Photos volées par Dominique Fabre (review)

Reviews 195 et répète depuis trois décennies que depuis Shakespeare, tous les grands thèmes ont été développés, et que le rôle de l’écrivain ne consiste plus à raconter des histoires (la télé et Internet s’en chargent), mais à capter les fréquences et la musique de son temps, à rendre compte du monde à travers un regard décalé et une oreille affutée. Djian, émerveillé dans sa jeunesse par la lecture du dernier chapitre d’Ulysse de James Joyce (ce célèbre monologue écrit sans ponctuation), reste donc fidèle à lui-même ainsi qu’à ses premières amours, et continue d’avancer, de livre en livre, vers une écriture de plus en plus stimulante, sobre et épurée. Baylor University (TX) Alexandre Thiltges Fabre, Dominique. Photos volées. Paris: L’Olivier, 2014. ISBN 978-2-8236-0071-1. Pp. 313. 18,50 a. The story is simple enough. Jean, a fifty-eight-year-old man who lives alone, suddenly finds himself out of work. Initially a photographer, after his divorce he found more permanent employment with an insurance company, but now this stability has disappeared. He has a small rental apartment in Asnières, three or four close friends, recurring memories of his deceased mother, and boxes of photos he has taken. His universe is essentially contained within the street where his lives, near the railroad station and the neighborhood immediately surrounding the Saint-Lazare station in Paris. It is within these parameters that he constantly wanders. He makes friends with an Arab man of his age and together they earn a bit of money, making deliveries in their cars of possibly illegal merchandise. Eventually he begins to take more photos, which lead to a vernissage in a café. Around this time he meets a woman with whom he may manage to have a successful relationship. Yet if Fabre creates an intriguing novel out of this seemingly banal material, it is because Photos volées is not really about chômage, aging or loneliness; it has a more subtle focus. Jean is a perfectly ordinary man who, like many of his counterparts, passes his life in a state of semi-somnolence. Fascinated by the work of Calderon La vie est un songe that he has never dared to read (190), he drifts through his existence without ever totally engaging with life: “[J]’ai toujours eu du mal pour exister à temps complet” (250). This hovering sense of an almost dreamlike consciousness is reinforced by the frequent appearance of the verb murmurer. In Jean’s world people tend to murmur rather than talk, so that what is said or intended is never fully grasped. His own language is replete with clichés (like “ne pas être né de la dernière pluie”), which reinforce his sense of security. He never really confronts life, but is content to experience it in muted, refracted segments, “Il s’est passé beaucoup de choses grises dans ma vie”(275), which he files away, much like his photographic negatives:“Il m’en restait [...] plus à classer qu’à vivre”(213). To the extent the world exists for him, it is the known past, frozen in his numerous snapshots, a place that is comfortable, but from which he vaguely hopes to escape: “Le monde n’est plus qu’une grande banlieue où on attend le train” (231). While it is tempting to place this novel in the tradition of Breton’s Nadja (1928) that would not do it full justice. If Photos volées has a certain affinity with surrealism, its lingering effect on the reader stems less from its literary heritage than from its portrait of a contemporary consciousness adrift in today’s world with an attitude of low-level,continuous befuddlement concerning the passage of time, the lack of intensity or achievement and the lingering sense that the train one is awaiting will never arrive. Florida State University William Cloonan Ferney, Alice. Le règne du vivant. Arles: Actes Sud, 2014. ISBN 978-2-330-03595-2. Pp. 208. 19 a. This is a compelling story of man’s urgent need to care for our planet Earth and all...