Subversions of Verisimilitude: Reading Narrative from Balzac to Sartre

Preface

Preface In writing this book, I have benefited from the input, comments, and suggestions of many people. David F. Bell, Andrea Goulet, Armine K. Mortimer , and Franc Schuerewegen all read the entire manuscript and generously gave me recommendations and suggestions on every page. I owe each of them a great debt of gratitude. For their suggestions, invitations, and generosity , I also thank Éric Bordas, Patrick M. Bray, Véronique Cnockaert, Margaret C. Flinn, Evlyn Gould, Doris Y. Kadish, Marie-Pierre Le Hir, Maryline Lukacher, Jean-Philippe Mathy, Giuseppina Mecchia, Karen McPherson , Stamos Metzidakis, Dennis Minahen, Sylvain Montalbano, Catherine Nesci, Elizabeth Rechniewski, Todd Reeser, Alistair Rolls, Beryl Schlossmann, Naomi Segal, Lewis Seifert, Sonya Stephens, Susan Suleiman, Tim Unwin, Margaret Waller, Alexandra Wettlaufer, and Gayle Zachmann. Special thanks to my interlocutors en permanence: David F. Bell, Michael A. Johnson, James Mandrell, Denis Provencher, and Robert Harvey. Conversations with each of them have always provided food for thought. I am grateful for their support and wonderful friendship, as well as to Thomas C. Lay, Eric Newman, and especially Helen S. Tartar, all of whom helped turn my manuscript into a book. Some of this material has been published in earlier forms and I would like to thank the publishers and editors for permission to reuse the material in this book. These previous publications are: ‘‘Flaubert’s Failure.’’ In Cambridge Companion to Flaubert, edited by Timothy Unwin, 208–19. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Copyright 䉷 Cambridge University Press 2004. Reprinted with permission. ‘‘Deipnomachy, or Cooking with Zola.’’ Nineteenth-Century French Studies 34, no. 3–4 (2006), 338–54. ‘‘Proust et l’Unheimlich.’’ In Savoirs de Proust, edited by Michel Pierssens, Franc Schuerewegen, and Ana González Salvador, 143–62. Montréal: Paragraphes 2005. ix x Preface ‘‘Colette and Androcentrism.’’ In Entre Hommes: French and Francophone Masculinities in Culture and Theory, edited by Lewis Seifert and Todd Reiser , 158–78. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008. ‘‘Sartre’s Autodidacticism.’’ In Sartre’s Nausea: Text, Context, Intertext, edited by Alistair Rolls and Elizabeth Rechniewski, 31–51. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006. ‘‘Sartre’s Body Parts.’’ Journal of Romance Studies 6, no. 1–2 (2006): 185–96. S U B V E R S I O N S O F V E R I S I M I L I T U D E ...