which examines its relationship to the work of Nathalie Sarraute, and in particular to Sarraute's own début, Tropismes. Tobiassen remarks on the similarities but moves on to emphasize the transformations that have taken place through Lenoir's foregrounding of sexual difference in her characters. In the study as a whole, Tobiassen offers some excellent close reading, leading to insightful analysis of her authors, several of whom have been unjustly neglected by critics. The analysis of the reading–writing relationship itself is perhaps not the study's strongest suit: its centrality to each essay is variable, it does not quite resolve into an argument, and it is rivalled for prominence in the second half by the fascinating and more coherent examination of the début novel. On these terms, though, the study is highly recommended to all those with an interest in the extrême contemporain.

Simon Kemp
Somerville College, Oxford
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