Lire Jean Rouaud by Michel Lantelme, Le Roman contemporain: Janus postmoderne by Michel Lantelme (review)

reflection published shortly after his death is Un Captif amoureux, not Le Captif amoureux, as Moraly erroneously mislabels it. And Roland Barthes’s 1953 text to which Moraly makes passing reference in his ninth chapter, “Le Sens en stéréo,” is Le Degré zéro de l’écriture, not Le Degré 0 de l’écriture (145). Other than the seventh chapter, in which Moraly usefully suggests that we look to Michel de Ghelderode’s 1942 play, L’Ecole des bouffons, as a potential source for Les Nègres and that we discount the “petite boîte à musique” evoked by Genet in his long-lost 1955 introduction to Les Nègres, there is very little new in this scant, easily skimmable study. Any of the more recent works listed by Moraly in his thin and wholly inadequate bibliography would likely provide readers a more substantial , satisfactory, and nuanced understanding of Genet’s plays. Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo (CA) Brian Gordon Kennelly LANTELME, MICHEL. Lire Jean Rouaud. Paris: Armand Colin, 2009. ISBN 978-2-20024329 -6. Pp. 192. 17.50 a. . Le Roman contemporain: Janus postmoderne. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2009. ISBN 978-2-296-07330-2. Pp. 207. 20 a. Any theory of the contemporary novel is tentative, and will probably be somewhat out of date before it gets into print. That much said, theorizing today’s fiction is a fundamental scholarly duty; it provides structures and contexts which allow us to see an isolated work as more than an individual entity, but as part of an existing or emerging cultural pattern. While Le Roman contemporain does not propose a theory for the entirety of the contemporary novel, it identifies and examines two major trends. Readers will find much to debate in Michel Lantelme’s strongly argued and clearly written study which is sure to play an essential role in any discussion of today’s fiction in France. Lantelme begins his study by noting that over the last twenty years it has become something of a commonplace to lament the “fin des idéologies, de l’homme, de l’Histoire et de la littérature” (12). However simplistic these assumptions, they have created a climate that has indirectly contributed to the emergence of two major trends in contemporary fiction: the Apocalyptic novel, and the novel of origins in which Lascaux often quite literally plays a role. Readers struck by the divergent nature of these two tendencies will be wise to recall the study’s subtitle : Janus postmoderne. Not only are these two directions part of the same national literature, but, as Lantelme demonstrates, they are really not so different from each other as they initially appear. Among the writers who figure in the Apocalyptic category are Houellebecq, Dantec, Darrieussecq, and Toussaint, while Chevillard, Michon, Rouaud, and Chedid are numbered among those interested in exploring origins. It is, however, a measure of the subtlety of Lantelme’s approach that these categories are not exclusive, and depending upon the particular novel, a writer can move from one camp to another. Lantelme is not interested in pigeonholing; he wants to delineate broad, necessarily unstable patterns. Lantelme does an excellent job sketching the cultural climate in which these works were written; he is particularly good at suggesting the influence of the fin du siècle mentality and its possible effect on literature. Yet his real strength, the Reviews 173 passages which make his argument compelling, are in his reading of specific texts. As part of his dismissal of the charge that contemporary fiction is apolitical, he makes a powerful case that “Truismes fonctionne comme une arme de guerre contre le fascisme, l’intolérance, la xénophobie” (62). Similarly, his discussion of La Mélancolie de Zidane as an allegory of the state of the contemporary novel is as convincing as it is imaginative. Perhaps the most intriguing part of Lantelme’s thesis is that these two trends, in appearance so opposite, are both parts of an effort to move fiction forward , and free the novel from enslavement to past achievements. Whether it is breaking with traditions or reexamining its origins, today’s fiction remains a powerful, imaginative force, capable, according to Michon, “[de...