Je réel/je fictif: au-delà d’une confusion postmoderne by Arnaud Schmitt (review)

SCHLANGER, JUDITH. Présence des œuvres perdues. Paris: Hermann, 2010. ISBN 978-27056 -7080-1. Pp. 242. 29 a. What is the meaning of loss for us? How do we cope when we know almost nothing will be left of all that surrounds us? While definitive destruction results in an absolute blank, leaving no traces whatsoever, it is often the case that fragments remain, which may be remembered or rediscovered. Lost works—whether they be monuments, libraries, buildings, cities, statues, paintings, manuscripts, books, cultures, values, ideas, or techniques—that once existed but have disappeared , can still maintain a presence. Almost-presence and near-absence of what has vanished is the subject of the meditations that constitute this passionately written book. Most fascinating are the unusual, wide-ranging, and intermingled examples and anecdotes that give free reign to the reader’s imagination: the lost library of Alexandria; the destruction of pre-Columbian cultures of the new world; Nazi book-burning; the Taliban’s explosion of Bamiyan Buddhas; families’ destruction or amendment of manuscripts. For example, Jules Renard’s and Romain Rolland’s widows tampered with their husbands’ books; Flaubert’s niece changed some of his texts; Rimbaud’s and Nietzsche’s sisters suppressed some of their brothers’ pages. Then there are the tantalizing questions posed by forgeries and forgers: Giovanni Bastianini (1830–1868), Alceo Dossena (1878– 1937), and Han van Meegeren (1889–1947) who, in order to avoid execution in 1945, confessed to the forgery of a Vermeer (assumed to be a national Dutch treasure ), which he had sold to Hermann Goering. The author’s wide-ranging and varied erudition and the lyrical quality of her writing are impressive. Unfortunately, as is the case for many scholarly books published in France, there are no notes or indexes in Présence des œuvres perdues. Current technology facilitates these scholarly accessories, and the text here is not served by their omission. This book deserves an English translation, and perhaps the publisher undertaking this task will consider this issue. The author’s conclusion is predictable: invisibility and not survival is the normal fate of most works, and there is no assurance that value protects anything or anyone from oblivion. A more or less radical extinction is the normal outcome of all our creations. Yet, that is no reason for sadness. Value is in experience itself—that is to say in life. That is how we deal with the presence of absence: living life itself in all its fullness. Hunter College (NY) Jeanine Parisier Plottel SCHMITT, ARNAUD. Je réel/je fictif: au-delà d’une confusion postmoderne. Toulouse: PU du Mirail, 2010. ISBN 978-2-8107-0117-9. Pp. 202. 24 a. As Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea and James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces have shown, distinctions between fiction and non-fiction remain nebulous. Arnaud Schmitt attempts to provide some clarity to this problem. For him, the simple label of autofiction does not resolve anything: “L’autofiction n’est pas un genre, c’est un sème d’auteur” (178). Contrary to the typical approach, as found in studies on autofiction by Vincent Colonna, Philippe Gasparini, or Philippe Vilain, what matters is not how we classify texts, but rather how we understand authors, for the confusion about autofiction is the result of authorial, not textual instability. 392 FRENCH REVIEW 86.2 Thus, Serge Doubrovsky, the father of autofiction, did not create a new genre, he gave birth to “une nouvelle figure de l’auteur” (178). To reach this conclusion, Schmitt begins with the literary critic Käte Hamburger, developing her argument that a hybrid of truth and fiction is impossible. While postmodernism and autofiction recognized that “il n’y avait pas d’énoncés en dehors du référentiel et du fictif,” their innovation was to “les rapprocher et les confondre” (55). However, this combination is not one of hybridity, which Schmitt regards as a myth, but rather of what he calls “mixité” (96). “L’autofiction est un texte à choix multiples, qui se succèdent, certes, mais sans jamais se superposer,” he asserts (74). Indeed, Schmitt proffers an alternative to autofiction, ‘autonarration,’ an autobiography presented as literary work. Autonarration...