ART - L'Institut français de Lituanie

FALL 2007
LITERARY
SEASON
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CULTURESFRANCE
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These pages present the current state of book publications and music releases in France since October 2007.
The selection of works is made by our reviewers and the diversity of voices in each of the sections
make Vient de paraître, aka Just Published, the “quarterly newsletter on the latest,” an indispensable
resource for French cultural institutions, publishing houses, booksellers, translators and, more generally,
all readers inside and outside France.
In this edition you will find:
Bookseller’s Choices among the other selectors’ reviews,
where you will learn about books which particularly moved people in this profession.
French Books around the World which describes major events
relating to books and writing, in France and the world over.
Past issues in French and English can be consulted and downloaded
at the culturesfrance Website [www.culturesfrance.com], where your comments are also welcome.
Vient de Paraître # 31
culturesfrance
comm@culturesfrance.com
President Jacques Blot
Head Olivier Poivre d’Arvor
Publications and writing
Head Paul de Sinety
Editor in Chief Bérénice Guidat
Translated by Chet Wiener
culturesfrance is the agency of the ministries
of Foreign and European Affairs and Cuture and
Communication responsible for the international
cultural exchanges.
Vient de paraître is published 3 times a year
and distributed in the French cultural network
worldwide.
Published by culturesfrance
1 bis, avenue de Villars
75007 Paris
These selections
are the sole responsability
of the authors and do not represent
an official position of the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs.
© culturesfrance 2008

Books chosen and
reviewed by:
ARCHITECTURE
Jean-Pierre LE DANTEC [Director of
the “Architectures, milieux, paysages”
laboratory and professor, École
d’architecture Paris-La Villette]
LIVING ARTS
Pierre-Dominique PARENT [Critic]
ART
Michel ENAUDEAU [Critic]
Gérard-Georges LEMAIRE [Writer, Critic]
Olivier MICHELON [Critic]
GRAPHIC NOVELS AND COMICS
Jean-Pierre MERCIER [Specialist Advisor,
Collections Musée de la Bande dessinée,
Angoulême]
FILM
Patrick BRION [Director
Film Department, France 3]
YOUNG READERS
IBBY-France and
LA JOIE PAR LES LIVRES
CLASSICAL MUSIC
Jean ROY [Author, Critique]
CONTEMPORARY MUSIC (CDs)
Richard MILLET [Writer]
MUSIC-JAZZ
Philippe CARLES [Editor in Chief Jazz Magazine]
NEW “CHANSON FRANçAISE”
Stéphan PARIS and Thierry VOYER
[Radio Néo 95.2, Paris]
PHILOSOPHY
Sylvie COURTINE-DENAMY [Professor,
Centre d’histoire moderne et
contemporaine des Juifs,
EPHE, Sorbonne]
Marc-Olivier PADIS [Editor in Chief Esprit]
Guy SAMAMA [Professor of Philosophy]
POETRY
Marc BLANCHET [Writer, Critic]
Yves di MANNO [Writer, Editor]
DETECTIVE AND NOIR NOVELS
Aurélien MASSON [Editor]
NOVELS AND SHORT FICTION
François BUSNEL [Managing Editor Lire]
Thierry GUICHARD [Editor Matricule des anges]
Louise L. LAMBRICHS [Writer, critic]
Boniface MONGO M’BOUSSA [Professor, Writer]
Delphine PERAS [Journalist Lire]
Éric POINDRON [Editor, writer, book critic]
François de SAINT-CHÉRON [Professor,
Université Paris IV-Sorbonne]
Jean-Pierre SALGAS [Professor, Critique]
SCIENCE
Étienne GUYON [Director, Emeritus,
École normale supérieure]
Jean-Pierre LUMINET [Astrophysicist, Writer,
Judge Roberval Prize]
HUMAN AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
Christian DELACROIX [Professor, History
Université de Marne-la-Vallée]
Yann DIENER [SIHPP, Psychoanalyst]
François DOSSE [Professor Contemporary History,
IUFM de Créteil]
Patrick GARCIA [Professor Contemporary History,
IUFM de Versailles]
Olivier MONGIN [Editor Esprit,Writer]
Éric VIGNE [Editor]
SPORTS
Serge LAGET [Journalist, L’Équipe]
THEATER
Jean-Pierre THIBAUDAT [Writer, Critic]
TRAVEL
Gilles FUMEY [Geographer, Professor Université
Paris IV-Sorbonne]
Vient de paraître has teamed up with
lechoixdeslibraires.com to provide readers with
a selection of booksellers’ favorites from among
the latest in French and Francophone
publications.
[www.lechoixdeslibraires.com]

Contents
ARCHITECTURE
5 ARCHITECTURE
6 GARDENS AND LANDSCAPE
7 URBANISM
8 LIVING ARTS
12 ART
24 GRApHIC NoVELS AND CoMICS
fILM
26 FILM–BOOKS
27 CINEMA–DVDS
YoUNG READERS
29 PICTURE BOOKS
30 FAIRY TALES
31 NON-FICTION
32 POETRY, SONGS, NURSERY RHYMES
33 NOVELS
LITERATURE
35 BIOGRAPHIES AND NON-FICTION
38 GENERAL LITERATURE
46 POETRY
51 DETECTIVE AND NOIR NOVELS
52 NOVELS AND FICTION
MUSIC
59 JAZZ
61 CLASSICAL MUSIC
62 NEW “CHANSON FRANçAISE”
66 pHILoSopHY
71 SCIENCE
74 HUMAN SCIENCES
86 SpoRTS
90 THEATRE
93 TRAVEL
95 INDEX

ARCHITECTURE
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ARCHITECTURE
Selected by Jean-Pierre Le Dantec
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CARTIER Claudine, ROUX Emmanuel (de) and FESSY Georges (photography)
patrimoine ferroviaire
[Our Railway Heritage]
[Scala, coll. “Patrimoine,” October 2007, 312 p., 46 €, isbn: 978-2-86656-394-3.]
Continuing their enterprise of exposure, or even evaluation, of whole areas of our architectural heritage
that had been considered secondary only a few years ago, Éditions Scala, here in association with the SNCF,
has once again put out an outstanding work. It is outstanding in its knowledgeable and agreeably written text
by a curator at the Inspection Générale des Musées and a journalist who has long been passionate about the
defense and promotion of the physical national heritage. And it is outstanding in its photographs, as always
they are superb, here by one of the best French photographers of architecture (a dangerously difficult specialty
I must point out), Georges Fessy. We encounter modern and older marvels (monumental lobbies, spider web
glasswork, hangers, and gigantic spaces for the storage and repair of machines, art, or decorative detail) as well
as curiosities such as the famous “Neo-Othonian” style station built in Metz by the Reich after the Franco-
Prussian War (in 1883) to assert the city’s Germanic character. And, icing on the cake, a number of modest
but oh how picturesque buildings (employee housing in Laon, gate-keeper’s houses…) are not overlooked.
J.-P. l. D.
MAZZONI CRISTIANA
Les Cours. De la Renaissance italienne au paris d’aujourd’hui
[Actes Sud/Paris musées, October 2007,310 p., 39 €, isbn: 978-2-7427-6238-5.]
This book is based on the dissertation recently defended by an architect who teaches and has a research
appointment at the École Normale Supérieure d’Architecture–Paris-Malaquais. It strives to explain why Renaissance
Italian courtyards, then large Parisian private residences, as well as (in this case only considering those
in Paris) multiple dwelling courtyards–including those that are terraced–of old and contemporary buildings
(those on the outskirts of Paris, apartment buildings and public housing) should be considered not as simple
“empty spaces” resulting from the building process, but as complete architectural works, even though they are
outdoors and roofless. After a synthetically oriented historical and sociological essay, Christina Mazzoni minutely
analyzes a great number of examples, illustrated with photographs as well as with layout and elevation
schematics to meets her challenge perfectly not only in terms of architecture strictly speaking (form, dimensions,
materials, mineral or vegetable decoration), but also in the description of the multiple uses these sometimes
secret, sometimes public places are put to, places which are often almost magically enchanting to the person
walking through them. J.-P. l. D.
SERAJI Nasrine (Ed.)
Logement, matière de nos villes. Chronique européenne 1900-2007
[Housing; Substance of Our Cities; Euopean Chronivl 1900-2007]
[Picard/Pavillon de l’Arsenal, June 2007, 464 p., ill. black and white, and color, 48 €,
isbn: 978-2-907513-96-8.]
Nasrine Séraji is an architect and the current director of the École Normale Supérieure d’Architecture—Paris-Malaquais.
She recently organized a vast retrospective exhibition (which also had a prospective
perspective) at the Pavillion de l’Arsenal in Paris tracing the evolution of housing in Europe. Housing is here
understood as sites where people live whose architectural forms (translated into plans above all) have evolved
over the past century with the customs, norms in comfort, family and neighborly (etc.) relations, as well as
the urban fabric whose various associations translate into buildings striving, in their various combinations, to
create the modern–handsome and practical–city. These issues have been decisive in everyone’s life, as the “matter
of our cities” are the object (matter? material?) of innumerable debates, flights forward and jumps backward,
involving professionals in the field (architects, urbanists), “decision makers” (politicians, developers…), socio-
5

logists, historians, critics and… the population (even if for too long it has not been a party to decisions). The
exhibition was excellent, although a little difficult to read because of the enormous amount of material. The
edited edition is also a little blown up in its form, but constitutes such a mine of information and considerations
on a question of interest (or which should be of interest) to everyone, that this is an insignificant detail. With
its rich iconography, including not only photographs but also plans and cross section views of buildings, images
from film, articles for broad circulation and specialized periodicals, the significant positions of living and dead
architects, and contributions from excellent specialists, Nasrine Seraji has put together a living chronological
view by deliberately placing it on the European scale—and thus the interwoven French and English editions.
In short, this is an important reference on the subject. J.-P. l. D.
SUMA Stefania
Musées 2. Architectures 2000-2007
[Museums 2. Architecture 2000-2007]
[Actes Sud, coll. “Architectures,” October 2007, 278 p., 69 €, isbn: 978-2-7427-6973-5.
Translated from Italian by Marie Bels.]
The development of the cultural industry and mass tourism have led to a continual increase in the
number of museums in the world. Under the sign of the Quai Branly Arts Premiers Museum designed by Jean
Nouvel which decks its cover (a magnificent night view with the lit Eiffel Tower in the background), this seriously
documented work (it includes plans, views, and in depth critical analyses in addition to photographs) includes
twenty of these “icons of the contemporary” which opened on the cusp of the twenty-first century. This grand
collection amounts to a denial of the common conception that “modern” architecture cannot measure up to
architecture of earlier centuries. The Audrey Jones Beck Building of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts built by
the architect Rafael Moneo, for example, is a marvel of taste, of careful execution, and of display for the works
it harbors. And while one is not very shocked to see seven American creations on this prize list, it is a pleasant
surprise to encounter South Korea’s current strengths in the production of four of the museums presented. It is
a French architect, Jean Nouvel, who takes the cake though, as he is the only architect to appear twice: for the
Musée du Quai Branly and the Leeum Samsung Museum of Art… in South Korea (Seoul). J.-P. l. D.
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GARDENS AND LANDSCAPE
Selected by Jean-Pierre Le Dantec
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SCHIDLOSVKI Catherine and SUET Bruno (photography)
Jardiniers
[Landscape Gardners]
[Marval, mai 2007, 168 p., 49 €, isbn: 978-2-86234-399-0.]
It may seem excessive or even out of place to write that a work is miraculous. And yet this book calls for
such a qualification, conceived of as it is by a great photographer and accompanied by excellent entries on each of
the nineteen landscape gardeners (very well) chosen by Bruno Suet. The mode of presentation for each includes
magnificent color photographs of some of their most arresting creations, sometimes in large format and sometimes
emphasizing a motif or a detail; one (or two) photographic portrait(s) as close up to the faces as possible, faces
which are so expressive that one feels as if one can perceive not only the underlying material (skin, flesh…) but
also the deep personality of each of the landscape gardeners as they confront the double major problem of their
field: an art which is called minor or applied by some while it bears within it in situ painting allied with the most
intimate and most delicate knowledge of the living world, the garden. From the meeting (probably already longconsidered
since one finds the moving portrait of the brilliant Scotsman Ian Hamilton Finlay who has been dead
ten years) of nineteen landscape artists and one photographic artist aided by a scrupulous journalist a miracle is
born: a book that one can read and look at with intense pleasure. J.-P. l. D.
6

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URBANISM
Selected by Jean-Pierre Le Dantec
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LIOTARD Martine
Le Havre 1930-2006. La renaissance ou l’irruption du moderne
[Le Havre 1930-2006; Renaissance or Modern Outburst]
[Picard, June 2007, 168 p., 38 €, isbn: 978-2-7084-0788-6. Preface by Paul Chemetov.]
In two days in September 1944, Le Havre was destroyed by allied bombings, effectively amounting to an
achievement of the hygienist movement of the 1930s absurd dream of reducing the “base” port city, considered
unhealthy due to a lack of healthy rehabilitation, to a tabula rasa. After twenty years the reconstruction of the
new city of Le Havre is complete under the direction of the “classical-modern” (my own qualification for him)
Auguste Perret and his team, while in the “upper city” “large blocks of social habitations” have been cropping
up. Now, after long arguments about the new city center’s “coldness,” “stiffness,” and the “repetitiveness” of its
large areas punctuated with a few highly symbolic architectural objects (Saint Joseph Church, City Hall, the
Musée André Malraux, the Maison de la Culture designed by Niemeyer…), it has been classified a UNESCO
World Heritage site offering an interesting context for considerations on the spatial and social segregation of
a city center which is appreciated by its inhabitants (and historians of architecture) compared to an “upper
city” with all the unfortunately typical problems of a more or less depressed urban area, and compared to a vast
zone of peri-urban homes. These historical and current architectural, urbanist, social, economic and political
questions are studied in this well documented work—written with lucidity by an architect and specialist on
planning and development. J.-P. l. D.
7

LIVING ARTS
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Selected by Pierre-Dominique Parent and Éric Poindron
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BOLOGNE Jean Claude
Histoire de la conquête amoureuse. De l’Antiquité à nos jours
[A History of Romantic Conquest from Ancient to Modern Times]
[Éd. du Seuil, coll. “L’univers historique,” September 2007, 386 p., 23 €, isbn: 978-2-02-084837-4.]
After l’Histoire du mariage en Occident [A History of Western Marriage], l’Histoire du sentiment amoureux
[A History of Romantic Feelings], and l’Histoire du célibat et des célibataires [A History of Celibacy and the Unmarried],
Jean Claude Bologne presents us with Histoire de la conquête amoureuse. He means to limit his study
to the first step that plants the seed of relationship. An enormous task, for that includes discussing, over a period
that runs from Antiquity to modern times, all these questions: How does one approach the person one wishes
to attract? What are the first movements, the first words? Why this particular woman, on this particular day?
Where can one find a soul mate, a summer love, a Saturday night fever? How can one convince her to listen, to
follow, to leave with you? How can one change a passing fancy into a fling and a Don Juan into a husband? The
list goes on. The number and variety of these questions yields a dense book, but one it’s a pleasure to get lost
in. Confronted with all kinds of interdictions, lovers of centuries past knew how to use their imagination, and
we follow their attempts at seduction in church, balls, public gardens, and carriages (and later, in hackneys and
cars). In retrospect, we can be glad not to live in an era where, in France, girls’ fathers gave them in marriage
without even having them meet the groom. In 1749, M. de Thiboutot, field and army Marshal, considered it a
sign of intolerable defiance that his future son-in-law had the effrontery to see his fiancée before the wedding.
Today, in Europe, “the traditional trajectory of love and romance is reversed: sexual relations often become a
preliminary to deep feelings.” But nothing is perfect, and it seems that sexual liberation and women’s liberation
have scrambled the reference points for a generation of men. This disarray benefits the publishing industry,
for almost never have manuals of flirtation and seduction been as numerous as in the last twenty-five years.
P.-D. P.
DANSEL Michel
Au père-Lachaise. Son histoire, ses secrets, ses promenades
[In Père-Lachaise: Its History, Secrets, and Walks]
[Fayard, October 2007, 382 p., 25 €, isbn: 978-2-213-63233-9.]
To follow Michel Dansel to Père-Lachaise cemetery is to embark on an uncommon voyage… for mortals.
Thanks to Dansel’s indefatigable enthusiasm for a sublimated obituary and necrophilia, we follow his lead and
succumb, despite ourselves, to the place’s various attractions. For Dansel, Père-Lachaise is not only a classical
cemetery with its recently or long-deceased residents and its saddened visitors, but it’s also a temple of the
esoteric and the erotic. Dansel’s erudite documentation effectively proves that this place lends itself to unusual
and often unspeakable encounters, to sectarian and often indecent practices, usually at night in the hollows of
luxurious burial places, with the complicity of carnal statues. All of this, of course, happens under the watchful
eye of the most illustrious eternal residents who attend their bodies, watching over all these unusual acts
reprovingly or with interest, according to one’s imagination. Père-Lachaise is, then, much more than just an
immense necropolis where black mass is held. Michel Dansel takes care to reassure the reader who might be
intimidated at the idea of walking through so many austere resting places, peopled by prestigious ghosts. “In
Père-Lachaise, the birds sing more sweetly than elsewhere, and children’s cries, echoing through the enormous
trees that engulf the burial grounds, are touches of hope and love. No feeling of fright or of profound sadness
assails you when you walk in this restful place.” It’s true that the mere list of names whose final resting place
is Père-Lachaise is something impressive. However, walking through, you end up used to frequenting these
figureheads. You might even forget them, like the mothers who come with their children in strollers, looking
for a little fresh air and silence in this former church property, with no thought to Molière, Balzac, Musset,
Chénier, and Daudet sleeping peacefully among so many others. Indeed, these mothers would be wrong to
deprive themselves of the joy of such a park. Surface area: 44 hectares. A record. And how many sections?
Ninety-seven, some less accessible, geographically, than others. Let’s add for the uninitiated that animals, even
leashed, are forbidden in the cemetery. P.-D. P.
8

FOTTORINO Éric
petit éloge de la bicyclette
[A Brief Praise of the Bicycle]
[Gallimard, coll. “Folio 2 € ”, September 2007, 138 p., 2 €, isbn: 978-2-07-033923-5.]
Journalist, novelist, and… amateur bicycle racer: such are Éric Fottorino’s different activities. There’s
reason to be astonished that an intellectual should have a passion for cycling, and especially for competition.
Beyond this moment of surprise, we approach this Petit éloge de la bicyclette with confidence. Since the author
knows how both to pedal and to write, we feel ourselves in good company. On the way, the tale’s chain seems
well-oiled, just like the author’s life, a balanced life where the pleasure of riding and writing go together. For
Éric Fottorino, riding is a way to get out of his interior landscape and confront the actual landscape. Unlike
bicycle tourists, the author most often chooses competition and the intense sensations it brings. Biking can
enliven creativity: “it may seem incongruous or trivial to compare the noble literary effort and that of hitting
the pavement. For me, they’re equal and, to tell all, the biking bug which has often stirred my flesh seems to me
a peerless representation of how to confront the vertigo of words, the density of language through which a narrow
path leads to the right tone, the best rhythm, images, color, music, feeling, and grace.” This is not a history
of the bicycle throughout time, from the high wheeler to the futuristic racing bike “with biconvex wheels and
streamlined frames. This is something else: a poetry of speed, risk, and joyful erudition, revealing the legends
of giants of the road.” Éric Fottorino describes himself modestly as an amateur motivated by dreams. One
regret seems to pierce this dreamer, that of not having been a champion to equal Coppi, Bartali, Bobet, Robic,
Anquetil, Merckx, etc., all venerated. Though never a world champion, Éric Fottorino is currently editor-inchief
of Le Monde is that any consolation for this unique man? Nothing is less sure, as he’s been gripped with
cycling fever since earliest childhood, when he played with little metal racers on the tile floor. In 2001, Éric
Fottorino decided to participate in professional racing as a journalist, through stages of the Midi Libre. He
finished respectably, after having begun each morning before the others, it’s true. The pages that he dedicates
to his daily absorption by the pack aren’t painful since, for him, to be caught up is a way to commune with
those he admires, and the communion erases any disappointment. A moving passage in the book, worthy of
note: the nostalgic description of Charly Gaul, that handsome hill-climber nicknamed Mountain Angel. Years
after his exploits in the Tour de France, we find him as a spectator without recognizing him. He has become a
paunchy old gentleman, a fallen angel. When it’s not done by accidents or drugging, life has a way of sending
idols off their pedestals. The wheel turns, but Éric Fottorino’s memories remain. P.-D. P.
FOURNIER Jean-Louis
Histoires pour distraire ma psy
[Stories to Distract my Shrink]
[Anne Carrière, September 2007, 188 p., 17.50 €, isbn: 978-2-84337-404-3.]
Readers delight in the fifty-some stories collected here not only thanks to their flavor, but also because
of the sense that a red thread is woven through them, meeting after meeting, with the imagined states of mind
of a curious psychiatrist. For all those in analysis, past, present, and future, this book is a practical lesson. So
when your shrink is silent too long, or lacks pertinent comment, even to the brink of sleep, what should you
do? Above all, don’t hesitate to imitate Jean-Louis Fournier if you retain some control of your mental resources
despite the neurotic state that led you onto the couch. Like the author, have the courage for once to observe
all your shrink’s particularities (style of dress, sloppiness, personal problems) and feel free to take note of the
things that strike you or bother you. For Jean-Louis Fournier, one can tell that beneath this attitude lies the
desire not simply to submit and to stay on equal footing with his therapist. But of course, he doesn’t stop there.
Thinking that she needs a distraction, the author tells his shrink stories (one per meeting) that aren’t part of his
analysis (which eventually no longer seems to interest either him or his shrink). The stories, all endowed with a
whimsical fall, reveal a controlled sense of the fantastic, a cleverly guided meandering between dream and reality.
Throughout these “psychiatrist’s briefs,” one is reminded of Jacques Sternberg or Pierre Bettencourt. Jean-Louis
Fournier brings a critical comedy in which everyone can find themselves seized by the naiveté, mania, tics, and
absurdities of a society which is, for good or ill, our own. Example: this question asked of the unhappiest man
in the world in a tale called “Interview”: “What do you do when you are tempted to be happy?” Answer: “I read
a page of Schopenhauer; that’s enough to make me sad.” P.-D. P.
9

KOVARIK Patrick, ROINÉ Arnaud and PONT Jean-Pierre
Voyage à l’Élysée, les coulisses du palais
[Voyage to Elysée: Behind the Scenes at the Palace]
[Éd. Télémaque, October 2007, 160 p., 39.90 €, isbn: 978-2-7533-0049-1.
Introduction by Gonzague Saint Bris.]
This book is for all those who would never have the courage to brave the lines at the Élysée Palace during
Patrimony Festival days. It is a book that has the value of showing us a behind-the-scenes look at the Élysée and
the different occupations that assure the palace stays in good condition and working order. For, as Gonzague
Saint Bris writes in his introduction, the Élysée is also the palace of “those there who work, breathe, and live
creativity and fidelity to the most beautiful traditions of art and artisanship and who make of this address a
unique international window into French savoir-vivre and living arts.” Chosen among the best, these artisans
work in teams. Organizing a dinner mobilizes the house service, laundry, silver polishers, florists, and maîtres
d’hotel. A dinner for 220 takes six hours of work. The laundry irons tablecloths that are up to 45 meters long.
Working for the Élysée is an honor, and some posts pass from generation to generation. Thus Marie d’Arvaux,
following upon father and grandfather, maintains 320 palace clocks. Patrick Kovarik and Arnaud Roiné’s gorgeous
photos guide us into this palace of the Republic. They aren’t limited to the reception rooms and offices,
but take us through the wine cellar, archives, laundry, kitchen, and garden. Built in the eighteenth century
by order of the Count d’Évreux, the Élysée had various owners, including Madame Pompadour, before being
claimed by the Republic, which made it the official residence of the president. When Louis Napoléon Bonaparte
moved in, the Élysée was in bad repair. It has come a long way since the period when Victor Hugo, invited to
dinner, noticed that the broken windows had been stuck back together with paper. He found “the main sittingroom
appalling, the engravings and paintings unfortunately chosen, the food execrable, “and lamented,” I got
up from the table still hungry.” P.-D. P.
SEMPÉ
Sentiments distingués
[Best Wishes]
[Denoël, September 2007, 104 p., 30 €, isbn: 978-2-207-25986-3.]
Sentiments distingués is an expression written reflexively at the bottom of letters, meaning, “among my
feelings, I single out the best to offer you.” How can I differentiate myself from others? How can I show that
I’m unique and irreplaceable, and how can I prove that I should be loved? That’s what we want, as do Sempé’s
characters. Sentiments distingués is his most recent title. The cover drawing shows a large hothouse with thousands
of red tulips. A young woman works, bent over the flowers, and at the door, a young man looks at her
tenderly, his arms filled with a big bouquet of blue tulips. At this time of literary prizes, Sempé captures authors
and their endearing vanity. One of them watches himself on TV, finds his makeup unflattering, and criticizes
the appearance of all the show’s participants to conclude, “No, I’m not tense; I’m furious, yes, furious because
in this type of show we talk about everything except literature.” Painting also becomes a subject; a haughty
guide exhorts a group of terrified ladies to offer themselves “to modern painting’s incandescent dagger!” The
hobbyist is very funny, given permission to paint in the attic if newspapers are placed on the floor so as not to
stain the boards. Why does he suddenly give up on still lifes and portraits of the cat and dog in order to paint
an “Origin of the World” that causes his wife to faint when she brings him tea? The solitude of a character lost
in the crowd, the cruelty of time’s arrow, a little tenderness, a little poetry, a zest for cocasserie these are Sempé’s
hallmarks. Invited to the signing of a collection of erotic poetry, I was admiring the poet’s white mane and
leonine profile when, suddenly, I realized that he was surrounded by a swarm of charming old ladies fighting
for his attention and favors “former mistresses or muses?” and I surprised myself by thinking, “This looks like
one of Sempé’s drawings.” We know every moment when we could sing along with Anne Sylvestre: “But I feel
pathetic/ Just outside what’s going on, off /Like a dot in a picture/like a Sempé character.” P.-D. P.
TAFFIN Nicolas and MELOT Michel
L’Agenda du livre 2008
[The Book’s Calendar 2008]
[L’il neuf éditions/Centre national du livre, September 2007, 68 p., ill. b. & w., 24 €,
isbn: 978-2-915543-18-6.]
It’s not exactly a book, but much more: a sort of book of all books in the form of a calendar. The project
10

originated with a book called, with appropriate restraint, Livre [Book]. Author Michel Melot and photographer
Nicolas Taffin, enjoying themselves tremendously, explore this strange object. Born more than two thousand
years ago, yet always resolutely modern in its construction and architecture, the book is a constant fascination
for us. Thus, the authors set off to encounter it and followed that path all the way to imagining this calendar,
a new genre. Through hours, days and seasons, L’Agenda du livre 2008 lets us live in the company of printed
things. The calendar follows our lives day after day, blending new and recurring, changes and permanence,
events and obligations, intimate and collective rhythms. We live in the calendar and it gives us structure, like
the cycle of seasons, weather, the passing of time, like a book With the import of this theory supporting them,
L’il Neuf Éditions and the Centre National du Livre came together to bring the reader this daily companion.
Each week’s layout is illustrated with Nicolas Taffin’s photographs, taken from the lovely work Livre. Michel
Melot’s text, streaming and whispering from page to page, reminds us that the book is almost a living object;
the book’s vocabulary reveals its relationship with the human body. Binders speak of the book’s “spine,” “body,”
“head,” and “nerves.” As you page through the months, you find a very thoughtful selection of book-related
events in France (fairs, festivals, gatherings, literary organizations) with dates and locations. This work offers
both a personal planner and a guide for getting involved in books. L’Agenda 2008 is for book-lovers, readers,
publishing professionals; each person makes up his or her own calendar and gives it a particular rhythm. É. P.
11

ART
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Selected by Marc Blanchet, Michel Enaudeau, Louise L. Lambrichs, Gérard-Georges Lemaire,
Olivier Michelon, Éric Poindron and François de Saint-Chéron
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Art sud n° 25
[Art South, issue 25]
[Transbordeurs, 3 e
trimestre 2007, 120 p., 7 €, issn: 1252-8447.]
Art sud, subtitled Ethics and Esthetics of the Other Hemisphere, is a quarterly review of the “sociocultural
nuances” of the other hemisphere. It is a romantically and politically modern review, resolutely baroque
and irreverent; it covers all fields of expression: architecture, painting, sculpture, video, photography,
film, poetry, theater, philosophy, dance, music, design, fashion, travel and living arts: many rubrics for many
new paths of exploration and creation. It endeavors to spotlight rebellious, unusual and adventurous creators.
From Marseilles to Tunis, Algiers to Milan, Nice to Tangiers, Toulouse to Barcelona, Montpellier to Beirut,
Aix-en-Provence to Istanbul, Johannesburg to Caracas, every aspect of the South is represented, all its cultures
and all its latitudes. Issue 25 is dedicated to the Venice Biennial with the subtitle, “Vive la guerre” [Long Live
War], which is to be read figuratively. As for the editorial position, it’s a bit caustic, asking whether the Cannes
Film Festival should be canceled in order to better revitalize the Fondation Vazarely which is dying from lack
of interest in Aix-en-Provence. It has a particular tone. In it’s pages one encounters unknown aspects of Burma
and luminous photographs by Lartigue. One learns that the Dead Sea scrolls have—perhaps—revealed their
secret, or the appeals of choreographical encounters in Carthage. Literature is also strongly represented. There
is a fascinating article on women of the East and women of the West, another on the writer Daniel Rondeau
and his latest book, the fascinating Journal de lectures. The poet Eugène Guillevic—who would have turned
100 in 2007—is also part of the delivery or rigging. So, one can leaf through it in no particular order, as if one
were taking a trip. You have to take your time with it, move along its new-revealing paths and, why not, surprise
yourself lifting your eyes toward the sky. Such is the philosophy of this review, one might say of the South…
É. P.
Biennale de Lyon, 2007. L’histoire d’une décennie qui n’est pas encore nommée
[The History of a Decade Yet to Be Named]
[Presses du Réel, September 2007, 304 p., 28 €, isbn: 978-2-84066-221-1. Stéphanie Moisdon
and Hans-Ulrich Obrist (Eds.)]
According to Thierry Raspail the artistic director of the Lyon Biennal, there are currently 110 art biennials
in the world—or two a week! In light of this acceleration, the latest Lyon Biennial sought to outdistance
the movement and get past the current by putting forward a writing of the history of the decade underway.
Subject to the difficulties of creating a cartography of the present, the two curators, Stéphanie Moisdon and
Hans-Ulrich Obrist, bounced back by handing the decision over to the “players,” artists and curators. “The
structure of the project did not consist in a wholesale delegation of decisions and disengagement from critical
thinking; on the contrary it allowed for enabling other instances to appear, for questioning hierarchies and
domains of knowledge,” explain Moisdon and Obrist in their explanation of intention. While the idea here is
not to report on the exhibition, we have to say that the choice of curators was more important than the pieces.
This is because on the theoretical level the idea of a history of the contemporary turns out to be quite fruitful.
It brings paradox and debate to the fore. The book does not avoid a certain “who’s who” aspect on the art world,
with numerous biographies and portraits, but it gets beyond the level of compilation to present exchanges and
cool-headed texts. The interview with Paul Veyne illustrates perfectly the difficulty of the task. He says, “Writing
history is an effort: that of trying to purify oneself of one’s prejudices and depersonalizing oneself.” In 1971
Veyne declared in Comment on écrit l’hisoire? [Writing History, 1984], “the task of history is not to explain, to
be a domain of knowledge, but to recount events.” Besides Okwui Enwezor’s study on “contemporary art and
the postmodern condition,” the six other studies adopt that position; they are by Mehdi Belhaj Kacem, Anselm
Jappe, François Cusset, Ralph Rugoff & Louise de la Tour, and Stefano Boeri. O. Mi.
12

Gustave Courbet
[RMN, October 2007, 478 p., 49 €, isbn: 978-2-7118-5297-0.]
GEORGEL Pierre
Courbet. Le poème de la nature
[Courbet; the Poem of Nature]
[Gallimard, coll. “Découvertes,” November 2007, 176 p., 14 €, isbn: 978-2-07-053132-5.]
With a clear-cut book geared toward the general public (Gustave Courbet Peinture et Histoire, Presses
du Belvédère, June 2006), Michèle Haddad was way ahead of the various republished or new works that have
appeared in relation to the Courbet show at the Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais in Paris until 28 January
2008, before making its way to New York, then spending next summer at the Musée Fabre in Montpellier. Here
we have a book in the “Découvertes” collection, Pierre Georgel’s Courbet (first edition: 1995). The painter’s
relation to nature and his new representational approach provide the basis for this study’s originality. Nature, in
a broad sense of the term (landscapes, animals, hunting and rural scenes) is the substrate of what Georgel calls
the painter’s “great design”: getting beyond classicism and romanticism. This getting ahead was called realism
and included disapproval, condemnation and, on the other side, support and encouragement of contemporaries.
The organizers of this show, Laurence des Cars and Dominique de Font-Réaulx, take up the task of fine-tuning
the qualification “realism.” The terms “ambiguity” and “paradox” are employed in several places. Such an emphasis
is important if one considers the weight of Baudelaire, Champfleury and Castagnary. Courbet’s realism
is an interior realism rich with the painter’s subjectivity. He looks to “make dense rather than true.” Realism is
thus the term that is most commonly used and the most conducive to misunderstanding while indicating that
Courbet’s work is on the outposts of new painting. From this perspective, Manet, Cézanne, and even Balthus
come close to Courbet, and the photos of Balthasar Burkhard which are hung at various points in the exhibition
underline the durability of Courbet’s relation to photography. Bruno Mottin tells us the extent to which
contemporary knowledge of the painter is owed to the work of specialists in the laboratories of the Centre de
Recherche des Musées de France. From Self-portrait, Courbet with Black Dog to Trout, baskets of apples and
including the portraits, female nudes and the famous large canvasses (Burial at Ornans, The Painter’s Studio)
the catalog successfully accomplishes its function of illuminating and engaging the reader/viewer about this
complex work. It is a work which would most likely be praised by Jean Clair (see a review of his Malaise dans
les musées below). Since here again, the loan of works from museums from around the world (the opposite of
the “Abu Dabi Louvre” project Clair condemns as a corruption of the notion of what a museum is) assures their
coming together for “study, education and enjoyment.” M. e.
L’Atelier d’Alberto Giacometti
[Éd. du Centre Pompidou/Fondation Annette & Alberto Giacometti,
November 2007, 420 p., 39.90 €, isbn: 978-2-84426-332-2. Valérie Wiesinger (Ed).]
DUFRÊNE Thierry
Le Journal de Giacometti
[Hazan, coll. “Bibliothèque des arts,” September 2007, 336 p., 27 €,
isbn: 978-2-7541-0165-3.]
GENET Jean
L’Atelier d’Alberto Giacometti
[Gallimard, coll. “L’Arbalète,” October 2007, 96 p., 20 €, isbn: 978-2-07-078631-2.]
PLEYNET Marcelin
Giacometti, le jamais vu
[Giacometti, the Never Seen]
[Dilecta, coll. “16 au carré,” September 2007, 60 p., 16 €, isbn: 978-2-916275-25-3.]
13

SCHNEIDER Pierre
Giacometti. « Un pur exercice optique »
[Giacometti; a Pure Optical Exercise”]
[Hazan, coll. “Essais. Écrits sur l’art,” September 2007, 88 p., 19 €,
isbn: 978-2-7541-0233-9.]
WIESENGER Véronique
Giacometti. La figure au défi
[Gallimard, coll. “Découvertes,” September 2007, 160 p., 14 €, isbn: 978-2-07-034122-1.]
The Pompidu Center presented a large and imposing Alberto Ciacometti exhibition in collaboration
with the Alberto and Annette Giacometti Foundation. This enabled the publication of an equally imposing
catalog. Although it contains never before published material and rare work, nothing revolutionary emerges
here. How could it be otherwise? On the other hand, a fine piece by Véronique Wiesenger guides us through
the old no longer extant workshop; fragments of its walls can be seen at the Pompidou. Most of the essays in
the large volume concern the workshop: memories about it or the artist’s work methods. There is also a piece
by Thierry Dufrêne on Giacometti’s relation to writers; that story begins with surrealism which provided him
the opportunity of having his writings or works appear in the movement’s reviews and especially of being the
subject of a long commentary by Breton, republished in L’Amour fou [Mad Love]. After World War II Giacometti
tuned away from the surrealists. When he presented his work at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York
(1947) he called upon Sartre, who wrote, “La Recherche de l’absolu” [The Search for the Absolute] which was
published the following year in Les Temps modernes. Rather than being idealistic, as Thierry Dufrêne rashly
states, Sartre’s piece is a magnificent translation of existentialism into artistic terms and one of the finest texts
by the author of Les Mots [The Words] on art: on a par with his pages on Tintoretto. Giacometti was in dialog
with Sartre, commented on the contents and corrected the manuscript. One shouldn’t believe, as Dufrêne does,
that Giacometti had a sort of Machiavellian relationship with the writers and philosophers of his time, rather
he cultivated his literary friendships as much as Picasso: Francis Ponge and then Jean Genêt (whose admirable
Atelier with photographs by Ernst Scheiddeger has just been reissued) were subject to his ascendancy, as were
Aragon, Michel Leiris, René Charand Merleau Ponty… Giacometti thus turned out to have a strategy but he
most of all seems to have wanted to meet his contemporaries head on. As always, a number of publications accompany
this fine exhibition. Marcelin Pleynet produced a too-brief incursion into this work in his Le jamais
vu. Pierre Schneider provides sagacious formal and esthetic commentary on the artist’s drawings. Véronique
Wiesinger’s fascinating study has the benefit of competently condensing into one slim volume the essential
points of what we know about Giacometti. And Thierry Dufrêne’s vade mecum (Le Journal de Giacometti) is an
effective and relevant reference on all aspects of Giacometti’s work. G.-G. l.
playback
[Paris-Musées, September 2007, 176 p., 35 €, isbn: 978-2-7596-0023-6. Anne Dressen (Ed.).]
From the earliest days of the Scopitone in the 1960s, what are now called music videos have been visual
objects which intrigue, exasperate and fascinate. Beyond pop music itself it is hard to find another format
that is as much dictated by the commercial norms and strategies of the cultural industry. It is precisely these
constraints and their possible distortions as well as the contemporary porosity between the plastic arts and
popular culture which makes the music video the subject of predilection for a number of artists. Published in
conjunction with the “Playback” exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the book under
review here works to decipher the attraction/repulsion factor at a time when the music industry’s marketing
strategies—MTV is more than 25 years old now, and amateur hour programs that have become amateur-to-star
search/competition programs—have never been so developed. Without becoming either coldly condescending
or too on-the-scene-in-the-know, the goal of this collection of essays is to cast an “attentive and amused eye on
this complex and too rapidly eluded form in order to recognize its fascinating ambiguities,” as Anne Dressen the
show’s curator explains. The book’s strength is in not annexing the popular to the artistic or vice versa. “Real”
music videos are considered as well as those produced by artists for the industry, and even freer works which take
inspiration from the form. Bettina Funcke’s “Pop or Populus; Art between High and Low” is very clear about
this. “Art, like politics, operates somewhere between mass culture and high culture where it wages a struggle
for attention.” Benjamin Thorel’s contribution on the status of authorship in music video and the gratification
it provides through its “capacity to gauge from the framework of the work itself and establish when this is still
14

possible a transitioned relationship of viewing with the spectator.” The film historian Nicole Brenez provides six
examples showing how the style of music videos fuels politicizing and satirizing modalities of the counterculture.
Jean-René Étienne’s study of the sexual and vulgar character of rap videos is, more “specialized.” If there is still
time readers are advised to consult the videos in question online at www.myspace.com/playback_arc. [Exhibit,
Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 20 October 2007 to 6 January 2008] O. Mi.
Roger parry. photographies, dessins, mises en pages
[Gallimard, September 2007, 200 p., 25 €, isbn: 978-2-07-011903-5.
Mouna Mekouar and Christophe Berthoud, preface by Olivier Todd.]
This book was published in connection to the Roger Parry (1905-1977) exhibition at the Paume/Hôtel
de Sully (18 September to 18 November 2007). The preface-bio by Olivier Todd tells us about the young man
who wanted to become a painter and became a photographer and graphic artist: “Nice and courteous in a suavely
cruel Paris, always in his bubble: Roger Parry.” He illustrated a deluxe edition of Léon-Paul Fargue’s Banalité
with Fabien Lorris (Gallimard, 1930). And in the following years he made the poster for the NRF’s publication
of La Condition Humaine (the Goncourt prize winner of 1933); a poster for Saint-Exupéry’s Terre des hommes;
book covers for the collection “Détective”; the layout for Aragon’s Henri Matisse, roman; and a number of book
jackets in the collection “L’Univers des formes.” The organizer of the exhibition, Mouna Mekouar, provides a
substantial and detailed introduction. The catalogue is liberally illustrated with advertisements, photomontages
and book covers (“At the NRF 1929-1939”); reporting photography (“Visions of the World 1930-1945”); and
drawings. The final section is devoted to Malraux’s art books (he and Parry met in 1928) with which Parry was
involved from 1947 to 1977: a number of the photographs in Voix du silence [The Voices of Silence] and Musée
imaginaire de la sculpture mondiale [Museum without Walls] are Parry’s. As Olivier Todd puts it, “His eye was
inventive, incisive and misunderstood, and is currently still immersed beneath the low lights and shadows of
reputations which this exhibition should be able to bring him out of, that is, out from the shadows he chose
where he painted light, Rolleiflex or Leica in hand.” f. s.-c.
BALDASSARI Anne (Ed.)
picasso cubiste
[Cubist Picasso]
[Flammarion/RMN, October 2007, 368 p., 49 €, isbn: 978-2-08-120697-7.]
Consideration of the chronology of the works reproduced in this catalog provide excellent indications of
the ambiguities behind the term “cubism.” Picasso never recognized the term which was invented (as has been
customary since Impressionism) by journalists whose intention was derisive. In 1912 he declared, “My paintings
are not cubist.” André Derain alone enjoyed explaining the organization of the play of cubes to whomever
would listen in the cafés of Montparnasse and Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Guillaume Apollinaire certainly took
hold of the term, but was quick to attribute it to a witty remark by Matisse. But since there is such a thing as
cubism, it is certainly worth understanding what the term covers. One has to admit that it reveals much about
the dynamics of Picasso’s production. In his essay (now thirty years old), Leo Steinberg showed the paradoxical
relation between the painter of the Demoiselles d’Avignon and Cezanne. If Cezanne inspired Picasso (as he
did Braque) during the Estaque period, his teaching comes to be betrayed by a progressive (and provisional)
rejection of color. The extreme geometrization practiced in the almost monochrome compositions of the socalled
analytic cubist period (another somewhat hollow definition) gave way to the works with glued paper in
the next few years when a sense of playfulness, humor and casualness replaced the sensation of constructive
rigor. Jean-Claude Lebensztein provides a very relevant study of the evolution of the idea of cubism and its
semantic implications. While some of the contributors get a little tied up in arcane argumentation, the catalog
is nonetheless fascinating because it does the service of insinuating doubt into the matter and the shadow of
doubt makes for more subtle reflection on the immense areas of work Picasso opened up between 1908 and
1924 (the dates they hold to here). Since the term is not going to disappear, we can say, with a view on all that
is discussed here and the reproductions provided, that for Picasso there were “cubisms” which followed each
other and overlapped in his high speed and many-directioned investigations. G.-G. l.
15

CLAIR Jean
Malaise dans les musées
[Flammarion, coll. “Café Voltaire,” October 2007, 144 p., 12 €, isbn: 978-2-08-120614-4.]
This short book, as the author announces from the start, is the product of his disenchantment; the
disenchantment of a man who “passionately loved art,” discovered joy in a Matisse painting as a child and
appreciates it still, sixty years later, but who now takes flight from museums as high temples of culture. What
led this curator from the Musées de France system, after a brilliant career, to come to criticize the universe to
which he had devoted his life? From what he says, the answer is that the world changed. In his view, malaise has
overrun the museum, due to the turn our civilization has taken toward the commercialization of art, a mark
of its de-sanctification and the loss of our values—meaning those values which are not commodifiable. While
in many regards his critiques hit the mark (that the commercial order’s regimenting of artistic creation is effectively
a catastrophe); while he brilliantly details some excellent questions (in particular the project for creating
the museum named the “Louvre of Abu Dhabi”), his arguments leave one wondering and the more one reads
the more one conjectures on the sense of his critique: for several books now, Jean Clair has been complaining
about the state of the world, of ambient negationism (which led him to give pride of place to the concept of
acedia, in his preceding book, Lait noir de l’aube [Black Milk at Dawn] where he takes up the defense of Peter
Hadke) and what he considers the catastrophe of our civilization. But does he propose anything other than a
return to his childhood illusions? In this short book it is difficult not to hear the echo of the “new reactionaries”
and their nostalgia for former idols in a world they can no longer make sense of as they age. In the end, is the
dilemma with art or the out-of-step or even backward-looking representations of the author? A close reading
of this disenchanted book perhaps reveals that it contains the unperceived causes of its own disenchantment.
l. l. l.
COSTA-PRADES Bernadette
frida Kahlo
[Libella/Maren Sell, coll. “Du côté des femmes,” August 2007, 144 p., 12 €, isbn: 978-2-35580-003-0.]
BURRUS Christina
frida Kahlo, « Je peins ma réalité »
[Gallimard, coll. “Découvertes,” September 2007, 144 p., 14 €, isbn: 978-2-07-034593-9.]
Frida Kahlo: Painting Her Own Reality, Harry N. Abrams 2008
Frida Kahlo is an artist who has taken on mythic proportions after her death. The centennial of her
birth, though not marked by any large event in France, has elicited some publications. The first, by Bernadette
Costa-Prades, is a sort of novelistic and very (too) love-life-filled biography. The author addresses the painter
with the informal, tu, pronoun: “In the end you know why you never succeeded in leaving Diego: with him
you were never bored.” This narrative mode is disconcerting and the result is that the painter of Las Dos Frida
turns out to be more disappointing. Christina Burrus’ book is on a different level. It is a serious study accompanied
by numerous documents which lead one to develop a deeper conception of this exceptional woman
and her work. While it is impossible to separate her fate from that of the great artist Diego Rivera, that is not
the unique center of this study: Burrus describes the important stages in her life but also and above all those
of her pictorial creation. We discover a complex, contradictory and intense personality who was committed to
her esthetic progression, a progrtession which could not avoid crossing paths with surrealism. André Breton’s
arrival in Mexico City in 1938 only served to encourage her on an artistic route that was far from the dominant
spirit of the avant-garde milieus of her country as expressed in mural painting and of which Rivera was one of
the main representatives. Her excessive letter writing and her journal which was published well after her death
show the extent to which Frida Kalho is not some picturesque marginal figure of twentieth-century Mexican
art. Rather than trying to go about doing biographical-historical work, Burrus’ book returns to the essential
features of this extremely original and gifted painter who knew how to transform her love life, her passions and
the dramas of her life into the raw material of painting. G.-G. l.
COUCHOT Edmond
Des images, du temps et des machines dans les arts et la communication
[Images of Time and Machines in the Arts of Communication]
[Jacqueline Chambon, September 2007, 314 p., 29 €, isbn: 978-2-7427-6940-7.]
16

There is no lack of work “on the image” or images by specialists in esthetics, semiology, history or philosophy.
Nothing could be clearer than that. The subject here is the understandability of the image; moving from
the Middle Ages to the contemporary period, Edmond Couchot distinguishes three major figurative moments:
the iconic, the optical and the digital. This tripartition corresponds to the painted image, the image produced
mechanically (by photographic and cinematic cameras) and the digital image which unlike its predecessors does
not seek to reproduce the real, but to replace it by stimulating it. Split between “action time” and “seeing time,”
time slips into the heart of an understanding of the image. Each of the representational moments has its own
particular temporal modality. With photography “the shot is a capturing of time.” This effective rule nevertheless
leaves room for the “chronogenesis of the image.” Couchot is no victim of current technological enthusiasms
as he maintains contact with phenomenological thought and analyses, at least those of Maurice Merleau-Ponty,
whose conception of the gesture he makes use of. The gesture which holds attention is very concrete. And it is
connected to each of the domains of the image, even the minuscule gesture of digital tension which makes for
the capturing of the photographic image and the unconsidered gesture of the new movement guiding a mouse
on a computer. The pages on real time, on the virtual (which is not in opposition to the real but to the currently
actual) are especially illuminating; and those considering the enigmatic emotions of robots are fascinating as
well. Specialists in one or another representational domain may have things to say about this or that point. But
any reader who is not privy to the most advanced research into the domain of high technology digital imaging
will definitely profit from Couchot’s historical, theoretical and esthetic conceptualizations. M. e.
DEMOULE Jean-Paul
Naissance de la figure. L’art du paléolithique à l’âge du fer
[Birth of the Figure; Art from the Paleolithic to the Iron Age]
[Hazan, October 2007, 200 p. ill., 45 €, isbn: 978-2-85025-993-7. Photographs by Éric Lessing.]
Jean-Paul Demoule, a prolific writer and a professor and director of the INRAP (Institut National de
Recherches Archéologiques Préventives), with the collaboration of a remarkable photographer—Éric Lessing—
here successfully rises to the challenge of going over 35,000 years of signs, geometrical traces, images, statuettes
and sculpture, that humans alone are capable of producing: for “only humans are makers of images.” While
this book places art at the center of its narrative and considerations, it does not become a prisoner of esthetic
concerns. If a comparison were necessary one might say that Demoule the archeologist is closer to being an
anthropologist than an art historian, as the approach is more or less anthropological. It recognizes the status of
archeological discovery and renders it comprehensible by placing it in an explanatory network including the
economic, social, political, and ideological, as well as non-utilitarian production. While he is always interested
in pointing out the first signs of inequality and the earliest social and political hierarchies, he expands the circle
by introducing—and this seems to be a new approach—the psychological dimension. This psychic register is
not reducible to the growing complexity of the brain which took place over millennia and which is borne out
in the capacity to represent, although representations are inconceivable without the increasing complexity of
the brain. Concretely, the first tombs (Neanderthal) are “as much a psychic as a material manifestation.” And
thus the upper Paleolithic (Aurignacien) establishes the certainty or at least the hypotheses that, as Demoule
puts it, “a new psychic order was established.” Examples of two accentuations dominating the production of
images and representations which began 35,000 years ago and which we have inherited: the naked female and
animals. For this archeologist, the almost constant representation of the former, in whatever form, is not about
nurturing fertility or the mother goddess, what it attests to is the importance of sexuality. It is a sexuality that
is in no way unbridled, but, as he insists, had a “framework.” Through the book’s writing and photography,
archeological knowledge is put to the service of marveling they eye, e.g., before the green stone Galgenberg
Venus, 32,000 years old, an astounding votive chariot from Serbia, or figurines found at Munhata (Israel). La
Naissance de la figure is a magnificent book of art and knowledge in the truly human sciences; we welcome it
with pleasure—and it would make a fine gift. M. e.
DIEDERICHSEN Diedrich
Argument son (De Britney Spears à Helmut Lachenmann: critique électro acoustique de la société)
[Sound Argument (from Britney Spears to Helmut Lachenmann; An Electroacoustic Critique of Society]
[Presses du Réel/JRP/Ringier, August 2007, 254 p., 15 €, isbn : 978-2-84066-140-5.]
This collection of translated essays could have appeared in the music section of this publication but,
like Playback also reviewed here, it approaches the sphere of music from the vantage of the plastic arts. The
17

ook is directly connected to contemporary plastic creation as much in its themes as in its writing. The author,
Diedrich Diederichsen teaches at the Merz-Akademie in Stuttgart and the Akademie der bildenden Künste
in Vienna. After having swallowed the Frankfort School’s anathema on productions of the culture industry
without bitterness, he prefers listening to the “pop music’s internal theoretical knowledge of itself.” An album,
song, concert, rock star’s career (and more classically, a video installation) are each objects of study to be grasped
as works. Diederichsen reveals them to us without denying either their complexity or their autonomy. And in
so doing he shows the best art criticism has to offer. In “The Dark End: Sites of Love and Politics in Late 60s
Soul” Diederichsen takes up a classic of soul music to unwind an exposé on the American urban setting and the
universality of sin. In “The Melvins: Concept versus Concept” he sketches out a monograph on this American
grunge group with the aim of gauging the distance between the purity of conceptual art and the drippy flights
of progressive rock’s concept albums. That reading leads him to conclude that there is “an application of the
largest aesthetic problems in metal and punk: the part against the whole, functionality against autonomy, objectivity
against chance.” Diederichsen’s texts point in fascinating directions. He considers science fiction as an
horizon toward liberation (“Lost under the stars: Mothership and other solutions for replacing earth and its
territories”): he relates the tragedy of John Meek, a producer in the 1960s who recorded ghosts in the flickerings
of his sound equipment (“John Meek and the Drama of Paternity in Pop Music”). In his refusal to leave
the seen or the heard behind in favor of one or the other, he also looks into the film work of Stan Douglas and
Mathias Poledna (“How Make a Real-time Installation?”). O. Mi
ENCREVÉ Pierre
Soulages. 90 peintures sur papier
Soulages. 90 peintures sur toile
[Soulages. 90 Soulages Paintings on Paper. 90 Soulages Paintings on Canvas]
[Gallimard; two volumes, November 2007, 128 and 122 p., ill., 55 € each,
isbn: 978-2-07-011901-1 ; 978-2-07-011900-4.]
POUIVET Roger
Qu’est-ce qu’une œuvre d’art ?
[What is a Work of Art?]
[Vrin, coll. “Chemins philosophiques,” June 2007, 126 p., 7.50 €, isbn: 978-2-7116-1899-6.]
Pierre Soulages is a painter without drawings or watercolors. This is a characteristic of his work which
pushes aside typical ascriptions of support: on paper go drawings, sketches and preparatory work with the
canvass reserved for painting. For sixty years, without ever resorting to the aid of a title, with darkness and
light, paper or cloth, these paintings compel the viewer to view. And such is the framework of Pierre Soulages’
work here; the decision to present two times one hundred reproductions from among six hundred paintings
on paper and 1,400 paintings on canvas was a choice made by the painter and Pierre Encrevé who is also the
author of a catalogue raisonné on Soulages’ work. Rather than their chronology, relationships and rapports are
more important guides to the paintings. Nevertheless, the paintings on paper which are much less frequently
shown, and thus less well known than the canvasses are presented according to six groupings by year starting in
1947. An important year was 1979 when Soulages invented the term outrenoir [beyond black] in contradistinction
to “monochrome.” The outrenoir is a confirmation of the intensification of his working with black and
light, or “lights” if one wants to be attentive to the unexpected variations and consequences in looking at his
paintings. Pierre Encrevé, who is a linguist, does not ask, “what is a work of art?”—and leaves that question
to philosophical inquiry. But Roger Pouivet does ask it as an informed connoisseur of the analytic philosophy
practiced in English-speaking countries and therefore rejects pretty much all definitions which have been put
forward by philosophy or esthetics. None find favor in his eyes because none respond to the required criteria:
intelligibility, neutrality, and universality. He comes to construct a definition however, “A work of art is an
artifactual substance whose esthetic function determines the specific nature.” But is the legitimization of an
appreciation of contemporary art involving this obvious mistrust of philosophies of art and esthetics worth
such an unnuanced rejection? M. e.
18

LAMARCHE-VADEL Gaëtane
La Gifle au goût public… et après ?
[The Slap in the Face of Public Taste… and Then?]
[La Différence, coll. “Les Essais,” October 2007, 160 p., 22 €, isbn: 978-2-7291-1702-3.]
The “slap in the face of public taste” of this book’s title is taken from a 1912 Russian futurist manifesto.
And this borrowing is no indication that the book concerns Russian futurism—far from it. It is rather shorthand
for the currentness of a particular problem (the relation of the public to artwork and of artwork to the public)
which began to take its societal shape in the eighteenth century (the painting salons) and whose philosophical
basis is associated with the names Baumgarten, Kant and Schiller. The establishment of a critique of the judgment
of taste, the advent of a reasoned public space, and the articulation of esthetics with citizenship can be
credited to these Enlightenment thinkers. But Lamarche-Vadel quickly takes leave of artistic and esthetic theory
for considerations in relation to writings by artists, with a decisive position accorded to poetry and particularly
Mallarmé’s. Mallarmé broke classical metrics and conquered the domains of space and sound which the Russian
futurists, whether poets or painters, made good use of. There are fascinating pages here on these Russians,
Dada, and Bauhaus—particularly Walter Gropius and Oscar Schlemmer (Theater of Abstraction). An important
point: there was no participatory sharing of these new forms with the public, with the artists’ entanglements
with the new Soviet authorities as the clearest sign. When, in the 1950s, Georges Mathieu painted in the presence
of the public everything changed with a shift from workshop or gallery to theater. Judgment gave way to
participation, with happenings, performances, and events becoming the most famous modalities. These well
described artistic forms left judgments of taste on the sidelines. Participation extends further into the public
space than debate to the extent that it gives satisfaction to the body and the visual dimension. With Richard
Sennett, Jauss, and Habermas contemporary thought comes back to considerations of the reception of art and
public space as common space. In the face of the blurring of public/private boundaries, refusals by groups of
being superficially bound to other groups, and public commissions of artistic projects, Gaëtane Lamarche-Vadel
works at establishing or reestablishing a connection with the fact of artistic creations that exacerbate the virtualities
of the spaces they occupy. This is why another important area concerns the mediators of these spaces. But
the brave new and politicized way is typified by collectives which imagine ways of living in the grip of artistic
practices. Alternatives such as “La Ferme de Bonheur” in Nanterre are sprouting up in Europe and in Canada
on more or less abandoned sites (abandoned industrial sites, for example). A “poetic economy” (Félix Guattari)
with the participation of architects leads to artistic utopia… These “art laboratories” (Bruno Latour) are
extremely important for an understanding of what Lamarche-Vadel (who is a professor of esthetic philosophy
at the Dijon École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts) calls “topiques of change” in public space. This stimulating
book points to the active potentials of the relation of life in democracies to art and the politics and policies on
art. M. e.
MOISDON Stéphanie
Stéphanie Moisdon
[Presses du Réel/JRP/Ringier, September 2007, 336 p., 15 €, isbn: 978-2-84066-205-1.]
“Yet one must keep on being modern, living, traveling and thinking with modernity.” Stéphanie Moisdon
puts this forward in 2000 in a piece on Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s film Ipanema Theories. This might be
the lead sentence of the book under review. In this collection of forty texts written over the past twenty years,
she confirms the engaged and enjoyable possibilities of her work, considered as a practice, “a language in exile,
which does not conform to anyone else’s interests, which rather than consisting in ‘judging,’ distinguishes,
separates, splits, and redistributes the roles of author and commentator and in that way assails the order of
languages.” The work begins abruptly with Moisdon’s essays, lectures and interviews relating to the “Présumés
Innocents” exhibition at the Bordeaux CAPC. Having been charged with “diffusing images of a pornographic
or violent nature and making them accessible to minors” she points to a form of “denial which places the artist
outside the world, its contingencies, as well as its violence” and prevents thinking about the “real function” of
art. In her conclusion to the work, Moisdon describes a current climate which, since May 1968, has shifted
from “detesting the powerful to having a passion for power, from the desire “to be” to “being like.” The other
texts describe current conditions and controversial moments of the past twenty years. The writings are divided
into interviews with tutelary figures (Olivier Mosset, John Armleder), dialogues with artist-allies (Pierre Joseph,
Carsten Höller) and monographic essays (Jeroen de Rijk and Willem de Rooij, Douglas Gordon, Tino Sehgal,
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Jean-Luc Verna, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Pierre Bismuth, Bless, Philippe Parreno…).
19

Just as relevant are the cross-cutting essays which clearly peel away “minor willfulness, whims and fads”; instances
of this include “The Temptation of the Screenplay” on the use of film by visual artists and “Glamorama,”
on the margins of artistic freedoms artists have given the communications, consumption, institution triangle.
O. Mi.
NATTIEZ Jean-Jacques (Ed.)
e
Musiques. Une encyclopédie pour le x x i siècle. Volume V : L’unité de la musique
[Music. An Encyclpedia for the Twenty-first Century. Volume V: The Unity of Music]
[Actes Sud/Cité de la Musique, September 2007, 1 254 p., 55 €, isbn: 978-2-7427-6974-2.]
Following upon Musiques du x x e
siècle, Les savoirs musicaux, Musiques et cultures, Histoires des musiques
européennes this volume presents the colossal musicological work of Jean-Jacques Nattiez and his team over
several years. After so many titles in the plural, i.e., musiques, one understands that the master question of this
encyclopedic enterprise concerns the unity of music. Such a question can only be asked from an anthropological
and not an esthetic point of view. The ambition is to produce an anthropology of music which, while announcing
its connection to the cultural relativism initiated by George Boaz, among others, is accompanied by two
main aspects: the postmodern (in the now current sense of the term), and the post-structuralist. The central
section “What is Music?” is preceded by a study on music and colonialism, particularly on the relationship
between Western music and the musics of China and Japan. But the question “What is Music?” turns out to
be so complicated it requires the support of a dense methodological text, “Typologies and Universals.” Clearly,
the oral transmission of music, musical notation, indications from ethnomusicology, popular music, and the
immense diversity of instrumental as well as non-instrumental music render this a none too small task. Then
add to that the problems of the diffusion and listening modes of all sorts of music (rap, rock, jazz, reggae, classical,
contemporary, traditional song, variety show pop, music in movies) which have been popular in Western
societies or so called Westernized societies—to which the volume devotes considerable attention as well. But
diversity (in terms of instruments, styles, etc.) is the first center of attention. These remarks only give the barest
indication of the extent of the topics approached and treated. Almost every aspect of ethnomusicology and
musicology is included by these specialists who, unless I am mistaken, have excluded the term “musical” from
their lexicon. Upon encountering all this knowledge a question rises to the top: is any kind of music “worth”
“more” or “less” than any other? The postmodern position rejects the exclusion of any kind of music or any way
of listening. The paradox is thus that the unity of music is limited to the diversity of music which brings the
unity of music into play. It is a diversity which ceaselessly increases through individual and social inventiveness.
M. e.
OBRIST Hans-Ulrich
dontstopdontstopdontstopdontstop
[Presses du Réel, September 2007, 272 p., 15 €, isbn: 978-2-84066-222-8.]
Hans-Ulrich Obrist is currently a co-director of the Serpentine Gallery in London. He has curated a
large number of exhibitions since the 1990s and accompanied the acceleration of the art world’s globalization.
A short time ago some Western capitals maintained their isolation, but the contemporary scene has become
multitudinous, stretching from Glasgow to Dakar and including Guangzhou. The nomadic Obrist has served
as a relay switch among these new centers. He is known for his love of interviews, and he is the author of numerous
prefaces. As Rem Kookhaas puts in his introduction, “Obrist’s prefaces—which are really a series of
intertwined minimanifestoes—resonate with past efforts to disturb the art world’s self-importance through
returns to Dorner agitprop and other unexpected heroes of the unsettled and unexpected.” Whether due to lack
of time or design, Obrist has produced enough prefaces himself to put forward this collection of about forty
(plus some lectures) where his willingness to accompany rather than set the pace or impose is evident. “The
ideal curator is a catalyzer” and “the primary function of an exhibition is to question the routine, the habitus,”
he explains about his first exhibition (In the Kitchen, 1991). He explains that “since then the exhibitions I’ve
organized have always followed the same principle: dialog with artists in order to determine the necessity of
an exhibition, whether in at atypical site or in a museum.” Obrist makes use of such examples as Asian cities,
Cedric Price’s Fun City design, and Édouard Glissant on Creolization to develop his perspective on networks
and truly idealistic and optimistic connections. O. Mi
20

PINET Hélène (Ed.)
Rodin et la photographie
[Gallimard/Musée Rodin, November 2007, 224 p., 39 €, isbn: 978-2-07-011909-7.]
Starting with Jacques-Dominique Ingres, painters have made use of photography as one means of preparing
their work and for its circulation, replacing plates. To mention just a few, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Édouard
Degas, and Alphonse Mucha, are the proof of this in the twentieth century. Sculptures were not slow in following
suit. Antoine Bourdelle and Constantin Brancusi were even remarkable photographers. Auguste Rodin never
felt the need to photograph his works himself. But this modern means of reproduction imposed itself on him
for several reasons, starting in 1877; the first was that it enabled him to reveal his work to extended locations in
France and the world, and the second was its use in the maturation of his projects and their recollection. After
an incident with the jury of the Paris Salon which accused him of having cast the Bronze Age directly from a
model’s body, he contacted Gaudenzio Marconi, a painter and photographer in Brussels to prove how he had
worked from a living model. After 1896 he had many of his sculptures photographed for commercial purposes.
His meeting with a young art publisher, Bulloz who published a significant catalog in 1903 called L’Œuvre,
launched a fruitful business venture which also contributed to Rodin’s glory. However Rodin also encountered
another aspect of photography when he met young practitioners who sought to make photography into an art
form in its own right. Pictorialists made their way to Rodin because they wanted to use his sculpture as their
models. The first of these were Frenchmen, Eugène Duret starting in 1896, and then Jean Linet, who just after
the turn of the century, put together an album of seventy-three views of the Bronze Age; the Englishman, Alvin
Langton Coburn made some portraits of George Bernard Shaw in 1906, as well as some superb portraits of the
Rodin in the position of his Thinker; the Englishmen Stephen Haweis and Henry Coles worked in his studio
in 1903 and 1904; and Edward Steichen was fascinated with his Balzac. Each of them developed a novel vision
of Rodin’s sculptural art and contributed significantly to Rodin’s glory and fame. G.-G. l.
QUIGNARD Pascal
La Nuit sexuelle
[The Sexual Night]
[Flammarion, October 2007, 246 p., 85 €, isbn: 978-2-08-011620-8.]
Pascal Quignard has conceived of a compilation associating the reproduction of paintings with commentaries
or extrapolations he wrote. The book can be seen as a form of modern day ekphrasis while constructing
an idiosyncratic catalog of a personal gallery which enabled him to descend into the Hells of a secret night
which he describes in these terms: “Thus there is an eminently sensory, totally sensory night which precedes
the astral opposition between day and night. There is a night anterior to the sun’s appearance to our eyes at
the emergence of parturition.” He invites the reader on a journey “into the night”; as he reveals his thoughts
on the various appearances of the mind’s nocturnal life and the transports of Eros, he examines “immemorial,
Magdalenian, archetypical, hallucinatory, and involuntary images” which are forged in the darkness of thought
“across generations of sleepers.” The works of art he has chosen are not necessarily erotic. Some of them reveal
the monsters the mind gives birth to, horrifying movements, such as the Monsu Desiderio painting of Beatrice
Ceni killing her father, or the dragon devouring a hero’s face in a Van Haarlem painting. Strangeness is perhaps
the key word in this fantastical edifice, witness Giorgio Vasari’s Immaculate Conception (1553), or the Io seduced
by Zeus in the form of black clouds as painted by Correggio. In any event, Quignard does not remain in the
register of the bizarre and unbridled sexuality. He also scours the Bible for the most disturbing moments of
nocturnal religious aspects. He glosses Lot and his daughter painted by Van der Werff, or Noah’s children trying
to conceal his nudity in a painting by Bellini. Here, shamelessness is tied up with the shame of prudishness.
He treats large themes such as Noli mi tangere, which fascinated great artists, beginning with Titian, or the life
of Mary Magdelene, the impure and venerable hoine. Quignard comes to define “his” particular melancholy
by discoursing on the very curious work of Cranach. At the end of this journey into mythological night (with
Acteon and Diana, Mars and Venus) or in the metaphysical night of Judaism (Suzanne and the elders, Jonah)
he reaches beyond obsessive erotic figures to birth and death, the first and the last night. G.-G. l.
SCHLESSER Thomas
Le Journal de Courbet
[Hazan, coll. “Bibliothèque des arts,” September 2007, 384 p., 27 €, isbn: 978-2-7541-0024-3.]
The idea behind this work is simple and effective: putting together a small encyclopedia of Gustave
21

Courbet’s world as seen from the most diverse positions. It is made quite interesting by virtue of the way that
its articles are organized chronologically in relation to the main stages of Courbet’s artistic career. Thus we get
a kind of biography which is parsed out according to the significant themes or events of his existence. The great
advantage of this somewhat surprising procedure is that it enables the temporal situating of his compositions,
their presentation at the Salon which was the largest coming together of artists and art viewers of the time, and
the reactions to the work—Courbet did not deny himself the experience of rousing controversies and provoking
disapproval and scandal. Criticism had an important place in this perspective because of the considerable
power it acquired. Besides this, the painter’s activities were often linked to the general movement of esthetic
movements, whether in the form of a school (for example the landscape school which began at Barbizon) or
with the postures of his contemporaries. They are also studied in relation to transformations in French society
(Courbet’s role in the Paris Commune is well known, as are the difficulties he got himself into for deciding to
take down the Vendôme column). Whatever its defects (a chopped up reading by definition, articles that are
sometimes too short or too elliptical, subjects that are ignored or poorly treated), this book has the great advantage
of providing a rather complete and convincing portrait of this exceptional artist. Another interesting aspect of
the format is that it enables an examination of works which are not necessarily the most well known. One sees,
for example, his time in Germany illustrated by the La Dame de Francfort (1858), and The Charity of a Beggar
at Ornans presented at the Salon of 1868. All told, Thomas Schlesser’s work enables a better understanding of
Courbet’s realism and that is an important end. G.-G. l.
SCHNEIDER Pierre
Brancusi et la photographie : un moment donné
[Brancusi and Photography: a Given Moment]
[Hazan, September 2007, 144 p., 35 €, isbn: 978-2-85025-988-3.]
While Constantin Brancusi’s work is generally well known, his photographs are not. The objective of
Pierre Schneider’s work here is not only to bring valuable documents to light but also to attempt a new reading
of his sculptures by virtue of the very particular light the photographs bring on the matter. It all seems to have
begun when the great American photographer Alfred Stieglitz photographed several of his creations. However
beautiful they may have been, Brancusi was not completely satisfied. And he decided to photograph his own
work. He adopted two operating procedures. The first consisted in isolating the work and making use of a
black background as if the object existed onto and for itself. The second responded to a diametrically opposed
exigency, that is to position the work in the midst of his workshop. This aproach is very interesting because it is
a response to his search for “total” sculpture, as in the base becoming an integral part of the composition before
becoming in turn an autonomous work. Brancusi thus suggests that we consider his workshop as a creation
which integrated new elements over time. And when the contents of that workshop were installed in the Musée
d’Art Moderne, that is, located in one of the buildings from the 1937 Universal Exposition, it elicited a highly
poetic effect on the visitor: in all the photographs, this poetry was dominated by the color white and zenithal
lighting and, moreover, it intrinsically “staged” the advent of something new. Brancusi liked to say, “Look at
the sculptures until you can see them.” These images are excellent instruments for learning to see. And some of
them are surprising, such as those of Bird in Space (1927): the bird seems to glimmer like a flame, a procedure
which is also seen in several other prints of other polished metal pieces. It was not enough for Brancusi to produce
an image, he also worked on its position in space in relation to light. G.-G. l.
TITUS-CARMEL Gérard
Edvard Munch entre chambre et ciel
[Edvard Munch between Bedroom and Sky]
[Éd. Virgile, coll. “Carnets d’atelier,” October 2007, 102 p., 14 €, isbn: 978-2-914481-58-8.]
The painter and writer Gérard Titus-Carmel presents us with a different Edvard Munch than we are
used to; not the fantasized Munch, not a “screaming” Munch, one might say, in deforming and turning the
title of one of his most famous paintings to our advantage. Not an expressionist Munch either, an appellation
which obscures the work: he gives us a painter we can appreciate today, rendered with every nuance. This is a
Munch without lyricism or gloom, and finally a “man who painted,” carried away by his passions, moved by
his potentialities, and won over by the desire to most perfectly represent his obsessions. The strength of Titus-
Carmel’s book is in knowing how to tell about this struggle over the course of chapters which are like so many
canvasses, advancing through time, and going back in time sometimes to grasp a metamorphosis, a recurrence,
22

a memory from as close to a painting as possible. Considering his aim to produce a “critical reverie,” the work
approaches the novelistic, without expressly trying to: we come close to Munch’s times and places, in his studio,
with his friends, among the landscapes of his solitude. But Titus-Carmel knows how to turn an artist’s eye
toward the work. He describes it with the precision of a critic who does not forget that he is a painter, making
us feel each dizzying ochre or green. The canvasses become visible in the absence of reproductions. His mode
of evocation in the service of comprehension of the work succeeds. We find ourselves in the mind of a painter
obsessed with the formally accomplishing his reflections. Disappointed love and disenchanted words are combined
with a passionate nature and a fecund mind. The fate which draws itself out is common in its trials and
unique in the traces it leaves. Titus-Carmel’s book is also unique in how it imparts without didacticism, shows
without becoming facile, and reveals without complexity. This oh so tactile book also enables us to touch an
era with our fingers. The texture of a voice joins that of an œuvre as one thinks that Titus-Carmel’s Munch is a
book that is more useful than most, and more friendly toward its subject; from painter to painter. M. b.
23

GRApHIC NoVELS AND CoMICS
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Selected by Jean-Pierre Mercier
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CESTAC Florence
La Véritable Histoire de futuropolis
[The True Story of Futuropolis]
[Dargaud, August 2007, 102 p., 18 €, isbn: 978-2-205-05911-3.]
Before she was the celebrated and well-known artist of Démon de midi (Noon Demon) and the Déblok
books, Florence Cestac was an editor and bookseller, and not under just any name, but Futuropolis. More than
fifteen years after the official end to her activities in this domain, which has since restarted in a new configuration,
she revisits this foundational chapter of her biography which also corresponds to key moments in the contemporary
history of the French graphic novel. Futuropolis was originally one of the first specialty bookstores; then,
driven by Étienne Robial and Florence Cestac, a publishing house that contributed forcefully in the 70s and
80s to the genre’s evolution. Practicing an authorial policy that applied rigorous quality controls to its books,
developing its own distribution network and refusing to allow comics to get stuck in a stereotypical commercial
production, Futuropolis was, with Actuel, the first era of L’Écho des Savanes and Métal Hurlant, a force moving
the French comic strip closer to maturity. Through Florence Cestac’s paintbrush, Futuropolis reveals itself as
an improbable adventure made up of fortuitous encounters and enthusiasm. Lack of money and experience
didn’t matter; talent, chutzpah, and perseverance made up the difference. Driven by hair-raising energy and
cunning, this Véritable histoire emphasizes portraits of the people who made Futuropolis: the authors, of course,
but above all administrators, reps, messengers, modelers, are for once out of the shade. Impeccably done, they
allow an understanding of this singular adventure which, though it couldn’t resist the end of utopia characteristic
of the eighties, left a rich legacy for the “alternative labels” of the following decade, notably L’Association.
J.-P. M.
IBN AL RABIN
L’Autre fin du monde
[The Other End of the Word]
[Atrabile, September 2007, 1096 p., 42 €, isbn: 978-2-940329-33-5.]
A man who lives alone is visited daily by the mute ghost of his deceased spouse, whose resting place is
a stone’s throw from his house. He opens up to his doctor, who advises him to go to a psychiatrist. The man
does and, in so doing, starts a chain of events that will lead him to prison, almost get him lynched, and finally
set off a cascade of irrational and surreal events that cannot be summarized here. Just keep in mind that you’ll
finish this six hundred page, twenty-six chapter story amazed that the author managed to get you involved with
characters (and settings) as graphically rudimentary as pictograms. How did he manage to get us to recognize
each of the many protagonists without fail in this continually expanding story? How does he maintain a subtle
balance between humor, strangeness, and melancholy in this story whose action is simply a long variation on
the theme of death and mourning? The answers to all these questions lie in Ibn Al Rabin’s consummate artistry
at cutouts and dialogue. One thing’s for sure: once you open this fine book, you can’t put it down. Plan on a
long, quiet evening to devour it. J.-P. M.
ORY Pascal
Goscinny, la liberté d’en rire
[Goscinny: Free to Laugh]
[Perrin, October 2007, 308 p., 20.50 €, isbn: 978-2-262-02506-9.]
In 2007, thirty years after his death, René Goscinny was the object of critical literature on a par with
his own talent, which was immense. This publication has already pointed out José-Louis Bocquet’s book of
interviews. Today, it can unreservedly recommend Pascal Ory’s biography of the Astérix writer. The result of
deep study and evidence of an intimate knowledge of the state of Franco-Belgian comics post-World War II, it
contains no shattering revelation but, better than that, gives some perspective on the life of this prudish man
who, like so many humorists, never really got over his childhood. The key events: youth in Argentina, the French
24

family’s demise in Nazi death camps, and his father’s brutal death, are not the subjects of new revelations or over
interpretion; nor is his Jewishness, which is surprising. In clear accord with his subject, Pascal Ory points out
the unique quality of Goscinny’s posthumous status: his characters enjoy at least as much popularity as they did
thirty years ago, dozens of expressions he coined have made it into common parlance, (“être calife à la place du
calife [to be the Kalif instead of the Kalif],” “être tombé dedans quand on était petit [started at an early age/born
into it]”), his books still sell by the millions, and streets and schools have been named after him. However, his
body of work, conceived for genres that occupy a low rung in the cultural hierarchy (children’s literature, comic
strips), is not considered for what it is: a comic treasure of twentieth-century French culture. We estimate that
this intelligent and excellently written book will help his reputation. J.-P. M.
RICARD Anouk
Anna et froga: Tu veux un chwingue ?
[Anna and Froga: Want Some Gum?]
[Sarbacane, Ocotber 2007, 44 p., 9.90 €, isbn: 978-2-84865-182-8.]
First appearing in the now defunct children’s monthly Capsule cosmique, the pages that make up this
collection show a little girl surrounded by animals (a frog, an earthworm, a dog, and a cat), with whom she
talks and has both funny and clever everyday adventures. Drawn in what could be called a naïve style, these
short narratives have their share of mischief and describe characters that are not uniformly angelic, but often
fall prey to jealousy, desire, and laziness. Anouk Ricard’s special talent is making them likeable, making their
short stories a pleasure that both big and small can share with explosive laughter. J.-P. M.
SATTOUF Riad
La Vie secrète des jeunes
[The Secret Life of the Young]
[L’Association, coll. “Ciboulette,” October 2007, 160 p., 19 €, isbn: 978-2-84414-253-5.]
Riad Sattouf delivers a key to understanding this work in his introduction: he wants to show the customs
of contemporary youth as if they were from a series of popular science books from his childhood describing
the secret life of animals living together in the same environment. In this series of sketches, the point of view
is neutral: a minimum of context, no commentary, and above all, no moralizing after the fall. No time lapses
either: the action takes place in real time. The content consists of dialogues between ordinary people, usually
young ones, in public places: the street, sidewalk cafés, stores, a few more or less trendy parties. The content
goes from sheer stupidity to aggression and even raw violence, with some buffoonery and absurdity on the
way. Read each week in Charlie Hebdo, these pages provoke surprise and sometimes smiles. Gathered in a thick
volume, their sheer accumulation gives them a sense of strangeness and gripping brutality. And it does make
you consider (sometimes to the point of feeling unwell), our generation seen by Riad Sattouf as animals with
strange customs indeed. J.-P. M.
TROUILLARD Guillaume
Colibri
[Éd. de la Cerise, October 2007, 80 p., 19 €, isbn: 978-2-9519498-5-0.]
Artist and animator of the youthful Éditions de la Cerise, Guillaume Trouillard’s Colibri is his first
significant work. A long, fluid narration almost free of text, this large-format presents itself like a roving movie
camera. From the Amazon jungle to the heart of an Asian megalopolis, the reader encounters and follows human
or animal characters previously unknown. A man steers an elephant through the streets of the metropolis, running
all-out and causing some damage to the cars he passes; a group of animals attacks a path that’s destroying
their forest habitat; some tourists visit the quays, where tipcarts spill out the detritus of consumption which
is then gather up by primitive humans… the common point of all these sequences strung one after the other
without downtime is a rather celebratory kind of incongruity, from which emerges a concern for preserving a
planet threatened by human folly. Guillaume Trouillard’s brush brings all that to life with impressive virtuosity.
J.-P.M.
25

fILM
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FILM–BOOKS
Selected by Patrick Brion
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Sacha Guitry. Une vie d’artiste
[Sacha Guitry ; An Artist’s Life]
[Gallimard/La Cinémathèque française/ Bibliothèque nationale de France, coll. “Livres d’art,”
October 2007, 264 p., ill. black and white, and color, 45 €, isbn : 978-2-07-011898-4.
Noëlle Giret and Noël Herpe (Eds).]
Noëlle Giret and Noël Herpe edited this book which appropriately presents Sacha Guitry as an actor,
author of plays and operettas, a journalist, and a writer as well as a photographer, draftsman and talented publicist.
An exhibition took place at the Cinémathèque Française and thus this work is the catalog filling in an
account of this multiform personality. One comment must be added at this point; even if this is an exhibition
catalog, it is above all a collection of exceptional information and documentation. Along the way one thus gets
to see Lucien Guitry, Colette and Mathilde de Morny, Cocteau, Yvonne Printemps and the fascinating gallery
of films and plays which bear Guitry’s mark. In this vein, the storyboard for Roman d’un tricheur [The Story of
a Cheat] is a great discovery. Guitry’s arrest following the Liberation is the subject of a thoroughly documented
article which explains the situation: Guitry’s tremendous celebrity led to his having to spend sixty days in prison.
He never forgot this, wrote a book on it and made allusions to it in several films. While Guitry’s films are—like
those of Pagnol—regularly underestimated and critically attacked as filmed theater, François Truffaut pointed
to his innovations, writing of Guitry, “He immediately questioned film and found answers before anyone else.”
Truffaut had some affection for this “straight-shooting independent of French cinema” whose work proves to
be always ripe for reexamination. P. b.
Tod Browning, fameux inconnu
[Tod Browning, the Famous Unknown]
[Charles Corlet, coll. “CinémAction,” October 2007, 248 p., 24 €, isbn: 978-2-84706-130-7.
Pascale Risterucci Marcos Uzal (Eds).]
Until now there had been no book in French on Tod Browning, the maker of Freaks and The Unknown…
You had to refer back to a special issue of Midi-Minuit Fantastique from June 1963… which suggests the extent
to which this one, published within the framework of the review CinémAction is indispensable. It contains
articles by thirty contributors with a common passion for Tod Browning’s astonishing universe; the filmmaker
with more of an attachment to the bizarre than any other. His is a world populated with vampires and dwarfs,
false one-armed men and the really legless, a world where subterfuge rubs up against the most atrocious realities.
The writers look into Browning’s screenplays, his novels written under the name Charles A. Allen, on
the “character of the dwarf, ‘aura-full’ figure,” on forms of cruelty, and the disappearing bodies in Miracles
for Sale. Like a many-pieced puzzle, these various contributions gradually reconstruct Browning’s exceptional
personality; Browning himself was a member of a circus troupe before becoming the painter of these people
with malformations. He was also interested in magic and denounced false appearances in Mark of the Vampire
to attract attention to people’s rights to difference. Browning’s career ended in 1939 but his work continues to
be more modern than many of the most fashionable directors today because—as this book reminds us—of his
attachment to human beings, one and all, without being caught up with appearances. P. b.
CORNEAU Alain
projection privée. Souvenirs
[Robert Laffont, October 2007, 336 p., 21 €, isbn: 978-2-221-10148-3.]
“Today I think filmmaking would be a fine profession if we weren’t required to show our films,” writes
Alain Corneau, adding a little further on, “at bottom, our profession would be the greatest pleasure if there
was no film in the camera.” These two reflections by the maker of Indian Nocturn and Police Python 357 [The
Case Against Ferro] provide a reasonably accurate idea of this both sensitive and truly frank book. In contrast
to many others, Corneau does not conceal his debt to Henri Age, who was his teacher at the Lycée Voltaire,
26

Bernard Paul, Michel Drach and José Giovanni to whom he was an assistant, and free jazz, which is one of his
passions. He recalls such things as May 1968, the États Généraux du Cinéma, his shift from the Trotskyists to
the Internationalist Communist Organization, and meeting Yves Montand. He refers to all his films, from France
Société Anonyme [France Incorporated] to Cousin, from Choix des armes [Choice of Arms] to Tous les matins du
monde [All the Mornings of the World] with Gérard Depardieu. Cournu recognizes some of his unsuccessful
ventures, he reasonably sees them not as personal failures but as efforts which did not meet public expectations.
With his great characteristic reserve, he also touches on the event in Vilnius which cost Marie Trintignant—his
wife’s (Nadine Trintignant’s) daughter—her life. He writes, “I know that my outrage allays nothing about it
but I have never experienced greater pain than what the barbarous interruption of Marie’s life has caused.” The
book continues with notes to Deuxième souffle [Second Wind] the remake of Jean-Pierre’s film of the same name.
“This was the first time I was going to put a character heading directly toward his death into images. Melville’s
film is very diurnal, ours was going to be almost entirely nocturnal, it came out that way, calmly and naturally.”
It is fascinating to see a director such as Corneau looking at his own work and explaining it with intelligence,
feeling and not the slightest snobbery. P. b.
MILLER Claude
Serrer sa chance
[Stock, September 2007, 328 p., 19.50 €, isbn: 978-2-234-05952-8. Interviews with Claire Vassé.]
In conversation with Claire Vassé, Claude Miller whose latest film, Un secret, was just released, recalls his
earliest film experiences, Bambi and Pinocchio, Arabian Nights, The Thief of Baghdad, and his earliest cinematic
and love-related emotions. He refers to the IDHEC Film School and his years as an assistant to Marcel Carné,
Robert Bresson, Jacques Demy, and François Truffaut about whom he says, “His personality corresponded to
my own, even its negative aspects, particularly in always choosing seduction over confrontation, especially with
actors. If there was anyone who influenced my attitude on the set it was François. He used diplomacy, and did
everything so things could take harmoniously and pleasurably.” Further on he confesses his attraction to Gombrowicz
and Bataille. Real analysis of each film follows, from La Meilleure Façon de Marcher [The Best Way to
Walk / Get Along] to Un Secret, and including Dites-lui que je l’aime [Tell Him I Love Him]—one of the best—,
Garde à vue, L’Effrontée [Charlotte and Lulu] and the others. Miller does not hesitate to recognize, “I am a pure
voyeur! I enjoy people’s hidden faces, which is not noble. I believe that our profoundest being resides in the
‘back stairs’ of personality, to take up an expression from Gombrowicz.” Through these pages you find Gérard
Depardieu, Romy Schneider, Michel Serrault with whom Miller first had a difficult relationship, Isabelle Adjani,
and Charlotte Gainsbourg. Claude Miller does not conceal the reasons for some of his less successful projects,
taking responsibility and recognizing that some of them have remained close to his heart in all events. This
is a warm and intelligent book which probably also provides a better understanding of contemporary French
cinema starting from one of its most personal directors. P. b.
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CINEMA–DVDS
Selected by Patrick Brion
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ANTONIONI Michelangelo
L’Éclipse
[The Eclipse]
[Studio Canal, October 2007, 1 DVD, 120 min., 20 €.]
L’Eclisse was released in 1962 and starred Alain Delon and Monica Vitti. It was Antonioni’s last film in
black and white, the third in a trilogy which included L’Aventura, and La Notte. Once again Antonioni considered
the relationship of a man and a woman in a couple. These problems are framed by wealthy Italians in the
1960s, symbolized here by Alain Delon, and living off the stock market. Well-served by Gianni di Venanzo’s
sublime black and white photography, Antonioni becomes a painter of the relationship between these two
colors, opposing Monica Vitti’s black dress to Francisco Rabal’s white shirt and then making use of gray, the
color midway between black and white. In parallel, he skillfully uses forms—those of buildings—as he does a
little later in Red Desert—as well as the forms of objects. You only have to look at any single scene in the film
27

to see how Antonioni has his characters evolve, how he gives them a new dimension thanks to a reflection in a
mirror, has them suddenly move and occupy a new space. At the end of the film, Antonioni seems suddenly to
elude his characters to indulge in a real documentary approach to landscapes, following flowing water, framing
a street, a road. The advantage of the DVD is obviously in enabling one to follow the plot on one level, and to
be able to return to a scene, to a shot, to better rediscover Antonioni’s genius. Monica Vitti and Alain Delon
are simply superb. P. b.
GODARD Jean-Luc
À bout de souffle [Breathless]/Une femme est une femme [A Woman Is Woman]/Le petit Soldat [The Little
Soldier]/Le Mépris [Cntempt]/Alphaville/pierrot le fou/Made in USA/La Chinoise [The Chinese Girl]
[Studio Canal, coll. “Godard,” October 2007, 9 DVD, 730 min., 85 €.]
As one can understand from reading the titles in this box set, this is an edition of premier importance
since it includes Jean-Luc Godard’s most interesting films. Each DVD includes a presentation by a critic—
from Cahiers du Cinéma for the most part— (Jean-Michel Frodon, Jean Douchet, Emmanuel Burdeau) or an
American academic (Colin MacCabe). Watching À bout de souffle or La Chinoise today and the visionary quality
of this director is completely clear. He upset the formal canons of French cinema at the time and alone created
a new cinematographic syntax; he also questioned the Algerian War (Le Petit Soldat the Vietnam War (Made
in USA), Maoism (La Chinoise). One is still flabbergasted by his modernity and his audacity as he directs Jean-
Paul Belmondo, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Jean Seberg or Brigitte Bardot. The ninth disk includes several additional
features, including Le Dinosaure et le Bébé, which he made for the television series “Cinéastes de notre temps.”
You will also find Fritz Lang and Godard talking about life and film, violence and censorship, with each showing
tremendous respect for the other. It is an encounter that is both fascinating and moving, as the two directors
symbolize both a love of film and two periods of cinema itself. There is also a documentary on Godard’s
relationship with the woman who came to be his muse for a time, Anna Karina. An interesting curiosity is an
advertisement Anna Karina did for Monsavon: upon seeing it Godard decided this young actress should become
his actress of choice. P. b.
PAGNOL Marcel
Naïs/Topaze/Marcel pagnol un auteur à la caméra
[Naïs/Topaze/Marcel Pagnol an Auteur behind the Camera]
[CMF, October 2007, 3 DVD, 310 min., 44 €.]
The Compagnie Méditerranéenne de Films, created by Marcel Pagnol himself, continues the process
of restoring the filmmaker’s work and here presents two of his major films. A return to Naïs under Pagnol’s
directorship with Fernandel playing Toine the hunchback means suddenly finding oneself deep in the universe
of Émile Zola’s Naïs Micoulin. Jacqueline Pagnol, Raymond Pellegrin and Henry Poupon accompany Fernandel
in this naturalist tragicomedy. The verve, the human warmth, and Pagnol’s sensibility are clear in the choice of
framing of shots, the marvelous use of language, and the way in which the actors are directed. Underestimated
when it was released—Pagnol was always a victim of jealousy—Naïs is definitely a masterpiece. The same is true
of Topaze, made in 1951 with Fernandel. But what a shame this DVD does not include the two other versions
of Topaze Pagnol made; one played by Armontel and the other by Louis Jouvet. Having the three adaptations
together would have enabled fruitful comparisons. As it is, Topaze remains a jewel and it is impossible to forget
the venerable teacher from Muche’s pension giving dictation to sheep. Un auteur à la caméra is a documentary
(52 minutes) by Jean-François Bedel in which Pagnol as well as his wife Jacqueline, Yves Robert, Maurice Druon,
Félicien Marceau, Jean Dutourd and several of his friends are interviewed. Pagnol utters this admission, “When
I see the long series of characters I’ve played in my life, I wonder who I am.” The answer is immediate: a filmmaker
of genius. P. b
28

YoUNG READERS
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PICTURE BOOKS
Selected by IBBY-France and la Joie par les Livres
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COTTIN Menena and FARIA Rosana (ill.)
Le Livre noir des couleurs
[Rue du monde, coll. “Pas comme les autres,” tr. Alain Serres, October 2007, 32 p., 18 €,
isbn: 978-2-35504-002-3.]
[The Black Book of Colors, tr. Elisa Amado, Groundwood Books, 2008]
[El Libro Negro de los Colores, Ediciones Tecolote, 2007]
This exceptional book comes to us from a small publishing house in Tecolote, Mexico. At the Bologna
Children’s Book Fair, it received the New Horizon prize, which aims to promote publishing in developing countries.
This Livre noir invites the reader to see colors as Thomas does, with all the senses except the eyes. Making
it happen is a simple and beautiful text whose poetic force suggests flavors, smells, noises, and emotions, printed
at the bottom of the page in handsome white type. The text in Braille apprears above it. The right-hand page is
reserved for the sense of touch. The drawing appears, black on black with a brilliant gloss, in faint relief. Shut
your eyes: it’s yellow like a chick’s soft down, green like freshly-cut grass, and soft and black like a mother’s hair.
Age four and up. i.-f.
FONTANEL Béatrice and GUILLOPPÉ Antoine (ill.)
Grand corbeau
[Big Crow]
[Sarbacane, October 2007, 32 p., 14.90 €, isbn: 978-2-84865-177-4.]
A handsome large format allows Antoine Guilloppé’s superb illustrations to claim all the space of double
pages in order to give us these countryside views from the perspective of the Big Crow’s mood and whim. This
poor bird grumps about darkly through the deep black of the ink that stands out from the white background
of each page. He dreams of being a tropical bird with colorful plumage. The poet restores his joie de vivre by
making him realize that “black makes all the other colors sing.” Then snow begins to fall; he is magnificent in
all this white. The text is also beautiful and solemnly poetic. Age five and up. i.-f.
Mc NEIL David, ALLART Jean-Luc and COURATIN Patrick (ill.)
Confisqué
[Confiscated]
[Panama, August 2007, 16 p., 19.50 €, isbn: 978-2-7557-0203-3.]
The teacher is set off by the blackboard depicted on the cover of this large picture book; welcome to
pre-1968 school days! “Confiscated!” resonated like the axe that falls when the teacher shut your favorite toy in
his drawer. But when night comes, the toys themselves take revenge. The enormous double pages are invaded
by a troop of robots, a dinosaur, and an army of tin soldiers. An extraordinary hyperrealist treatment plunges
you into the picture and the dream. Age five and up. i.-f.
NEEMAN Sylvie and TALLEC Olivier (ill.)
Mercredi à la librairie
[Wednesday at the Bookstore]
[Sarbacane, September 2007, 32 p., 14.90 €, isbn: 978-2-84865-173-6.]
A lovely story and original subject, well-served by a sensitive and balanced text and superb full-page illustrations
whose tones vary according to the changing moods. A little girl observes and retells her Wednesdays
at the bookstore where she always sees the same elderly gentleman. She reads comics and he always reads the
same thick book, a book about the war that occasionally brings tears to his eyes. Why doesn’t he buy this book,
since he seems so attached to it? Is it because it’s too heavy? Just before Christmas, the book is no longer there,
but it’s Christmas! Age seven and up. i.-f.
29

SELLIER Marie and RAJCAK Hélène (ill.)
Le Secret de Raya l’embaumeur
[The Secret of Raya the Embalmer]
[La Martinière Jeunesse, September 2007, 48 p., 14 €, isbn: 978-2-7324-3607-4.]
Raya, the “Great Embalmer,” is old now. It’s time for him to tell the story of his life, a life dedicated
to preparing the dead to pass into the next world. Above all, it’s time for him to share his secret, the secret of
what he did for love of the beautiful dancer, Nebetta. Marie Sellier tells us this beautiful love story, at the same
time versing us in ancient Egyptian death rites in the underground rooms where corpses were embalmed. The
beautiful collaged and painted illustrations are freely inspired by Egyptian art. They blend with photographs
of ordinary and ritual objects from the era, whose meaning and origin are explained at the book’s end.
Age seven and up. i.-f.
SOLOTAREFF Grégoire
Adam et Ève
[Adam and Eve]
[L’École des loisirs, coll. “Albums,” October 2007, 36 p., 12.50 €, isbn: 978-2-211-08951-7.]
In Moi Fifi [I, Fifi], Solotareff has Fifi say: “When I’m big, I’ll tell true stories.” That’s what this great
author/illustrator did, and that’s why his books speak so powerfully to his readers, whether adults or children.
Adam and Eve live peacefully in their paradise, but the serpent is watching and comes to seed discord by offering
sweets to Eve. It’s the story of love play, of concupiscence, and of jealousy. Biblical morals are in play, and if
the fall from grace is disappointing, it’s only because it is a somewhat disillusioning commentary on what life
in a couple is like; Eve doesn’t succumb to temptation, and while the mythical couple moves, it’s in order to live
a more organized life! The illustrations are inventive: black ink and Impressionist colors, characters with very
expressive postures and gazes. The text alternates dialog and narrative commentary, without useless chatting
and with fine rhythm and perfect pitch.
Age five and up. i.-f.
URBANKOVA Dagmar
Il était une maison
[Thierry Magnier, September 2007, 30 p., 8 €, isbn: 978-2-84420-596-4.]
Habia Una Vez Una Casa/ Once upon a Time a Home, Lectorum Pub. 2007.
This gorgeous little square book was created by a new Czech publishing house, Baobab. It’s lovely proof of
the resurgence of children’s books in that country. On the left-hand pages, a rambling nursery rhyme brings you
into the house: “In the house, there was a table. On the table, a bowl…” Thus unfolds a short story, whimsical
and poetic, whose traditional form holds some nice surprises. On the right-hand page, on a black background,
Dagmar Urbankova’s superb engravings stand out, both anchoring you in a landscape and opening to a dream.
Age two and up. i.-f.
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FAIRY TALES
Selected by IBBY-France and la Joie par les Livres
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GAY-PARA Praline and HIÉ Vanessa
Aïcha et l’ogre
[Aisha and the Ogre]
[Didier Jeunesse, coll. “Escampette,” August 2007, 34 p., 12.50 €, isbn: 978-2-278-05722-1.]
In this story, Aisha lives with her father who loves her more than anything. One day he must go away
and he has an enormous wall built around his house and then closes the gate, leaving the little girl with her
cat and everything she might need to eat and read. Alas, one day the cat knocks the box of matches into the
well. After making a little hole in the wall, Aisha goes to knock at the house of the ogre who lives next door. Of
course, he gives her the matches, but there is one condition. Each day, the ogre comes and sucks one of the girl’s
fingers, which she puts through the little hole left gaping in the wall. Aisha despairs. Fortunately, on his return
her father finds a way to get rid of the ogre. To be read with a mixture of worry and pleasure, this beautiful,
30

traditional Tunisian tale with its beautiful and effective illustrations gains rhythm from rhymes that reinforce
the musicality of this excellent storyteller’s text. Age five and up. i.-f.
GRIMM Jacob and Wilhelm and JANSSEN Susanne (ill.)
Hänsel et Gretel
[Hansel and Gretel]
[Être, coll. “Grands albums,” October 2007, 64 p., 24.50 €, isbn: 978-2-84407-058-6. Translated from the
German by Christian Bruel.]
This story is definitely, in our national heritage, one of those that touches children the most. Thus, it
would be a real shame to skip over the Être version. A solemn text very close to the original, with a very elegant
gray font contrasting with Susanne Janssen’s extraordinary illustrations, made of collages and paintings in an
incredible synthesis of Renaissance and contemporary style. Bodies twist, faces are dramatized, and backgrounds
blend city and nature to form theatrical images that set the stakes of the tale. For all. i.-f.
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NON-FICTION
Selected by IBBY-France and la Joie par les Livres
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BAUSSIER Sylvie and NATALI (ill.)
La famille racontée aux petits curieux
[The Family Told to Curious Little Ones]
[Syros Jeunesse, coll. “Les albums documentaires,” September 2007, 64 p., 16 €, isbn: 978-2-7485-0562-7.]
Wondering what families are might seem surprising, since at first glance the answer seems obvious.
But things get complicated quickly. The notion of the family has evolved throughout history; it’s also different
from one civilization to another and the roles within this community aren’t always distributed in the same
way: a quote from Jane Howard in Families sums up the common denominator of this idea very well: “Call it a
clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.” And
yes, a baby cannot survive alone and the family in which it grows up is necessarily unique. The last chapter is
dedicated to newer family structures: blended families, gay parenting… it asks questions with intelligence and
a wide-open mind. Age thirteen and up. i.-f.
BETTAÏEB Viviane and FOURURE Bruno (ill.)
L’oasis. Un jardin dans le désert
[Oasis: a Garden in the Desert]
[Gallimard Jeunesse/Giboulées, coll. Saga cités, August 2007, 12 p., 18 €, isbn: 978-2-07-057363-9.]
We are thrilled to rejoin this beautiful collection of illustrated non-fiction books published by a Tunisian
house in the eighties: they have a beauty and finesse of illustration and organization that makes the scenes
very lively, combined with clear and interesting information. Here, life in the middle of the desert unveils its
secrets: collecting water, growing date palms, the pattern of life, the souks at the edge of the desert. The same
collection offers three other titles: Venise, la cité des doges [Venice, City of Gondolas], Carthage, la cité d’Hannibal
[Carthage, City of Hannibal], and La Médina de Tunis, une ville des mille et une nuits [The Tunis Medina: a City
of Thousand and One Nights]. Age five and up. i.-f.
DUPUY and BERBERIAN
Comment c’était avant
[How It Was Before]
[Albin Michel Jeunesse, October 2007, 64 p., 13.90 €, isbn: 978-2-226-17780-3.]
The authors of this work propose to explore time by showing the changes in a street, an apartment, and
a farm in four stages: 1920, 1950, 1970 and 2000. Four stops on a picture in large double pages swarming with
detail and life in a cartoon-like style. Each of these scenes is followed by two more pages that isolate certain elements
from the picture and explain their appearance, history, or use. It’s thus a complete history of our society
to be read by observing people’s behavior and tasks. Age six and up. i.-f.
31

NAGATA Tatsu and DEDIEU Thierry (translator)
La Tortue
[The Turtle]
[Le Seuil Jeunesse, coll. “Les sciences naturelles de Tatsu Nagata,” September 2007, 24 p., 8.50 € ,
isbn: 978-2-02-096251-3.]
A translation in Vient de paraître? I think it’s time to give readers the chance to discover this marvelous
collection of non-fiction animal stories for young children by revealing an editors’ joke: Japanese professor Tatsu
Nagata is no other than Thierry Dedieu! He puts his humor and great talent as an illustrator to work in these
very intelligent little books that say and show, quite simply, the essential on an animal species. At the beginning
and end of the book, the famous professor comes on the scene, to the great pleasure of his readers. Thus in La
Tortue, you see his head disappear into his white shirt and he says, “It’s gone… to my head!” Age three and up.
i.-f.
SATURNO Carole and BELIN Perrine
La Ville mode d’emploi. De mon quartier à la mégapole
[The City, a User’s Manual: from My Neighborhood to the Megalopolis]
[Gallimard Jeunesse, coll. “Terre urbaine,” September 2007, 128 p., 23.50 €, isbn: 978-2-07-061382-3.
Illustrated by Séverine Assous, Olivier Balez, Antoine Ronzon and Matthieu Roussel.]
Established in B.C.E. 8000, Jericho was one of the world’s first cities. Since then, mankind hasn’t stopped
gathering together in this way. In 2007, the urban population is greater than that of rural areas. In a city, the
inhabitants live, work, get together for events, have fun. The city is complex and diverse and to do it justice, this
book presents it from different angles: first-person narratives by children, informative texts, statistics, photographs,
drawings, and architectural plans. It is organized into four major sections: “History of Cities;” “Living
in the City”: from house to urban household; “Life in the Ant Colony”: living together, moving around; and
finally, “Here, There, Tomorrow,” a reflection on big cities of the future. This celebration of the city doesn’t hide
the difficulties of this way of life for the most unfortunate: crowding, poverty, shanty towns. A dense book, a
bit excessive perhaps, but one that brings together a formidable amount of information. Age ten and up. i.-f.
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POETRY, SONGS, NURSERY RHYMES
Selected by IBBY-France and la Joie par les Livres
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premiers poèmes avec les animaux
[First Animal Poems]
[Milan jeunesse, coll. Premiers poèmes, September 2007, 124 p., 18 €,
isbn: 978-2-7459 2639-5. Poems selected by Jean-Hugues Malineau.]
“Great contemporary poets talk to cats, travel on elephants’ backs, dance with dragonflies…,” that’s
what this lovely anthology offers. And in fact, the power with which these poets bring these animals to life, put
them in motion, and make us hear them is through immediately striking rhythms, wordplay, and alliteration.
We’re moved, amused, and astonished. The book is organized into sections and each of them is illustrated by a
different artist, all talented: the birds by Martin Jarrie, animals from our region by Virginie Guérin, insects by
Christian Guibbaud, animals from other regions by Christophe Merlin, and fish by Maurizio Quarello. The
intelligent and dynamic layout unfolds in a large square format. A fine success. Age three and up. i.-f.
GROSLEZIAT Chantal and DEGANS Claire (ill.)
Comptines et berceuses des rizières : 29 comptines de Chine et de l’Asie
[Nursery Rhymes and Lullabies from the Rice Fields: 29 Rhymes from China and Asia]
[Didier Jeunesse, coll. “Comptines du monde,” October 2007, 58 p. + 1 CD audio, 23.50 €,
isbn: 978-2-278-05645-3. Music produced by Jean-Christophe Hoarau.]
In the handsome collection “Comptines du Monde,” Didier Jeunesse offers a new gathering of nursery
rhymes and lullabies from Asia: China, Cambodia, Korea, Japan, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. At the beginning
of the book, a map lets you situate all these countries in relation to each other and tells which languages
are spoken where. For more information, a big page, “About Languages,” explains with great clarity the dif-
32

ferent systems of these tonal languages, their writing, their major changes throughout history. Then come the
rhymes, laid out with beautiful illustrations. The words are printed in their original alphabets and transcribed
in the Roman alphabet in French. Thus, you can begin to get familiar with the different systems of writing,
and also with the different music, of these languages. The end of the volume gives information on the songs’
origins, performances, the gestures that accompany them and the musical instruments used. All that’s left is to
let yourself be lulled by these beautiful melodies as you listen to the CD. Here’s a work that offers children the
chance to make a real discovery, a magnificent opening to a part of the world. For all. i.-f.
MALINEAU Jean-Hugues and CAILLOU Pierre (ill.)
proverbes et dictons farfelus
[Crazy Proverbs and Sayings]
[Albin Michel Jeunesse, coll. “Déjà grands,” August 2007, 38 p., 10.90 €, isbn: 978-2-226-17379-9.]
Languages are rich with proverbs, sayings, and readymade expressions that translate a certain common
sense often with a moral underpinning. Frequently, poets make use of these little phrases, playing with them
and bringing them back into vogue, inventing new ones, mixing them up. This volume offers up a flowering of
this sort of stylistic exercise with Queneau, Tardieu, Desnos, and Malineau, as well as pieces written by children,
for this humorously-illustrated picture book is also an encouragement to write. Don’t forget: la valeur n’attend
pas le nombre des idées (It’s quality and not quantity that counts) and if it’s by reading that one becomes a
bookworm, it’s surely by playing with language that one discovers all its pleasures. Age eight and up. i.-f.
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NOVELS
Selected by IBBY-France, la Joie par les Livres, and local booksellers
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BLONDEL Jean-Philippe
Un endroit pour vivre
[A Place to Live]
[Actes Sud junior, coll. “D’une seule voix,” October 2007, 78 p., 7.80 €, isbn: 978-2-7427-7003-8.]
Jean-Philippe Blondel’s Un endroit pour vivre is one of the noteworthy books this fall. It’s the fourth
title of a new collection from Actes Sud junior – “D’une seule voix” –, edited by Jeanne Benameur and Claire
David. The principle: short texts, quick reads, mostly adolescents’ interior monologues. They’re truly all strong,
powerful texts, and this one in particular perhaps a bit more so than the others: an adolescent at school, unassuming,
carefree, a substitute student delegate. One day, a new principal arrives at the school and there’s a
new rule: no more kissing hello or otherwise at school. Dignity, work, and respect are the values that must be
brought back to the establishment. It’s a discourse the young man doesn’t like at all. So he gets his camera and
films life inside the school. It’s truly a quick read and the work stands out enormously from the bunch because
it’s a book full of hope, a book that restores one’s confidence in humanity. Should there someday be a reading
list for middle and high schools, this book should be on it. Age thirteen and up. Chosen by Madeline Roth,
L’Eau Vive booktore, Avignon
DESPLECHIN Marie
pome
[L’École des loisirs, coll. Neuf, September 2007, nonpaginated, 8.50 €, isbn: 978-2-211-08977-7.]
We loved Verte, and we’re delighted with its sequel, Pome, built on the same model with chapters told
in succession by the grandmother; the grandfather; Pome, Verte’s new friend; Gérard; Verte; and finally Soufi:
each has a different point of view on events in their lives, with a bit of magic and a lot of love and life. Verte is
more refreshing than ever, above all thanks to her new friendship. As she says so well, there was a “before” when
she felt a bit lonely and an “after” with Pome, and “it’s crazy how different things seem depending on whether
you do them alone or with someone you love.” Verte is also a free spirit: for her, doing something forbidden “is
serious if you think it’s serious. But if you don’t mind, then it’s no big deal at all.” A true ode to friendship and
joie de vivre. Age eight and up. i.-f.
33

NOZIÈRE Jean-Paul
Nous sommes tous tellement désolés
[We’re All So Sorry]
[Thierry Magnier, coll. “Roman,” August 2007, 164 p., 8.50 €, isbn: 978-2-84420-575-9.]
Reading a news item inspired the author to write this novel: a young Moldavian, stuck in a mafia
network, works in Dubai. When she gets pregnant, she’s imprisoned. An international organization manages
to get her released, but she cannot bring her child with her. Here, Vassily, the child Liliana abandoned at age
eight, is trying to learn who this woman, his mother, was. Liliana has just died in Moldavia. She leaves her son a
dilapidated house in the village far away from where she worked but where she was not well-liked as a foreigner,
any more than he will be as an out of work marginal worker. Between reading his mother’s diary and his own
(sometimes violent) encounters with the villagers, Vassily begins to understand why she left him and why she
died. A stunning story. Age thirteen and up. i.-f.
PETIT Xavier-Laurent
Be safe
[L’École des loisirs, coll. “Médium,” September 2007, 260 p., 10.50 €, isbn: 978-2-211-08806-0.]
Two brothers strum their guitars and sing in the family garage. Jeremy, the elder, escapes his boredom
by dreaming of being a rock star, while Oskar, the narrator, is still in school. In a supermarket parking lot,
Oskar sees his brother engrossed in conversation with two men. They are army recruiters. They promise good
jobs, a new meaning in life by rebuilding bridges, for example. Jeremy signs on, gets in deep, gets noticed for
his shooting skills, and is soon sent to combat. Oskar recognizes that destiny repeats itself and that his brother
is confronting the same demons as their father, a man closed off from others, forever marked by the horrors of
another war. The brothers keep in touch by mail, and what Jeremy writes is quite different from the reassuring
lines he sends their parents. His letters always end, “Be safe,” the little phrase soldiers exchange each time they
leave for Iraq, which is never named. A very powerful novel. Age thirteen and up. i.-f.
RAVALEC Vincent
Bons à rien, prêts à tout!
[Good for Nothing, Ready for Anything!]
[Panama, coll. “Romans jeunesse,” August 2007, 96 p., 9 €, isbn: 978-2-7557-0269-9.]
After Les filles sont bêtes, les garçons sont idiots [Girls are Dumb, Boys are Idiots] and Le président ne peut
pas être un imbecile [The President Can’t Be an Imbecile], Arthur’s still up to his old tricks. Actually, it’s the
rivals Bad Crunch and Bubble who come and stir up the trouble here. As usual in this series, there are memorable
passages: Madame Flûte and her whole class on the phone with a help desk trying to connect them to
the Internet is an example of the type! What’s more, the author makes fun of the snowball effect of junior high
violence. At the least skirmish, journalists come running and it’s a riot. Fortunately Arthur always watches his
back with the help of his dear, sweet Violet! This is but the latest addition to an incontrovertibly enjoyable and
interesting series. Age twelve and up. Chosen by Elsa, Develay bookstore, Villefranche-sur-Saône.
34

LITERATURE
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BIOGRAPHIES AND NON-FICTION
Selected by Yves di Manno,Tthierry Guichard, Louise L. Lambrichs,
Éric Poindron, Jean-Pierre Salgas and Éric Vigne
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BON François
Bob Dylan une biographie
[Bob Dylan, a Biography]
[Albin Michel, September 2007, 496 p., 22 €, isbn: 978-2-226-17936-4.]
Make no mistake about it: François Bon hasn’t really tackled the biography of Bob Dylan here, but
after his Rolling Stones, une biographie (Fayard, 2002), this book presents an X-ray view of an entire generation:
his own. “Dylan as a darker mask of ourselves,” he writes, or more precisely defining his project, “lives such
as Dylan’s become a sort of storehouse where everything about an era comes together, a mirror of questions
a society asks about itself, but which only become clear retrospectively.” While the book is remarkably well
documented, making use of numerous sources (other biographies, songs, people on the scene, and audiovisual
sources) this is not so much for the purpose of dressing up Dylan’s status as interrogating the silences and gaps
in what we know about the author of Blowin’ in the Wind. True to his novelistic capacities—see Daewoo (Fayard,
2004)—Bon uses the Dylan persona to place us at the intersection of time periods. Thus, Bobby Zimmerman’s
childhood links to the end of World War II, immigration from Eastern Europe, Judaism, the modern progress
brought about by radio and television, and the beginning of the electric guitar. He also shows us the cities of
childhood: Duluth and Hibbing are to young Zimmerman what the towns of Charante or Vendée may be for
the author himself. Reading through this biography one encounters a life which echoes of which can be heard
forty years later in the life of all Western societies. There is something surprisingly powerful in the way Bon
calls together the intimate and the universal, the known and the unknown, the profane and the sacred. Rich in
details and specifics (as much on Dylan’s guitar playing as his reading practices, love life and friendships) the
book could have been three times as long: François Bon has brought to life inexhaustible material. t. G.
BOURRELIER Paul-Henri
La Revue Blanche. Une génération dans l’engagement, 1890-1905
[The Revue Blanche. A Generation of Activism, 1890-1905]
[Fayard, coll. “Littérature française,” September 2007, 1,200 p., 45 €, isbn: 978-2-213-63064-9.]
The Revue Blanche, which was founded in 1891 by the Natanson brothers, the sons of Polish Jewish
émigrés, and came to a stop in 1903, was an exemplary incarnation of the final decade of the nineteenth
century—a period that is strangely neglected by French literary history as a sort of hinge point between the
surges of Symbolism and the great Modern explosion. The review was first championed by Mallarmé, who
published some of his Divigations in its pages. It welcomed the work of Jarry and the very young Apollinaire,
as well as Proust, Gide, Léon Blum, Mirbeau, and Claudel (among others) under Félix Fénélon’s impenetrable
and canny watch. In painting, the Natansons were supporters of Vuillard, Bonnard, Toulouse-Lautrec; in theater
they were supporters of Ibsen, Chekhov, Strindberg… and Ubu roi. They were faithful to an approach that
would be called “leftist” in today’s France (favoring cosmopolitanism, being sympathetic to anarchists, active
participants in the founding of the Human Rights League...) and were at the forefront of every ideological,
esthetic and philosophical debate of the time, including a significant role during the Dreyfus affair. Through
the Revue Blanche’s support of the most innovative thinkers and artists of its time, one might say that it was
the veritable crucible of the Modernism which took off as the publication itself disappeared from the scene.
Paul-Henri Bourrelier’s book not only recounts this formidable collective adventure: it erects the portrait of
a generation—of an entire era—without leaving out its least aspect. The flawless erudition goes beyond being
merely a history of the review because it traces the successive careers of all its collaborators—as well as
innumerable marginal characters. In addition to these forays, it provides useful excursions into the political
and cultural events which marked this decisive decade: a veritable encyclopedia unfolds over the course of its
chapters. And while this book wasn’t written to be read in one sitting (like the “biography” of the review may
35

have been) it certainly fulfills the function of being the work of reference on the question by virtue of the
sureness of the facts it brings together as well as the intelligence of its analyses. We must also point out that
this impressive work was written by a rare kind of enlightened amateur indeed, a mining engineer by day…
Y. D. M.
DIAZ José-Luis
L’Écrivain imaginaire. Scénographies auctoriales à l’époque romantique
[The Imaginairy Writer. Authorial Scenographies of the Romantic Era]
[Honoré Champion, June 2007, coll. “Romantisme et modernités,” 636 p., 105 €,
isbn: 978-2-7453-1590-8.]
MEIZOZ Jérôme
postures littéraires. Mises en scène modernes de l’auteur
[Literary Postures. Mise en Scène of the Modern Author]
[Slatkine Érudition, September 2007, 210 p., 33 €, isbn: 978-2-05-102041-1.]
Just a year ago, with his La Condition littéraire, Bernard Lahire thought he put a straw in Bordieu’s eye
rather than bumping himself in the head with a beam: he surveyed writers rather than reading their work… Well,
if you don’t consider how these two monoliths were thought out simultaneously in two different disciplines you
might simply define José-Luiz Diaz’s big work on the first half of the twentieth century as that very beam (or a
return to the Oster-Bourdieu debate which Lahire minimized): for two centuries writers have been recounting
the “literary condition” and their lives as writers in various ways… What value can the sociologist find in these
recountings? What can the historian of ideas make of them? Diaz’s terrain: exactly that of Paul Bénichou (in
Romantisme), the “consecration of the writer” and then the “disenchantment.” His problematic: Michel Foucault’s
in the famous What Is an Author lecture of 1969 (the contradiction of Barthes’ “death of the author” in
1968). A writing and socially defined “author” is a character in the literary drama who should not be confused
with the “person” or with the marks of utterance in the work. This is often a sort of theoretical dead zone. Still,
there are numerous major works by “authors.” I’m thinking about Gombrowicz’s Journal, or Sartres’ Mots or
Malraux’s Antimémoires… A product of his doctoral studies, Diaz’s book impresses as a monument of erudition
on the subject. It has two parts. The first dissects the theatrics of the literary scene during the Romantic period,
beyond the greats he makes us want to dive into the works of writers such as Lamartine, Vigny and Gautier. He
also shows us texts we don’t know (Charles Léandre’s). The second part is more structural and goes over five parts
of imagination (and their combinations): melancholy, responsibility, energy and on another level: fantasy and
disenchantment. “The role is there, awaiting its actor,” as Sartre would say and Bernard Frank had his “literary
panoply.” The two overlap and the most important writers can shoulder more than one… And so it continues
to this day… As against the “Proustian” doxa, Diaz resuscitates Sainte-Beuve (whose work he has been an editor
of), something like the author of the author and the Sartre of L’Idiot de la famille [The Family Idiot].
P.s. One can read Jérôme Meizoz’s book in the wake of all this—as exactly this, a postscript on the same subject;
a defense of the concept of “posturing,” bringing together case studies (Stendhal after Rousseau, Peguy and
Ramuz, Céline, Cendrars, Cingria). Here is a practical exercise: imagining an imaginary (or not) José-Luis Diaz
analyzing the latest books of Alain Robbe-Grillet or Philippe Sollers. J.-P. s.
LOCMANT Patrice
J.-K. Huysmans. Le forçat de la vie
[J.-K. Huysmans. Prisoner For Life.]
[Bartillat, April 2007, 282 p., 20 €, isbn: 978-2-84100-394-5.]
Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907) is an underappreciated yet major writer. The author of Là-Bas [Engl
translations: Down There, The Damned, La-Bas], En route, and La Cathédrale [The Cathedral] has thousands
of faithful readers to this day, a veritable cult following. His life, however, may even be more extreme than his
works. Whenever we think we’ve got a handle on him he slips away. Huysmans was a full and complex character:
by turns naturalist novelist, sharp connoisseur of Paris, aesthete, and connoisseur of “avant-gardes,” he was a
clear-headed art critic sure about his tastes, a “fin-de siècle” mind par excellence, a mystic and a recluse towards
the end of his life who preferred the company one finds in monasteries to literary cenacles. It was the author
himself who called himself a “prisoner for life,” that is a writer as filled with the Absolute, doubts and freedom
who endlessly interrogated the human condition and its oscillation between good and evil. What might have
36

een just one more biography in an ample enough university writing style, turns out to be a masterstroke, lively
to read, with a novelistic rhythm. Patrick Locmant walks his character through a living Paris during a lively
time. We meet up with the abbot Munier, Huysmans’s confidant and the author of a famous literary journal,
step into the Goncourt Académie or follow the writer as he walks through sad neighborhoods on the Bièvre or
the finer-looking areas near Saint-Sulpice. The portrait of Huysmans is clear and his biographer also manages
to explore the more obscure areas without difficulty: his faith and his crises, his confused sexuality, his visceral
need to write. The man who said he wavered between the cell and the noose was above all a tremendous writer.
We shouldn’t forget, all Huysmans novels, or almost all, are masterpieces that have captivated and fascinated
generations of readers—beginning with Là-bas, the novel of evil, black masses and Satanism. It is rare for a
biography to produce such a desire to find out more about and read more of a writer. É. P.
REZA Yasmina
L’Aube, le soir ou la nuit
[Flammarion, August 2007, 192 p., 18 €, isbn: 978-2-08-120916-9.]
[Dawn, Dusk or Night: A Year with Nicolas Sarkozy, Knopf, 2008, tr. Carol Janeway]
La Revue littéraire n° 32
[Léo Scheer, September 2007, 464 p., 15 €, isbn: 978-2-7561-0124-8.]
Portrait de l’écrivain en animal domestique [portrait of the writer as household animal]: it would be a
mistake to apply the (fine) title of Lydie Salvayre’s (less fine) book to the return of Yasmina Reza. An ample
July interview (65 pages) with Florent Georgesco, editor of La Revue Littéraire does in fact situate the import
of L’Aube, le soir ou la nuit. In the interview, Reza goes over each of her books (“Since I say the same thing all
the time, I have to say it in different ways”); for instance, the famous smart (as in intelligent) set bedroom
farce, Art, “perhaps the most frequently staged contemporary play in the world.” For six months she chose to
be embedded in the Sarkozy presidential campaign, Sarkozy, having announced his candidacy some five years
earlier (thinking about it while shaving, he tells us). From the beginning it reminds you of Marguerite Duras,
who put her encounter with François Mitterand into words. Short scenes for a theatrical novel behind the
scenes from Place Beauveau to May 16 th at the Élysée: meetings, airplanes… from Palavas-les-Flots to Algiers
via Rethel, Mount Saint Michel, Rennes, Le Creusot… accompanied by Henri Guaino (the words) and Élodie
Grégoire (the images). “Time the only subject” of the book—with Sarkozy the candidate giving time a run
for its money, and outdoing himself in fast zips from one place to another before the eye of the camera. You
read about time and the desire for social distinction: as they are condensed together in the scene of childlike
marveling at a newspaper ad for a Rolex. There’s just so much structural homology here—add in Teresa Cremis
(Reza Sarkozy?) the new chief of Flammarion international publishing—and this is really the strength of the
book. And its limitation… “L’Aube, le soir ou la nuit contains the quintessence for me of social or existential
observation.” The observation of whom? Of the future president; she notes on page 103 that from speech to
speech “he only addresses himself.” Soon however, this homology turns into resemblance and then identification.
At its best: pages 134-135, the April 12, 2006 speech in Tours: “Yes I am a child of an immigrant… Yes, I am a
Frenchman of mixed blood.” Sarkozy the absolute son, Sarkozy with a slight limp (Oedipus) “turned his back on
the negative” and grasped his “will.” And the worst? It is annoying when the author of Art and who only names
her friends by their first names, feels the need to tell us about a lunch with Vera and Milan Kundera—the first
of a long enough list, Alain Minc, Luc Ferry, Jacques Attali… to which we can add vacations at Sils-Maria and
citations from Cioran, Des Forets, Simone Weil and Borges… outward signs of intellectual distinction: Reza’s
Rolex is named Milan Kundera! Confirmation: her avowed personal enemy, the popular philosopher Michel
Onfray who had Sarkozy shaking down to his DNA in an interview. The only moment of esthetic emotion has
to do with her A Spanish Play directed by John Turturo and reviewed in New York… at the start, a self-portrait
of Reza as Sarkozy: Monsieur Sarkozy, c’est moi…” The only outside alterity to this mirror of a book (between
bedroom farce and René Girard), the book is dedicated to another person, also a candidate for supreme power,
here named “G”—like the point of desire, described as incapable of “wanting”… to reflect? J.-P. s.
SÉMELIN Jacques
J’arrive où je suis étranger
[Éd. du Seuil, coll. “Biographies- Témoignages,” September 2007, 304 p., 19.80 €,
isbn : 978-2-02-088398-6.]
37

It is a uncommon for the French university to permit itself to take itself as a subject. Excepting those
who are professors and writers the academic tradition tends toward being reserved in that way. This testimonial,
coming from a political scientist at Sciences Po and a director of research at the CNRS, is thus a unique sort
of cultural document. However its interest is not as a literary curiosity, far from being solipsistic, it is rather its
general, individual and social range which captures the attention. Jacques Sémelin’s story is revealing concerning
how certain handicaps are perceived in our society. Sémelin describes how he discovered he had retinitis
pigmentosa (a genetic disorder which appears relatively late in life and always ends in blindness) as an adolescent
and the way in which French society responded, first by sending him toward the garage. While he did not heed
this perfunctory counsel, which corresponded neither to his aptitudes nor his ambitions, he was still full up with
questions. How does one live one’s life when one knows that one day, sooner or later, one will be blind? How
does one orient oneself, one’s life? What kinds of love life should one pursue? How start a family? How much
should one say about it, and to whom? Should one talk about it? Say nothing? Tell all? Intense with what he
calls a “conquering rage,” Sémelin offers very interesting descriptions of how he continually went from denial
to realization and back to denial to the point of putting himself in danger, and how his dynamism, borne along
with valuable encounters, led to his constructing a personal and professional trajectory that many can envy.
Thus, at a time when the image is triumphing, Sémelin confirms what the wise of all times have known: that
the visually blind are often more clear-sighted than those who, not realizing their opportunities, are ignorant
of what they see. l. l. l.
THÉRENTY Marie-Ève
e
La Littérature au quotidien. poétiques journalistiques au x i x siècle
[Literature of the Quotidian: Nineteenth-century Journalistic Poetics]
When the large distribution press first came to be, in an era of increased literacy and a revolution in
transportation, the journalistic profession had to be invented. It took shape slowly, based first on writing practices
inherited from literature. For newspapers were born under the aegis of great writers. All, with the notable
exception of Flaubert, wrote for newspapers (Balzac, Hugo and Lamartine); sometimes wrote entire papers
themselves (Sand, Vallès); or were editors (Gautier and Nerval). The newspaper thus began by taking inspiration
from literary writing, then dictated literature’s formats to it (the serial novel, the prose poem), before imposing
its own formats onto literature (from fictionalization of the news to investigative reporting à la Albert Londres).
This is the first major work on the subject. É. V.
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GENERAL LITERATURE
Selected by Marc Blanchet, Yves di Manno, Thierry Guichard, Louise L. Lambrichs,
Boniface Mongo-Mboussa, Delphine Peras, Éric Poindron, Jean-Pierre Salgas and Guy Samama
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Le Magazine du bibliophile et de l’amateur de manuscrits & autographes n° 67
[The Magazine of Bibliophily, Manuscripts and Autographs, No. 67]
[Méditions Coprah, October 2007, 46 p., 7 €, issn: 1622-2539. Frédéric Reitz (Ed).]
Book of hours or artist’s book, moveable type or incunabulum, holy book or banned book, with a simple
cover or covered with embossed leather, or vellum paper—the book is a source of knowledge and pleasure
combined. Le Magazine du bibliophile explores the book in all its forms and all its dressings. Behind a modest
signed envoy or a manuscript, the presence of a literary or artistic personality, the history of literature comes to
life. Le Magazine du bibliophile is for the booklover, from the debutant to the professional, without distinction
and without judgment. It is resolutely modern, has no sticky old fashioned trimmings, and its modest ambition
is the sharing of passion for books. Each month the reader finds articles on authors, publishers, artists, binders,
periods or themes, clarified in terms of the present; articles about collectors and visits to public collections, plus
complete information on book fairs, markets, exhibitions and auctions. The September issue, vendange oblige, is
focused on the exhilarating connection between wine and books; lest we forget that the two have been directly
connected since Guttenberg and the invention of the press. How else, the editor in chief Frédéric Reitz asks,
would the ingenious inventor have come up with the idea of screw press impression? The publication presents
an alternating promenade between wine cellars and libraries. Philippe Bourguignon, the emeritus sommelier,
presents his collection of written works on wine; Louis de Chevigné, the author whose work takes place in Reims,
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tells us the history of a wine of mythic proportions, champagne. Each month the magazine offers an exploration
of the universe of the book including its fabrication. Each issue also has a theme (travel, gastronomy, natural
history, esotericism, curiosities), includes bibliographic or literary investigations, and provides information for
getting one’s bearings—or for taking one’s enjoyment in—the mysteries of the book of yesteryear. É. P.
Revue internationale des livres et des idées n° 1
[International Review of Books and Ideas, No. 1]
[Amsterdam, September 2007, 64 p., 5 €, issn: 1959-6758. Jérôme Vidal (Ed.)]
“What happened to Cahiers du cinéma? For decades it published the most polemical and influential
critiques ever written about film… It is still published every month, but now, beneath its shiny cover, it is
indistinguishable from the mass of mainstream film magazines” (Émilie Bickerton). One can replace the name
of the review… and extend the idea beyond the realm of the printed world to the notion of a change of epoch:
generational, technological (Internet), as well as political: the left destroyed from being too national… So the
arrival of the Revue internationale des livres et des idées is good news: it’s independent, “on the left of the left,” and
cuts its way through all domains of culture and activity of the world. It comes from Éditions Amsterdam which
is close to the reviews Vacarme and Multitudes whose specialties are American French theory, cultural studies,
and their latest-day upshots. Even beyond the article on Cahiers du cinéma, one is strongly tempted to consider
this first issue a manifesto. The contents include literature: Jean Potocki, Jean Hatzfeld, and science fiction;
Anthropology: Darwin, Jack Goody, Stuart Hall, Arjun Appadurai; Contemporary Art: Mathieu Pernot, Yann
Delacour, and Estelle Contamin (the last, least convincing); politics the “intellectuals” on the left of the left and
the socialist party. The first issue is dedicated to André Schiffrin. Still, we have two reservations: the staggering
editorial amnesia and lack of appreciation in completely ignoring the project of the Revue internationale of the
early 1960s (Nadeau, Vittorini, etc.), that the La Quinzaine littéraire was created by Maurice Nadeau for the
same reasons in 1966—ditto for Liber thought up by Pierre Bourdieu in the 1980s… and secondly its naïve
Anglophilia: the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement and the New York Review of Books taken
as their sole models… both thankfully corrected by the last piece (by Perry Anderson, the former editor of the
New Left Review). J.-P. s.
BARTHES Roland
Le Discours amoureux suivi de fragments d’un discours amoureux: inédits
[The Lover’s Discourse followed by Unpublished Fragments of a Lover’s Discourse]
[Éd. du Seuil, coll. “Traces écrites,” October 2007, 746 p., 29 €, isbn: 978-2-02-061850-2.]
This book derives from notes from a seminar Roland Barthes held at the École Pratique des Hautes Études
between 1974 and 1976. With this publication readers can follow the main currents and the transformations of
creative thought which led from the course to the publication, from the life of teaching to the completed work.
Repetition dominates here, in a refusal of immobility and providing a benefit of surprise. Psychoanalysis, the
“logosphere.” Plato, Nietzsche and music intercross in a play of writing which leads to an interrogation of the
epistemological break taught by modernism and whose central methodological object turns out to be reading
as a deciphering of thought. Another break is the abduction the lover’s discourse itself effects. Because the lover
is an artist who “uproots me and deprives me of my identity, sending me back to the origin and making me
flow toward my childhood.” At the same time, sensuality, worry, memory, ritual, friction, rejection and vertigo
enter into it. But what the lover’s discourse does not say is perhaps more interesting than what it does: the fall
from which it is born, whether elliptically, metaphorically, anachronistically or syntactically.
All this is so to the extent that the lover’s approach is basically discontinuous. What we see coming together in
Barthes are not objects, they are not even thoughts, they are a mechanism: these texts show how they come to
produce themselves. Thus there is no metalanguage. Barthes gave a name to this destruction of metalanguage:
semiology. It is a warning which continually undoes the imposture of classes of utterance. And it is that warning
Barthes addresses to us here. G. s.
BENOIT-DUSAUSOY Annick and FONTAINE Guy (Eds.)
Lettres européennes. Manuel d’histoire de la littérature européenne
[European Letters; a History of European Literature Handbook]
[De Boeck, September 2007, 860 p., 35 € , isbn: 978-2-8041-4861-4. Preface byVaira Vike-Freiberga.]
In his essay The Saxifrage Tree (1975) which is partially on Latin American literature, the Mexican poet
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Octavio Paz describes how Hispano-American literature is not a matter of pure groupings of works but a relation
among works. He explains that each is a response, whether declared or not, to another work written by a
predecessor, a contemporary or an imaginary descendent. A critique of national literature can be read through
Paz’s words, since literary reality, as Paz himself so well writes, never entirely corresponds to the national, state,
etc. realities. In any case, this is what Annick Benoit-Dusausoy, a professor agrégé in literature and Guy Fontaine,
the creator of the Villa Mont-Noir residency for writers try to demonstrate in their handbook of European
literature. Here we learn that Marguerite Yourcenar borrowed the title of her trilogy The Labyrinth of the World
which concerns her Flemish genealogy from the Moravian humanist philosopher Comenius, that Shakespeare
found the plot for his Hamlet in the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus’ twelfth-century history, that the
Ukrainian writer Yuri Andrukhovych claims his filiation from the great Rabelais, that Kafka had a predilection
for Gogol’s Nose and that his Metamophosis owes much to the author of Dead Souls. In short, Lettres européennes
points to lineages, legacies, and patronage, putting them all into perspective, and all the more aptly because of
its lucid language. It is written by more than 200 European scholars, and is divided into fifteen chapters each
of which is coordinated by an author from a different European country. It is done in such a way that one gets
an overall idea of all the movements and literary genres at a given moment in European history; one can read
about national specificities, great figures who enlightened Europe, etc. Conceived and put together for pedagogical
purposes and probably destined to be the Lagarde et Michard of European literature, this book takes
up the gauntlet thrown down by Milan Kundera when he wrote a few years ago, “Europe has not managed to
think about its literature as a historical unity and I will not cease to repeat that this is its irreparable intellectual
failure.” b. M.-M.
BERTRAND Alain
on progresse
[Our Progress]
[Le Dilettante, October 2007, 224 p., 16 €, isbn: 978-2-84263-146-8. Drawings by Alice Charbin.]
It is difficult to categorize this new book by the Belgian writer Alain Bertrand: it isn’t a novel but it also
certainly is not a collection of short stories… It is more a compendium of reflections on what progress brings and
on the objects and practices it imposes on us. In fact this book takes inspiration from…. catalogs. But a catalog
resembling no other, funny and affectionate at the same time, humoristic and biting, always on the mark, well
balanced, without the kind of forced stylistic effects one often finds in writing where the author compensates
for the weakness of ideas with the strengths of the pen. There’s none of that for the good reason that Bertrand
has so much to say about the period and specifically on the attributes of “modernitude.” There are fifty entries
on attributes of progress such as the following: “The Barbecue,” “The Wall Lamp,” “The Blankey,” “Nail Polish,”
“The Video Camera,” “The Washing Machine,” “The Cell Phone,” “The Remote Control,” “The Corkscrew,”
“The Microwave,” etc. And don’t forget “Tupperware,” and “the suction noise it makes when you open it which
sounds almost like a kiss,” or “G-String Panties,” about which Bertrand produces some particularly witty commentary.
He has plenty of punch in his remarks on “The Food Processor” too, “grate, squeeze, slice, dice, juice,
kneed dough, beat egg whites, the food processor covers the ground of the butler, the Turkish masseuse, and
the Marquis de Sade.” Not bad, huh? He puts “The Computer” in its place, as well as “The Swiss Army Knife”
which he describes as “too large, too heavy and too expensive.” The rest is just as forthcoming, tasteful yet ironic,
even if some entries are better than others. In any case, here’s an interesting variation on Roland Barthes’ famous
Mythologies! D. P.
BLANCHOT Maurice
Chroniques littéraires du Journal des débats, avril 1941-août 1944
[Literary Reviews from the Journal des débats, April 1941-August 1944]
[Gallimard, coll. “Les cahiers de la NRF,” October 2007, 686 p., 30 €,
isbn: 978-2-07-078346-5. Christophe Bident (Ed.)]
Europe n o
940-941: Maurice Blanchot-Antoine Volodine
[Europe, No. 940-941]
[Europe, August 2007, 384 p., 18.50 €, isbn: 978-2-35150-009-5.]
The first of these Chroniques littéraires ends with a review of Henri Mondor’s Mallarmé, “He restored
the history of a man whose entire existence had been in his work which itself was close to the void by its very
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wondrousness.” With the announcement of the publication of a hefty volume of Maurice Blanchot’s Chroniques
from the Journal des débats, one could have hoped that in turn we would finally find Blanchot restring his own
history and (and history itself), since it may be possible to consider (Mehlman 1982, Mesnard, 1990) the texts
of the early Blanchot as extremely determinant of the later Blanchot whom we see in the process of being born
here (the door to this perspective was opened a bit in Le Débat in 1984). Remember, his Écrits politiques published
in 2000 did not include his “anticonformist texts of the 1930s.” And then there is the opposite silliness
of the Dictionnaire des intellectuels (Éd. du Seuil) which does not discuss Blanchot after 1945. So, no… about
the beginnings of what amounted to the collaborative work in the collaborating Journal des débats (the critique
of the essence of literature first appeared in a Vichyist publication) nothing is said. The product of an author of
a pious biography (Maurice Blanchot partenaire invisible [Maurice Blanchot, Invisible Partner], 1998) this edition
is anything but critical… Neither Blanchot’s death (2003) nor his centennial (2007) have changed anything
about “Blanchot the Hero” (Évelyne Grossman’s title for this issue of Europe; she does not get out of this view
any more than the Internet site). There is always that posthumous anthumous “posture”(and a definition of his
heroism…): “Maurice Blanchot, novelist and critic; his life was entirely devoted to literature and its particular
silence” (as the front and back covers say). About these “chronicles of intellectual life” from 1941 to 1944, fiftyfive
out of seventy-three were reprinted in Faux Pas in 1943 under the auspices of Dyonis Mascolo. They are
contemporary with Thomas l’obscur [Thomas the Obscure] and Aminadab. Several things about this collection
are striking from the perspective of today: the thread of what is happening on the literary front provides Blanchot
the opportunity to depict wartime France as obsessed with national introspection, in the way that Thibaudet sees
literary criticism as always exceeding literary criticism. And this critic who was fascinated with Kafka (and Woolf
and Joyce) spewed out naturalism, and this enthusiast of formal novelty positioned himself (Sartre: the note in
Situations I) as diametrically opposite to “the disciple of Charles Maurras.” Valéry (the father) is everywhere, as
is Paulhan (the brother)… “the real critic, who is already a poet without being a poet, novelist without being a
novelist, also already has the ambition of not being a specialist of the non-specialty which criticism is.” Above
all, some of these works are masterpieces: on Mauriac’s La Pharisienne (1941) [Woman of the Pharisees 1946],
(with argumentation seen in Sartre on Mauriac’s La Fin de la nuit), on Audiberti (Urujac 1942), Colette (Julie
de Carneilhan 1942 [tr. 1952]), Beauvoir (L’Invitée 1942 [She Came to Stay 1952]), Des Forets (Les Mendiants
1943 [The Beggars, 1948)]), and Dumézil on several occasions… against Motherlant, and Morand (blowing
apart L’Homme pressé [Man in a Rush] in 1941, and his Maupassant biography in 1942). The past few months
have given us the resurrection of Albert Thibaudet (see VDP 30). Heir to Thibaudet’s questions, in the years
1941-1944 Blanchot invents thought on form as the engagement of the writer (technique equals metaphysics—
as Sartre put it in Situations I), which we came to see in Barthes (the technique side) as much as in… Blanchot
with Le Livre à venir [The Book to Come] and L’Espace littéraire [The Space of Literature] (the metaphysical
side). J.-P. s.
FERCAK Claire
Rideau de verre
[Glass Curtain]
[Verticales-Phase deux, August 2007, 106 p., 10.50 €, isbn: 978-2-07-078224-6.]
The history of mental illness and its borderlines has always been one of literature’s driving forces. Not
that the latter has the capacity to repair the former but one of literature’s challenges has always been to come
and speak from that other literary space, a solitary space that can be shared by all, about what cannot be registered
otherwise in the ordinary world. Claire Fercak’s first work of fiction, in its turn and with a contemporary
sensibility, translates and registers aspects of that experience. The uniqueness of her work derives from at least
two elements which distinguish her narrative, for example, from a novel which two generations ago (Fercak
is 25 years old) dealt with a similar theme—I’m thinking of Duras’ Ravissement de Lol V. Stein [The Ravishing
of Lol V. Stein]. First, the language reads organically. It is not separated from the body, and like the body it is
crisscrossed with snippets of other languages which break out in a sentence the way the Other breaks out in
memory without there being any unity of action breaking through for the narrator. Ballasted by the little girl
that survives in her, the little girl clinging to her father who himself has lost his sanity, she is caught in the present
with a sense of not existing which translates a permanent movement to the point where the same sentence
moves from “I” to “she” manifesting the subject’s difficulties in coming into the world and inventing herself.
The second element (perhaps connected to the first) is that this text is explicitly enrolled in a feminine literary
heritage, that of women writers with experiences of this sort who took their own lives, particularly Sylvia Plath
41

and Virginia Woolf. Does literature have a gender? A priori one thinks not. And yet there is a particularity to
the powerful sensitivity with which these women write through the glass walls of their mental states to produce
distinctive literary spaces. The indirect homage Claire Fercak pays them here is a notable entry into literature.
l. l. l.
GAUVILLE Hervé
pas de deux
[Gallimard, coll. “Verticales,” September 2007, 128 p., 14.90 €, isbn: 978-2-07-078473-8.]
“One is always alone with another. One is always with another when one is alone.” The voice which
takes form in this pas de deux succeeds in the feat of including the other while designating the other as other
and giving life and consistency to its silence. This writing thus makes the between vibrate, the space which
brings together and separates the gap were one’s fate, like works of literature, takes shape. The speaker here is
not like the familiar narrator of the past, this speaker is completely the live voice we can hear when a microphone
is held up to another, with all the hassling and pushing when one holds back, the questioning, but also
including attentiveness and receptiveness. Hervé Guaville’s sensitive and pared-down poetic prose gives life to
an interesting trio, a woman and two men (one is her brother, the other her lover) whose story echoes against
another, the tragic story of Elvira Madigan and her lover. Beyond the breathtaking, piercing story sketched out,
it is a melancholy and troubling meditation on art, dance, painting and death. l. l. l.
GUYOTAT Pierre
formation
[Gallimard, September 2007, 234 p., 17.50 €, isbn : 978-2-07-078444-8.]
It’s in the present; things, people, places, situations, the past: it’s all set up in the eye-opening, everythingsampling
succession of the immanence of childhood which doesn’t miss a thing. Hours follow hours in chapters
combining happiness and sadness, ecstasy and fear. Guyotat reveals the uncertainties of his apprenticeship with
time and space with a yearning for discovery which exceeds pleasure to become even avid and which soon comes
to fill in the interstices mind and body release from the same movement through the vibrations of the world. It
is an autobiographical narrative where the material in itself does not depend, cannot depend, on the charms of
past narration, on the idea of evoking memory. It goes beyond the recollections and the puttings into perspective
habitually found in this kind of writing. The person is like the world the he is penetrating: a multiplicity of signs,
run through with the figure of God, filled with fear of self, warmed up by his mother’s presence. Living seems
to mean losing the gigantic dimensions of this territory so that doubt about God can take its place, so that the
body of the other brings it own suffocations, so that writing becomes the cement of this much disparity. And
the choice of the present continues to indicate this advancement in time, this “going in search of self” as one
guesses one is free of these inhibitions as an adult. But nothing doing: deep childhood impulses do not give in
to the strong heartbeats of maturity. The body one knew as a child is also the thin-skinned body of the adult
that one presses on in youth. The present contains its cycles but also circles back onto itself to show how it is
eternal. Guyotat perceives this kind of time with such clarity that it also pains us, and teaches us just as much,
so much are knowing and being pained inseparable from each other as they speak their indivisible connections
in this admirable book. M. b.
HOREM Élisabeth
Un jardin à Bagdad. Journal (octobre 2003-mai 2006)
[A Garden in Baghdad; Journal (October 2003-May 2006)
[Bernard Campiche, September 2007, 328 p., 22 €, isbn: 978-2-88241-199-0.]
The French-Swiss Élisabeth Horem has been publishing novels since 1994 (Le Ring, Bernard Campiche)
and in 2005 she published a solid work on her life in American-occupied Baghdad under the wreck and ruin
of attacks in Shrapnels (same publisher). The journal which came out this fall is to a certain extent the matrix
of her novel. Horem is married to a diplomat and went with her husband to Baghdad when he was stationed at
the Swiss Embassy there. The journal begins as the container with her personal possessions (and her books…)
haven’t yet arrived in the Iraqi capital. We enter directly into the life of a more or less voluntary recluse: the
omnipresent danger forces one to stay inside protected by bodyguards, amid the sound of explosions that don’t
stop. While Horem notes daily what she teaches a little cat to do, the receptions she attends (strange receptions
surrounded by violence and death), the sun shining on the garden, people she meets, one is immediately taken
42

y the violence and terror the writing endeavors to resist precisely by naming what happens. This journal reads
like an gripping novel. Perhaps it is because she uses a perspective à la Raymond Depardon: her opinions, while
they make their way through only rarely (particularly in regard to the Americans) do not interfere with her
exposition of what is happening (from tender or amusing details to the most abject occurrences). The reader is
thus placed in the midst of history in the making, close to the position of the involved witness where the writer
is risking her life. The sense of danger which increases each day creates an incredible tension. Fear becomes
palpable, as when the author sets up a closet for use in case of a terrorist attack. Un jardin à Bagdad is not a
book by a journalist, through the precision of its views and the intelligence of its mode of writing, we go more
deeply into a reality which no reporting has come even close to revealing. t. G.
JEANNET Frédéric-Yves
Recouvrance
[Flammarion, August 2007, 456 p., 23 €, isbn: 978-2-08-068372-4.]
Frédéric-Yves Jeannet continues the project begun in Cyclone (Le Castor Astral, 1997), and then Charité
(Flammarion, 2000): a rereading of his own life connected to the making of a unique book incorporating all the
layers of its composition over several decades. One thus encounters a constant temporal ballet including various
periods of writing which is nevertheless grounded—as it imagines itself and sums itself up—in a perpetual
present. A “base text” dating from 1978 (but including older elements) provides the grounding the author
draws from while the thread of the months and years in which Recouvrance unwinds—starting with the year
2000 sunk deep into a library in New York with the September 11 attacks serving as the detonator—or deadly
flash—at the turn of the new century. The constant temporal swinging is kind of dizzying, if one lets oneself
be carried away into the maelstrom of writing which is built upon an initial, founding tear in which a father’s
voluntary and premature death is only the most “legible” part. Everything shuffled through these pages intensely
works to reconstruct an image of perpetually fleeting life, which the book endeavors to get beyond (note that
the term poetry is never referred to). One also senses a certain sense of exhaustion (of theme as well as material)
which sometimes leads Frédéric-Yves Jeannet to a kind of repetition—independent of the more musical variations
which provide a rhythm to the various movements of the writing. There is also a paradox at the center of
this peculiar project: the exit into the “real” world which seems to have animated the author since youth (and
where one perceives the echo of Rimbaldian dissidence, frequently evoked) which leads him toward a worried
self-contemplation—and the sort of literature he thought he was fleeing. Eliminating some of the repetition
probably would have served the work, as it sometimes obliterates its choked-off beauty and Baroque luxuriance.
But despite its very different style—and from the perspective of a completely different context—Jeannet’s work
can be situated in the line of the great autobiographical series of the last century, particularly those of Michel
Leiris and Thomas Bernhard. Y. D.M.
NODIER Charles
L’amateur de livres, suivi du Bibliomane, de Bibliographie des fous et de la monomanie réflective
[The Booklover / The Bibliomaniac / Bibliography of the Book-Crazed / Reflective Monomania
[Le Castor Astral, coll. “Les inattendus,” June 2007 [1993], 138 p., 12 €,
isbn: 978-2-85920-220-X. Jean-Luc Steinmetz Ed.]
Even if the collection is called “Les inattendus,” or the unexpected, Charles Nodier’s L’Amateur de livres
is an important edition—augmented with difficult to find pieces—that one and all will take pleasure in leafing
through anew besides previous editions. Edited by Jean-Luc Steinmetz, this homage to bibliophiles and
bibliomaniacs, the famous and not so famous, provides a continuous celebration of the book: the collected, the
erudite or the crazed. Charles Nodier, who was a librarian at the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal as well as a writer
on innumerable subjects, a specialist on secret societies, a friend of Nerval and Hugo, and a defender of the
Romantic generation, here declares his affection for and obsession with fine printed works. The bibliophile
“is a person it is important not to lose sight of, because everything points to his imminent disappearance. The
printed book has only existed for four hundred years in all, but it is accumulating in some countries in such
a way that the equilibrium of the globe is threatened… The booklover is a species that can be divided into a
number of varieties, the first rung of this ingenious and capricious family belongs to the bibliophile.” Nodier,
who loved books to the point of exhaustion, provides a portrait of the bibliomaniac—the person who only lives
for books—and in a list of a few of the “literature crazed” he reminds us that the man without a library is a very
lonely man. He also writes about the kings and princes who were the first patrons of the book, whom he thanks
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efore indicating his doubts about the modern era and its ignorant leaders as bibliophiles are almost becoming
extinct. Page after page reveals one bibliomanic’s surprising and amusing revelations about other bibliomanics
and strange or difficult to classify authors. The elegant object itself, with its fine typography, pays homage to
those who get heady on books and reading. É. P.
NOGUEZ Dominique
Lénine Dada
[Dada Lenin]
[Le Dilettante, October 2007, 192 p., 20 €, isbn: 978-2-84263-145-1.]
Lénine Dada by Dominique Noguez, first published in 1989 just before the collapse of the Soviet empire,
goes beyond being a literary hoax although it pretends (in the most serious way possible) to take on the
appearance of being one. This unusual book has two distinct projects. First it parodies academic writing as it
works to defend an impossible thesis, that Lenin actively participated in the birth of the Dada movement during
his stay in Zurich in 1916. Beginning with a real coincidence (Lenin coming to live on the very same street
as the Café Voltaire), Noguez embarks on an investigation which is as meticulous as it is zany, making use of
dozens of citations (all perfectly true but shifted out of context) to support his thesis, and he would be entirely
convincing if one didn’t know beforehand that one was dealing with the absurd. There is a particularly amazing
passage where he endeavors to show—with manuscript pages to point to—that Lenin was the author of some
of Tzara’s poems… And a fine digression (just as “convincing”) concerning the Dali painting Six Apparitions
of Lenin on a Grand Piano. All these pages which render ridiculous a method that is capable of establishing
the most eminently improbable events as truths are the most well done in the book. In the second part of the
book, Noguez supports a thesis—this time a real one—which was in vogue some twenty years ago, which held
that while avant-garde artistic movements can’t be held responsible, they can be held to be the “objective” accomplices
to several totalitarian regimes. Here the book gives this perspective a tilt and holds that during the
first years of the Soviet revolution Lenin basically executed (this is the term used…) the Dada program—here
identified with a dramatically real Ubu—before handing his tasks off to Stalin. Even if it is delivered with a
certain degree of humor, this proposition provokes additional reservations. The recent Beaubourg exhibition
sufficiently demonstrated the profound irreverence and anarchy of the dada storm to the extent that today—
even when presented with irony—one can be suspicious of claims about dada’s slightest “compromise” in this
domain. Y. D.M.
ROBBE-GRILLET Alain
Un roman sentimental
[A Sentimental Novel]
[Fayard, coll. “Littérature française,” October 2007, 256 p., 19 €, isbn: 978-2-213-63261-2.]
Underneath the plastic wrap which makes it impossible to leaf through this book one can read, “The
publisher wishes to indicate that this “fairytale for adults” is an imaginary fiction… as the pages are uncut the
use of a sharp instrument rather than a finger is recommended.” “Fairytale for adults”: it is hard to think of a
better (general) definition for the enchanted world of pornography, Robbe-Grillet’s latest [last?] choice of mode of
writing—now added to the nouveau roman—“bereft of any adjectivalness”: “Objective literature” of a recumbent
“voyeur” narrator with a flat voice in a white room. (This book was inspired by a Philippe Rahm architectural
commission.) This “sentimental novel” (so named by antiphrasis) by the man who brought together the nouveau
roman is soaked with allusions to his œuvre, beginning with the heroine Djinn or Gigi or Gynée… “Imagnary
fiction”: here we’re more into what Barthes called style coming from the body of the writer of Voyeur who “never
spoke of anyone but himself,” perhaps most shown off for some time now as a filmmaker (Le Jeu avec le feu
[Playing with Fire]) and an essayist (Le Voyageur): Robbe-Grille confides that he has been writing “masturbatory
narratives” since the age of twelve. The two are not identical however (there are two sorts of pornography).
“Within such a space… it is neither hot nor cold,” well, more hot than cold. The result: an initiatory novel in
239 paragraphs, with a background of incest and sexual slavery, a long “BDSM” arrangement of various combinations
between child murderer Gilles de Rais and Les Orties Blanches fetish publisher of the 20s and 30s,
Sade at David Hamilton’s, being in and around Jeanne de Berg… Well, the choice of “sharp instrument” from
the saw to the knife, rather than the “finger,” is the norm in this garden of tortures where “wild little girls” are
consumed… To these two (or three) aspects of the book (an absolutely porno new novel, add a sexual confession:
Robbe-Grillet inhabits sets and studios in order to hold forth on the difference between literature and reality) a
44

third aspect superimposes: the author’s strategy in the literary field (even political field given the return to the
moral-medias passion for “pedophilia”), this Roman Sentimental is a “sharp object,” and its aim is to wound the
Republic of Letters and the social body: on the other hand, Romanesques (1984-94) seemed to mark the end of
the œuvre, given Simon’s Nobel and the Sarraute Pléiade, the self-commemorating Reprise of 2001 inaugurated
the “coming out of the monument,” continuing with the foot in the door of the Académie Française (between
his election to it on 26 March 2004 to occupy Maurice Rheims’s chair and a reception that did not come to
be one—due to his refusal of ritual) then the publication of the Journal of the 1950s by Catherine, his wife…
There’s the real scandal underneath the fake of performance: a pure and complex enough theoretical object (erotics
and sociology in motion). Too pure? J.-P. s.
SOLLERS Philippe
Un vrai roman, mémoires
[A True Novel, Memoires]
[Plon, October 2007, 358 p., 21 €, isbn: 978-2-259-19720-5.]
SOLLERS Philippe
Guerres secrètes
[Secret Wars]
[Carnets nord, October 2007, 300 p., 21 €, isbn: 978-2-35536-001-5.]
L’Infini n o
100: roman-photos
[L’Infini, No. 100: Photonovels]
[Gallimard, October 2007, 128 p., ill. n. & b., 16 €, isbn : 978-2-07-078629-9.]
“Someone who will later say I has entered the human word…” It’s anything but “memoirs” in the ordinary
sense of the term (as with Beauvoir or Leiris), in this “true novel” by Philippe Sollers the reader who is
attentive to his work, once past childhood, will find almost no information he didn’t already know: no behind
the scenes, no private intimacies, no autopsy, no objectification. Disappointing? This book is more akin to “the
imaginary writer” described by José-Luis Diaz. “Time’s bell has rung,” the time of Reprisings (the Reprise, as
Robbe-Grillet would say: mocked here) has come, the eternal return, Redux Island on the île de Ré… A “true
novel” to prove that (false) novels were true. A self-portrait of the writer (not of the man as seen from the work),
his Ecce Homo, his Les Mots, or his Antimémoires… the well-worn maps of identity, the articulation of condensed
successive roles. Not far from his Portrait du joueur [Portrait of a Player] (1985) or the “biographies” of Mozart,
Vivant Denon or Casanova. In the face of Sollers’s GSI (“gestion des surfaces imprimées” [Management
of Printed Surfaces]) and IRM (identités rapprochées multi ples [infighting of multiple identities]) here finally
brought together: genesis and structure of Une curieuse solitude [A Curious Solitude] “the absolutely separate,”
wrote Roland Barthes in Sollers écrivain, 1979), of an “exception” (one might imagine Victor Hugo as told by
Diaz: Sollers the greatest French writer of his generation, without any exact contemporary one can point to…
an eminent “sociological” separateness). Thus a singular autobiographical pact: a self-fiction in the present in
chronological order (1936-2007). The Joyaux family, the two houses and the two brothers and two sisters, the
invention of the pseudonym, his lover’s education with Eugénie, the Algerian War avoided, his being recognized
as a peer by Mauriac and Aragon, founding Tel Quel, his partiality for prostitutes, the two necessary—in Sartre’s
terms “loves”: Dominique Rolin and Julia Kristeva (the goddess and the fairy, the “set passions”: Chinese (thus
Mao) and Christian (thus Jean Paul II) and the eighteenth-century. Places: Paris, Ré, Venice. The six most
important meetings in his life: Mauriac, Bataille, Breton, Ponge, Barthes, Lacan. Georges Bataille was a little
more important than the others, “the only one who gave me a direct impression of genius.” The war on nihilism,
the celebration of reading: no writer since 1945 has shaken up the library shelves more than Philippe Sollers.
Along the way this true novel sparks a desire to return to the article which appeared in Le Monde in 2000, “La
France moisie” [Moldy France] (2007 was the year Anouilh entered the Pléiade, Guitry is ceaselessly celebrated).
At the same time, issue 100 of L’Infini has published a Philippe Sollers (alone and with others) “photonovel”
and an anthology of “texts chosen from 40 books by Philippe Sollers,” the same well-worn map strategy as in
Un vrai roman. And then there is the publication of Guerres secretes, a book of readings in the line of the Divine
Comedy (that is, as offered to the Pope in a public edition): Ulysses, Dionysos, Sun Zi, Joseph de Maistre. The
Guerre du goût continued through other means. J.-P. s.
45

VILLIERS DE L’ISLE-ADAM
Le Convive des dernières fêtes
[The Guest at the Last Banquet]
[FMR/Panama, coll. “La Bibliothèque de Babel,” September 2007, 128 p., 20 €, isbn: 978-2-7557-0273-6.]
What a fine coming together whose fruits we can enjoy: that of the mythic FMR editions and the
young and gifted Panama. The legendary—and unavailable—Library of Babel—fantastic tales, edited by Jorge
Luis Borges have finally been reissued in this collaborative publishing venture. Some rare titles shaping the
Borgesian universe can already be found in the most sophisticated libraries and continue to enthrall the most
demanding readers: Gustav Meyrink’s Cardinal Napellus, Henry James’ Friends of Friends, Arthur Machen’s The
Shining Pyramid, and now Le Convive des dernières fêtes [The Guest at the Last Banquet] by Villiers de l’Isle-
Adam (1838-89). According to his friend Mallarmé, the author was a singular sort who could connect “two
worlds as secret correspondents of dream and laughter.” An admirer of Baudelaire and Edgar Allen Poe, he has
always been most well known for his Contes cruels [Cruel Tales]. It is shame that he isn’t more read these days.
With the republication of these seven certainly “strange” works of fiction, readers will be able to become fully
aware of what the terms cynicism and nightmare mean. The title story, “Le Convive des dernières fêtes” [Contes
Cruels and The Scaffold and Other Cruel Tales] is about a night on the town, of course, among revelers. Then a
newcomer appears on the scene, and this outsider’s strange and terrible secret provides one of the most terrifying
endings… “L’enjeu” is the story of a strange church secret: a penniless priest takes to gambling and comes
to depend on a strange secret… “Sombre récit, conteur plus sombre,” shows us a young dueler and reveals how
the dueler’s art is an art for the lowly… The other stories have the same sort of dark irony and reality twisting
capacities. Villiers de l’Isle-Adam was seer, a medium, but of a different sort. As Borges put it in the preface,
“To what point can a poet, however rich his imagination, escape from his day in time and his place in space?
You will find out the moment you begin to read this and become the strange guest of this strange author. É.P.
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POETRY
Selected by Marc Blanchet, Yves di Manno, Michel Enaudeau and Éric Poindron
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Action poétique n° 189
[Action poétique, September 2007, 128 p., 12 €, isbn: 978-2-85463-178-4.]
Here we have, if we can put it this way, an “ordinary” issue of Action poétique—that is, without fancy
pediments or special sections—but bearing witness to what still today is the specificity, the dynamism, and the
particular quality of this review despite its half-century-worth of age: it’s interest in poetry from other places,
its bringing to light of neglected areas or works, the publishing together of major contemporaries and young
authors in a variety of esthetics and registers. Among others, this issue contains strong contributions from Bernard
Noël, Claude Adelen and Laure Limongi, a striking text by Emmanuel Tugny, a baroque laisse by François
Cariès, newly published (and almost “objectivist” poems) by Hélène Bessette [cf. VDP 29], a surprising epic
parody on the war in Irak by Jean-Clair Bonnel… At the center of this intense grouping—in which one can note
that the historical is far from absent—there is a series (presented by Éric Suchère) by the “minimalist” Dutch
poet, Hans Faverey (1933-1990): its density and execution is flawless. At the end of the issue there is a translation
of the Rumanian Nichita Stànescu’s (1933-1983) possible poetic acts, accompanied by excerpts from his
Epica Magna. Following this are review essays where one comes across Claude Adelen (on Aragon), a pleasure;
Yves Boudier (the review of reviews), and contributions by Christophe Marchand-Kiss and Jean-Pierre Bobillot.
This is a tremendously flexible review—and a review of consistent quality—that presents crosscuts of the
current moment with real free thinking as it extends its fine collective adventure among generations of writers.
Y. D.M.
Incognita n°1
[Éd. du Petit véhicule, May 2007, 132 p., 15 € , isbn: 978-2-84273-579-1.]
The creators of Incognita, Patrick Vidal and Luc Hamelin, breathe poetry. For them it is a declaration
of faith: “We don’t have any particular aim in this review or, if there is one, it is a territory where one never arrives…
not an aim or a target, but an axis—one might say a life-axis: to count up, or to stand up against all that
46

we are threatened by.” Ingonita succeeds at this in its first issue, as a review whose stance beyond time provides a
temporality of reading inside the play of life its creators present. Every page brims with poetry whose ambition
seems to be to invite: as if the poet and the curious were one and the same. In addition, rather than looking
toward any official poetry or well published authors, Incognita unearths poets living their lives, poets on the
way and on the outside of the first circles. This inaugural issue contains a well deserved homage to Franc Mallet,
poet of the islands, broad horizons and the human. Mallet is no one-tune, travel, poet: he writes a great deal,
publishes his own work, and has no hesitations about meeting his readers at book fairs or in Brittany marketplaces.
As in the days of yore, he’s a bookseller, publisher and hawker, that is, a unique entity. “The wind’s call
does not spur to falling back against some house, but to taking off on seagull wings.” Other giants deploy their
wings here beside Mallet: there is René Guy Cadou’s “transfigured life” as seen by Joël Barreau and the minor
mode of Emmanuel Bove as seen by Thierry Piquet. The contributors’ and poets declaration: to smother us
with words. Thus their choice of addressing everyone, but everyone “as an individual.” Thus we go—and will
go—from the replete focused section to reviews and essays, from free-handed musical selections to interviews
on the theater. Here you’ll find a combination of poetry, the spirit of the Atlantic and the work of David Lynch.
Who said poetry is only interested in poetry? É. P.
BÉNÉZET Mathieu
La Tête couchée de Brancusi
[Brancusi’s Head Reclining]
[Le Préau des collines, October 2007, 80 p., 15 €, isbn: 978-2-914945-83-7.
Photographs by Jacques Le Scanff.]
In 2001, when he published L’Aphonie de Hegel [Hegel’s Aphonia] (Éditions Obsidiane), Mathieu Bénézet
made clear that was his last poem. Besides a few passages in reviews, he held himself to that declaration—
which he now transgresses with La Tête couchée de Brancusi, even if after a page it suggests that “there is no—lost
key.” These four Italian suites in which the author makes his way along today’s streets and pages from the past
(Petrarch, Ovid) alternate with notebook entries, verse pieces, scattered stanzas—no, they are stanzas that are
strewn towards oblivion—using the method he masterfully deployed in Détails, apostilles [Details, Marginal
Notes] (Flammarion, 1998). The text oscillates constantly in this way between the glints of reality it captures—
gestures of people on the street, ordinary objects—and the continual flow, I was going to write the ooze of a
sort of wounded thought which is attentive and captive at the same time. The superb opening sequence, “Petrarch,
perhaps,” is the perfect incarnation in its virtuoso movement form the sublime to the banal, from wispy
pencilings to the highest art of the fresco. Even if the author (or his “mask”) admits further on to having been
satisfied with discerning “the reflection of a –sole—/ design on porcelain—/ because—it was unavoidable that
he get somewhere.” The book is punctuated with Jacques Le Scanff’s photographs which also reveal a hidden
face of things while concealing—even deforming sometimes. They provide an interesting soft shading to the
textured autobiographical series which the poems sketch out and wipe away at the same time as they bring forth
a disturbing interrogation, “Is it true/ That the faint trembling /Of other shores is a dream?” Y. D.M.
DEGUY Michel
Réouverture après travaux
[Open Again after Renovations]
[Galilée, coll. “Lignes fictives,” October 2007, 272 p., 34 €, isbn: 978-2-7186-0678-1.]
Often Michel Deguy’s books have a sole ground, the poem, poetry, poetics. Challenging the Sartrean
antagonism between poetry and prose provides one opportunity among many others to put one’s arguments
to the court. The language of literature is not a matter of prose versus poetry but of “hesitation” between them.
Having heard about this before, why reopen the case when the action of poetry—in the sense of the post-
Rimbaldian rivalry poetry-politics (“Life Change”)—is no longer the order of the day? Deguy puts in for the
materialist option: it is not about making material manifest (too Romantic) and has nothing in common with
a new materialism that the poet would represent through a synthetic formula, “the rise to the brain of the unconscious.”
The materialism he conceives of is “parabolic.” Parabolic rather than symbolic because poetry lives
from bringing closer and making further away, through transshipment, comparison and transposition. Like
a transshipping freight bridge it leads from one shore to another without undoing their separation, maintaining
heterogeneity while enabling transit and transmission. For Deguy, language opens according to the axiom,
“thinking, speaking, and writing are the same.” This is why language similarly compels the economic and the
47

esthetic. Among the traits currently characterizing the latter the most prevailing seems to be “the body occupies
the place of the tongue.” After “the prose’s clean sweep” and the readjusting of a few conjunctions (art and
magnitude, advertising, imagination, jealousy, life), two groups of texts stand out in this volume: “It Happens
Late” and “Mutation?” Here the poet’s “political” reflections (without turning the poetry into “politics”)
comes through. Not because he claims (as many do) that the cultural can stand in for art, creation or thought,
but because he wonders about what in the human produces culture. This is why Deguy is so distrustful of the
Manichean optimism of the Italian philosopher Toni Negri and his conception of multitude. To abandon poetry
(Alain Badiou, “the age of poets,” or worse to declare poetry “parasitical” (John L. Austin), places the poet in a
position of “waiting and watching.” In this essay, which is as surprising as the burst fireworks it recalls, Duguy
takes hold of the reins of an unexpected horse team: Baudelaire and Heidegger. “Holding with the poem” in
the face of cultural and intellectual extravagancies, of course, but in “Paul Celan and Heidegger” we read about
the never-found renunciation of that philosopher in Freiburg and his eternal silence on the exterminations by
the Nazis. What remains, Deguy wonders (in a letter to the poet Jacques Dupin). The sublime. A sublime that
is neither Longinus’ or Kant’s. It is a sublime which has to “remake transcendence” he writes, with Beethoven
in mind. M. e.
DEUX Fred
Traits d’union
[Hyphens]
[L’Atelier des brisants, September 2007, 144 p., 25 €, isbn: 978-2-84623-091-9. Preface by Manuel Jover.]
We have to begin with a poem entitled, “The Transfigured Crossing.” Chosen from among those
populating this work, it gives the tone of Fred Deux’s poetic work, which is here presented facing paintings
which inspired it: “Newly blind. Piled. By nine./ Going as the others go./ Pressed. We are one against the other.
Behind, to the side, in front, a mass from which no one can leave. Except me./ I am on the side where they
can be seen./ They search. They don’t search./ I haven’t seen their eyes./ I guess at their looks from the folds./
I’ve lost the shadows. One cannot keep hold of everything./ I’ve spoken to myself. I have not found./ I haven’t
always wanted to follow.// If the Crossing is infinite, it keeps hold of what will be./ Where his body is broken
through renders other whomever has dared./ He reemerges as a prisoner./ I have seen that invisibility. Like the
dying sees life again./ The line passes before my welded feet.” Like Michaux and Bettencourt, Fred Deux has
linked painting and poetry into an impossible separation. The writing experiences what the painting otherwise
translates and the painting imposes the poet’s effort. These navigations, as through communicating vessels, here
appear as numerous mirrors, alternating the vivacity of the poem and its rhythms and cuts on the page with the
colorful and fantastical materiality of late pictorial work. Fred Deux’s universe is marvelous in its obsessions and
diffuse violence and sexuality. Often called organic, its sensuality is profound and its magnetism astonishing.
The disembodied permeates into sublime organs. And these organs come to inhabit the page of poetry-painting
in strange nearly abstract dances. This astonishing universe charms, captivates and can be frightening in its
unalterable nature. From his writer’s and painter’s table, Deux moves from the word to the stroke in a continuous
graphic form which is one of the most hypnotizing there is. M. b.
GELLÉ Albane
Je, cheval
[I, Horse]
[Jacques Brémond, June 2007, 76 p., 15 € , isbn: 978-2-915519-19-8.]
I and HORSE: bringing together two words, two kinds of existence, two states of being: Albane Gellé
has just published a magnificently successful book of poetry: Je, cheval. While she announces her intention,
she also does not abuse its possibilities: “I, the horse, the living animal, the body, the wild. I, in the horse like
inside the writing. With the indomitable balance the unknown the never acquired. The extreme attention to
the world. Between panic and pleasure. What in me is horse. Prey escape alone and herd. What in me resists,
insists, risks. What in me takes off to meet up again.// On horseback I am first of all at the heart of things,
disencumbered, reunited. Freed of peripheral hindrances and sterile knots. In the thick of the subject. I join
together in an extreme presence with what is around me. Disentangled.” It is in the rhythm of this sincerity,
but also of this discomfort, this animal urge which enchants, frightens or flees, which Gellé deploys and constrains
in this book. There is no unnecessary thematics, no pushing things together: it is only the release over
some pages of a narration between trot and gallop of the horse in the self. I mention movements, but Gellé
48

also writes about stops here, the mute fixity of the animal’s presence, the silence that is also the density of a
writing which refuses to be complacent; not choosing the study à la Ponge, or introspection à la Michaux. Slow
metamorphoses take place here, but most of all we get the fine company between what the horse intimates and
what the poet feels in proximity to it. “They aren’t my own, but I move forward on four legs and I accelerate
seated. The horse has heard what I haven’t said, I have a body he gallops, and my hands weigh nothing, on
the back of movement an animal. Between me and the horse there are no complaints.” Thus the magic of Je,
cheval is also a concrete experience which this poem presents to us from different angles and with real emotion.
M. b.
GIOVANNONI Jean-Louis and PARÉ Ambroise
S’emparer suivi de des monstres et prodiges
[Taking Posession / Monsters and Marvels]
[Éd. 1 :1, coll. “Les anciens modernes,” July 2007, 78 p., 12 €, isbn: 978-2-95190-374-X.]
Here we have Giovannoni stuck to Paré. It is a monstrous combination. What the first gets excited about
the second keeps silent about. So what is this double-headed individual? First of all, an editor’s project: have
an older work respond to a newer one; in this case a commission. Ambroise Paré (1517-1590) was the master
surgeon and advisor to the king. His book Des monstres et prodiges, whose chapters 1-11 appear here, was published
in 1575. Paré who was fond of the cut, offers details, after some moral considerations about the obviously
divine cause of monsters, about some individual cases, with a taste for comprehensiveness which bears witness
to this doctor’s passion for the subject. The misshapen, multiple, frightening and singular comprise the register
of these monsters from across Europe. The two-headed alongside the two-sexed: also included is the man with
a bird’s head, Siamese twins and other misfired angels. With this book of written and figured (the published
has reproduced some of the originals) images before him, Jean-Louis Giovannoni decided to write; that is to say
to marry his fantastical universe to this human bestiary. Paré was a surgeon. Giovannoni works in a psychiatric
hospital. The visual characteristics of some become, for the contemporary poet, the multiple, monstrous word
comprised of ramifications and paradoxes which are his own—and those he observes in his work. You get the
voice of the expert, a survey of experiments in language whose rhythms, inventiveness, and flights all serve the
author of Journal d’un veau [A Calf’s Journal] so well. The writing becomes polyphonic, but along a single path:
an immense furrow of strata where the serious alternates with the ridiculous, the sublime with the ugly. Side
by side with Paré, but remarkably serving and served by himself, Giovannoni creates his own book of images
where the words become the characters and thoughts become the gestures of the images of amazing personal
monsters. M. b.
HAUTCHAMP Mikaël
Terre à monde
[Earth to World]
[Cheyne, coll. “Verte,” September 2007, 60 p., 14.50 €, isbn: 978-2-84116-126-3.]
The earth. The origin. First breaths. The vibrations of time. Folds. Being alive. Imagine all of these together
in this very fine book of prose poems. The strength of the writing resides in how it perpetuates the origin
of the world in every stanza as an author’s obsession while he himself manages not to appear in the words. It is a
form of self-dispossession through the narration and invention of the Origin, of the ruminating appearance of
the world in time and space that imposes itself here. Citing a few passages will suffice; the sublime is nuanced by
the materiality of language, emotion is contained in the migrations of what it describes. “The same in advance,
stirrings. Wandering in the darkness, the same. Shadows from elsewhere, storm of the here. Again, the echo of
a storm here. Shadowy. Weary in advance, powerful in the stirrings. Word perceived. Desired. Traced round
in advance. Shadowed. The same in advance. Peaks of swathes. Stirrings of tufts. By the close angle of these
waves. Fronds coming from the burgeoning word. Vibrated. Snowed. Prespoken breath, stirring the word. The
wandering offering of these words. These signs here. Hurried flux, verse bearing. Pouring. Totter bearing. In the
nimble stirrings of these words. Of a rumbling flux. Pours. Spins off at the cost of the new-spoken. Rounds off
the prey released from the stir. From word to word, woven to verse. To pour. Hardly in line. Echo. Line spun
off, curved, of an echo alone of its order. Unique. Opaque. In the arc of a wellspring. Of a shadow.” This book
thus brings the stirrings of the origin to lips, to the first word. Delicately musical, authentically obsessional, it
bears witness to true mastery of poetic writing; fascinating without the slightest mysticism; with a plot and a
sort of narrative devoid of characters but with figures. Mikaël Hautchamp, who was born in 1975 and published
49

a first collection with the same publisher, has appeared on the scene as an important poet. M. b.
LEUWERS Daniel
La place du poème
[The Place of the Poem]
[EST, coll. “Brest,” June 2007, 384 p., 22 €, isbn: 978-973-8346-39-0.]
This is the kind of book one hardly comes across any longer within the limited universe of literary criticism:
it is moved by an intense passion and an innate capacity for discrimination of today’s poetry—as well as
by a freedom of thought which enables the author to savor what he does according to his own imperatives and
impulses, without programmatics, dogma or the commonplaces of the day. Daniel Leuwers’s book is comprised
of two parts: first a dozen texts on isolated poets—in all senses of that term (André Du Bouchet, Bernard Vargaftig,
Lorand Gaspar, etc. – as well as more fraternal addresses to Jude Stéfan, Jean-Luc Parant and Serge Pey);
then the greater part of his “reviews from the poetry fellow-traveler” published over the years on the latest in
poetry in the review Sud (and then Autre Sud) between 1995 and 2005. It begins with two studies—which I find
emblematical—of Michaux and Ponge, that is of two central authors of the past century who, however, occupied
a marginal position during the greater part of their trajectories in the face of changing dominant currents and
esthetics. In addition to the quality of these opening studies, there is the acuity (and generosity) of the journey
traced through the second part which must most of all be emphasized. What could be more a priori perishable
than such reviews written over time and in response to publications of poetic material? And yet, going back over
these ten years with Leuwers’s sometimes acerbic but always attentive approach the predominant impression is
of richness and diversity in a landscape that is much more contrasted than people often claim. Even if one does
not agree with all the author’s opinions—whether he’s praising or blaming—his open mind and his constant
attention to what founds (in language) poetic “truth” makes this critical collection a valuable signpost and a
most useful reference. At the very least because of the number of doors he opens on the present—a little like
Claude Adelen did in L’Émotion concrète [cf. VDP 16]. Let’s also add that it is refreshing to find an academic
writing about “what emerges from the writing itself” and advocating “the irreducibles,” or “the best, always.” Y.
D.M.
ORIZET Jean
Anthologie de la poésie française
[Anthology of French Poetry]
[Larousse, September 2007, 1,088 p., 22 €, isbn: 978-2-03-582653-4.]
This heavy volume—presented in a “general readership” edition, aiming a priori for the largest number
of readers—brings together two distinct projects, neither of which is treated in a truly satisfying way. On the
one hand it provides an historical anthology of poetry since 1950 which occupies more or less the first half of
the work and includes only a limited number of authors in the periods it ascribes according to the limitations
of the official literary “canon” as defined in educational programs of the last century. Jean Orizet hardly takes
in to account the redefining perspectives of the poetry which characterizes the most recent decades—as opposed
to the work done by Bernard Delvaille in his Mille et cent ans de poésie française (Laffont, coll. “Bouquins,”
1991) which is still the benchmark anthology in terms of its erudition as well as its poetic intelligence. Under
the heading of “Contemporary French Poetry,” the second half of Orizet’s anthology presents a reverse order
panorama of almost 120 authors, organized chronologically by the year they were born (1890-1971); it is comprised
of a bunch of first-rate writers as well as illustrious lesser-known writers, but contains no mention of the
large number of impressive poets of the last few decades. This contradiction is strange enough: having been so
strict in the choice of earlier authors and so un exigent in choosing their descendents… On the other hand, it
was a good idea to devote a large section at the end of the book to Francophone poets. But again, combining
major poets who already belong to the poetic past with less superlative contemporaries limits the weight of the
presentation. The introductions to each section pay more attention to the history of France than the history of
poetry and systematically steer clear of formal questions which nevertheless are the basis of the matter. The often
anecdotal character of the entries, the absence of any bibliographic references (or of translators for the poems
in Langue d’Oc or Ancien Français), and some approximations due to page layout prevent this volume from
being the reference work it could have been. We still await an anthology of twentieth-century French poetry
taking its diversity into account more objectively and the rejuvenations it has been undergoing for more than
fifty years. Y. D.M.
50

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DETECTIVE AND NOIR NOVELS
Selected by Aurélien Masson and Local Booksellers
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CAYRE Hannelore
Ground Xo
[Métailié, coll. “Suites,” September 2007, 138 p., 8 €, isbn: 978-2-86424-623-7.]
Here we have Christophe Leibowitz, the long-suffering and distracted lawyer who tries as best he can
to find some purpose in his professional life. He has been in practice for twenty years, but you can’t really say
this provides him with a sinecure or for that matter even with a vocation. Then, one fine morning after a relative’s
death, Christophe learns that, due to the happenstances of a chain of inheritances, he is the owner of an
aging brand of cognac. He decides to wipe the dust off this traditional product and take an American approach
to marketing, by aiming to make the cognac a symbol of street culture. Using his extensive connections in the
world of the urban projects, Liebowitz the lawyer becomes a rap producer. Is this all a bit too much? Well, this
cognac-based cocktail soon explodes even further out of control. In her third book, Hannelore Cayre brings
back her main character, good old Liebowitz whom we always manage to feel for. We move along in a tragicomic
universe which gives a new twist on all the clichés of the genre. The hero’s efforts are less to “put bad guys behind
bars” than to get them off for procedural errors. Cayre is herself a lawyer, knows what she is talking about and
casts a caustic yet lucid eye on the profession. In this noir comedy no one is left standing: cynical and alcoholic
lawyers, dilettante prosecutors, and small-time bigshots who never fail to be repeat the same offenses. Add to
this a sharp and hilarious critique of the rap world and ultra-consummerist values. Upon finishing the book
you have to wonder whether rap reactionary. a. M.
PÉCHEROT Patrick
Soleil Noir
[Black Sun]
[Gallimard, coll. “Série Noire,” November 2007, 296 p., 16.90 €, isbn: 978-2-07-034899-2.]
Four armed robbers plan to hit an armored car from a house they pretend to be working on as masons.
One of them just inherited an old decrepit house in a small suburban town in front of which an armored car
passes each week. The robbers do their best to meld into their surroundings and think they have every angle
covered. Everything seems to be going perfectly until the day of the planned heist, when they learn that armed
carriers have gone on strike. In this book, Patrick Pécherot, who has written several historical noirs, brings us
to the contemporary with a nimble noir novel in the pure French tradition. The setting is an out of the way
corner of a Paris suburb, one of those old villages that were caught up under the big city’s belt to become a nice
enough suburb before drifting back into being a place far from the common beaten track. The small-time con
artists of Soleil noir appear in this shadowy climate, struggling to get it together; losers with good hearts. The
story of the robbery effectively provides Pécherot with the opportunity of looking into the end of an era, the
difficult survival of a sepia-tinged past being pushed to the side by modern technology. Soleil noir resembles
the naturalist novels of the 1930s-50s which take place in Parisian suburbs, and it is above all a book to be read
about the collapsing sub-urban world on the periphery of the big city. a. M.
RUSCART Marc
L’homme qui a vu l’homme qui a vu l’ours
[The Man who Saw the Man who Saw the Bear]
[Rivages, coll. “Rivages-Noir,” September 2007, 316 p., 9 €, isbn: 978-2-7436-1708-0.]
When agent Floch suggests to his friend Ludovic who had been vegetating in Britany for years a return to
Moscow where he had lived ten years earlier, Ludovic does not hesitate. Sure, Floch works for a shadow division
of the DGSE and sure Ludovic is asked to keep an eye on the doings of a Yakut millionaire with an interest in
succession, but this is one way to get back to the country that has always been a personal obsession. Unfortunately,
the moment he arrives in Moscow Ludovic finds himself pursued by the millionaire’s henchmen as well
as the FSB henchmen of Vladimir Putin. The latter is very much against the idea of Yakut independence, given
the famous diamond mines there. Ludovic thus finds himself hunted down, even as he hunts bear in eastern
51

Siberia. In his first book, Marc Ruscart has given us a breathtaking thriller whose action leads us from Moscow
to the northern tundra. He paints a perfectly faithful image of contemporary Russia, takes us into the center of
geopolitical conflicts such as the competition over mastery of the international diamond network. We discover
the power of the Russian oligarchs in this society where cash is the golden cow. Everything is considered from
the perspective of money, from movements for autonomy which are more movements of the appropriation of
natural resources than movements of cultural and political affirmation. The most original aspect of the book
is the tone the author adopts through the mouthpiece of his main character: Ludovic of Brittany has an affectionate
and bitter view of this country he no longer recognizes. The narrative is chock full of memories and
anecdotes which perfectly counterbalance the disenchanted panorama of the former Soviet empire. a. M.
SANDERS Louis
Vie et mort des plantes toxiques
[Life and Death of Poisonous Plants]
[La Table ronde, November 2007, 260 p., 17 €, isbn: 978-2-7103-3014-1.]
An English family in the Dordogne. A family that might be described in a song by Patrick Brel. “First
there’s the oldest son…” and finally the youngest, well the nephew, George Hunter who spends his time in
England by not doing much, except for drinking and picking up girls… and living beyond his means. Then
there is his cousin, Sue Ashby, at boarding school in England, far from her father who lives in the Dordogne.
And the authoritarian Charles Ashby, with his immense fortune, who is besotted by an accountant, Hélène
Havilland… The two cousins descend upon the family house, each with a specific goal in mind, each wondering
what kind of role the accountant will have in the family drama; and there is, as always, a shadow of death
which lingers over the action. It is a pleasure reading Louis Sanders for his great skills in describing English
families and their false façades in the Dordogne. All the successful ingredients of his earlier novels can be found
here. The atmosphere is heavy and the psychology of the characters is perfectly rendered as the author invites
you for the kind of family weekend it would be best to pass up… Chosen by Christophe Dupuis, Entre Deux
Noirs bookshop, Langon.
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NOVELS AND FICTION
Selected by Gilles Fumey, Thierry Guichard, Louise L. Lambrichs,
Jean-Pierre Luminet, Delphine Peras and local booksellers
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ALEXAKIS Vassilis
Ap. J.-C.
[Stock, coll. “Bleu,” August 2007, 390 p., 20.99 €, isbn: 978-2-234-05793-7.]
The latest novel by the Greek writer Vassilis Alexakis should raise some hackles. At least on the part of
the monks who live on Mount Athos who are the essential subject matter of this novel. Ap. J.-C. is a critical
novel, almost a tract, written from the position of solid documentation. Alexakis brings a student to life as the
emissary of an aged landlady, Nausicaa, who sends him on a mission to Mount Athos because, he thinks, she is
considering leaving her money to the monks of the “Holy Mountain.” The young man sets off more or less half
heartedly: there is something of a dilettante disclaiming his thirst for knowledge in the character. But through
meetings and readings he discovers more and more of this secret world of orthodox monks, and that an extremely
wealthy community exercises considerable power as it relies on its long-time obscure goings-on. The novel goes
back and forth between today and a thousand years ago, between Christianity and the Byzantine world. And
the reader encounters a thousand references, dives into the history of Greece and religion, and comes up to the
surface to get a dose of the author’s anger at the church’s historical lies and dealings throughout history. Thus,
for instance, the monks’ actions during World War II, “They wrote to Hitler asking to be placed under his protection
and guardianship. They hailed the Führer’s positive response and hung his portrait in every monastery.”
And of course Byzantine statues of female figures were destroyed to negate the previous civilization… The book
is thus both a work of memory and a wake up call. While the fiction sometimes suffers under the weight of the
message, it nevertheless moves forward with the author’s interesting technique: “My memory apparently has
difficulty recording movement, it captures faces… My memories are like parked cars.” And one also finds the
52

heartfelt and painful melancholy of the eternal exile. t. G.
BARBÉRIS Dominique
Quelque chose à cacher
[Something to Hide]
[Gallimard, coll. “Blanche,” August 2007, 160 p., 13.90 €, isbn: 978-2-07-078575-9.]
Dominique Barbéris (b. 1958) returns to her melancholic themes in this her sixth novel, but most of
all she provides fine evidence of her capacity to depict the tedium of a certain kind of conjugal life and its
persistent tragic forebodings. Quelque chose à cacher is the story of a policeman in N., a small city on the Loire
River, following upon the killing of a mysterious woman who returned to La Boulaye, her comfortable childhood
home. Her name is Marie-Hélène, but she is most often referred to as the “girl from la Boulaye.” She
is a “vamp” to some, a woman of indescribable charm for others, a wiseacre adolescent, a rebel, and she lives
with her so-called aunt on this imposing property with its large grounds bordering on the local cemetery. Who
shot Marie-Hélène at point blank range, thirty years after her nightclubbing drives and her numerous liaisons
with local men? The narrator asks the same question; he is a guard at the local museum, a bachelor, sometime
hunter, gifted painter but a man with not much on his horizon. He is the last person known to have seen the
victim alive, in the museum. He recognized her immediately and she reminded him of long ago events from
their youth. He remembered the bright-eyed and sulky young woman and her disdain for the world around her,
how she stirred up desires and was the subject of rumors. Why did she return twenty years later? Why did she
have lunch with that engineer at the nuclear reactor the very day of her death? Massonnneau, the policeman
has his theory about the identity of the guilty party. Massonneau is a strange kind of policeman, and a strange
sort of philosopher. The narrator serves as his confident to whom he elaborates more than a simple scenario
about what happened…. Barbéris is aggrégée in modern letters and teaches at the Sorbonne. Here she skillfully
weaves a plot whose outcome is less important than the depiction of a deleterious ambiance, the autumn-soaked
atmosphere and the lost and solitary souls. She composes a dark, captivating and abysmal novelistic tableau in
a dry, precise style. D. P.
BEAUVOIR Cécile
pieds nus dans le jardin
[Naked Feet in the Garden]
[Le Temps qu’il fait, September 2007, 92 p., 15 €, isbn: 978-2-86853-494-1.]
These are very short pieces, two or three pages long, that one reads in the way one leafs through a photo
album. They are delicate moments, as if torn from time and placed on the white page in an effort to preserve
the trace, the flavor, the memory. Cécile Beauvoir the novelist—Envie d’amour [Wanting to Love] (Minuit,
2002)–and writer of short fiction—Le Chemisier [The Blouse] (Arléa, 2004)—traces out portraits of people she
has met, evokes childhood memories, and sometimes lets anger provide a countervailing push to the movement
of her sentences. Each one however aims for its own autonomy (and succeeds in getting there) and even when
they end up lightly suggesting an autobiographical spark (particularly from childhood), one senses that they have
no origin besides themselves. It is a poetic writing and provokes those sometimes minuscule epiphanies which
give the sense of the surge and sweep of life. There are fine pages on love, anticipation, and restrained gestures
observed with the minutia of desire. There is something very feminine, even in the texts where the narrative
voice is male. The memories of a female friend (or lover?) from childhood, desire born in a car covered by fog,
the tender letters of a poet; the collection moves about by virtue of its attentiveness and emotion. Mountains
(Beauvoir lives in Auvergne) and nature down to the very level of grass and trees seem to dictate the sentences’
movement. Sentences offer themselves up in a bareness, in apparent blatancies of concatenation which propel
them through flawless meanders. They do not fall into naïve lyricism as they accelerate upward toward memory
or expectancy. Thus it is desire itself that writes, a desire for freedom, a desire for love, a desire for life in which
concerns about time as it passes takes shape. t. G.
CHARRAS Pierre
Quelques ombres
[Some Shadows]
[Le Dilettante, September 2007, 188 p., 16 €, isbn: 978-2-84263-143-7.]
This is a collection of short stories which is like a collection of portraits, short and dense narratives, concentrated
novels. The often dark deep feeling and humor are distilled with subtlety, even in the worst scenarios:
53

antidotes to despair, or at least to melancholy. There is a faithful lover on the anniversary of a missed rendez-vous;
a young man who comes out of a coma and doesn’t recognize the old woman who resembles his wife; the hack
actor who is sure he is going to receive an award; and many more. When Pierre Charras, an experienced man
of the theater and writer takes us into “the realm of obsession and the idée fixe” we too are haunted. Chosen by
Danielle Deloche, the Deloche bookshop, Montauban
CHEVRIER Jean-Marie
Un jour viendra où vous n’aimerez plus qu’elle
[A Day Will Come when You Love only Her]
[Albin Michel, coll. “Romans français,” August 2007, 247 p., 16 €, isbn: 978-2-226-17959-3.]
The title, taken from a work of George Bernanos and cited as an epigraph, is deceiving: it alludes not
to an umpteenth love story but to a surprising story of death… Or how Maximilien, a Parisian doctor who is
just over 60, learns that he has lung cancer. The symptoms began when he had already decided to retire and
return to the region of his childhood, la Creuse, where two years earlier he had purchased some land and built
a house on the remains of an old farm. He obtained the land twelve days before he learned that he had cancer.
He decides to end his life there, rather than go through tedious and exhausting treatment. Then, shortly before
his departure he meets Anna, who is a delightful, delicious dancer of no more than thirty years. He invites her
to join him in his new refuge. Thanks to her, thanks to her graciousness, her disinterested love, her joy in life,
Maximilien manages to accept the idea of his physical decline and his unavoidable end. He is also paid impromptu
visits which do him some good by Louise, his ex, who is as invasive as she is welcome. But it is most
of all contact with nature, getting into communion with plants and animals in a new practice of ultra-calm
hedonism where intellectual pleasures are not lacking for appreciation that Maximilien finds peace… With
such a delicate, serious subject, Jean-Marie Chevrier, who has written four books of fiction already—among
which: Une saison de pierres [A Season of Stones] (1995) et Le Navire aux chimères [Ship of Chimeras] (2004)—
succeeds in the tour de force of composing an amazingly alert, skillful and intelligent score that is never heavy.
The elegance of his writing contributes much to this success. This fine novel is a lesson in sagacity; a must read!
D. P.
GUÉRIF Benjamin
pietro Querini. Les Naufragés de Röst
[Pietro Querini; Shipwrecked at Rost]
[Rivages, October 2007, 326 p., 20 €, isbn: 978-2-7436-1717-2.]
What was he going to do up North, that Pietro Querini? That is what his daughter Hilda keeps wondering,
fifteen years after the death of this mysterious father, “a good sailor,” as well as a “stubborn character,
terribly mule-headed.” This captain of a commercial vessel and scion of a wealthy Venetian family, set off for
the Flemish port of Bruges from Crete in 1431 with a large cargo of Malvasia, the wine behind the Querini
fortune. At that time, war was raging between the East and Europe as well as between Genoa and Venice who
were fighting over the Flanders route. The journey began poorly, the boat was behind schedule, apprehension
about running into Genoan pirates was gaining the upper hand with the crew, who were also suffering from
various entrenched superstitions. The discovery of a cadaver in the hold did not help the sailors’ perspective: it
was taken as the sign of a curse on the ship. As much as the sailors respected Pietro Querini, they also feared the
worst. And they were right… In this novel, his first, Benjamin Guérif, son of the editor François Guérif, has
embarked (in the literal sense of the term) on an enthralling and tragic adventure. He has a PhD in history, is
also a translator from Norwegian, and in this case he has taken inspiration from liberal consultation of the real
Pietro Querini’s journal as well as documents relating to the survivors and contemporary Norwegian witnesses
to the crew’s plight on an extremely inhospitable Island in the North Sea. After having survived several weeks
under impossible conditions, they were discovered and taken in by the inhabitants of the small village of Rost,
fishermen and their families whose way of life was rugged and magical in equal parts. When Querini returned
to Venice he was no longer the same man. The fictionalized narrative is masterfully written and constructed; it
is a fine invitation to a journey across time and space. D. P.
54

HATZFELD Jean
La Stratégie des antilopes
[The Antelope Strategy]
[Éd. du Seuil, coll. “Fiction et Cie,” August 2007, 306 p., 19 €, isbn: 978-2-02-0966229-2.]
Will the Rwandan tragedy ever be understandable? Even if that question can never be answered, the survivors,
both relatives and guilty parties, remain. Here for instance is the story of 6,000 Tutsis who, once outside
prison, fled the killings and sought refuge not in the marshes but in the Forests on the edges of Nyamata. Their
flight from the killers took six weeks, like the migrations of antelopes. After that, how did the twenty survivors
of the killings among killings, reintegrate into human society, after having lived through this sort of animalistic
experience? In La Stratégie des antilopes—not his first book on this tragedy—Jean Hatzfeld provides a view on
their “damaged” (because everything is “damaged” for these survivors) experience and testimonials. For instance,
how survivors are dependent upon killers because the former don’t know how things came to happen, how the
killings were organized… Hatzfeld’s distressing book is woven from the accounts of about a hundred people,
and reveals the flaws of humanitarian organizations’ and the Rwandan government’s approaches, the organized
“forgiveness programs,” which, like AIDS “programs,” have budgets in the millions of dollars. He pulls the rug
out from the idea that everything can be resolved in a great reconciliation where all the Africans forgive each
other as quickly as possible so that the West, which did nothing to stop the genocide, can feel pardoned itself.
It is a painful book which adds to understanding of the Rwandan experience—and of humanity at the same
time. G. f.
MONNEREAU Michel
on s’embrasse pas ?
[No Kiss Hello?]
[La Table ronde, coll. “Vermillon,” August 2007, 208 p., 16 €, isbn: 978-2-7103-2913-8.]
“No kiss hello?” That is what Bernard asks his sister Lucienne, when he suddenly arrives back at the
family home after fifteen years away, fifteen years wandering the four corners of the world, “quinze glorieuses
pucking around in travel and idleness” without any communication with his family. Having reached the age of
forty, Bernard decides to return to the old country: a village in the Charentes, near Angoulême, compelled by
an inexplicable yet “pressing need” to see his sister and parents again. His wearied father died of sadness awaiting
his return. His mother does not let go of her anguish and bitterness: why run away? why complete silence?
“People age less quickly without attachments” is Bernard’s justification. And, “I wanted to be me fulltime. I
wanted life in the fast lane, to live life above anything else, desert before the main course.” He tried to settle
down, to have a real profession, “with slavish hours that don’t let you see the setting sun, with the business
cards, interminable business lunches, colleagues who shrivel away before your eyes as the months pass and you
settle into a maximum tax percentage bracket.” In other words, he was an important editor at a publishing
company… But he only lasted six months before breaking free. Still, his experience did not enable Bernard to
bloom fully and, worse than that, his disenchantment and cynicism upsets the life of his family. After his first
very accomplished novel, Carnets de déroute [Clogbook], published last year, Michel Monnereau here puts the
spotlight on a character that honestly seems antipathetic while at the same time pinpointing a universal cultural
experience: the conflict between the person who feels too constricted in a mundane environment and those
who do not question that kind of life. Monnereau’s incisive writing achieves marvels, his sense of phrasing is
irresistible and his irony bites through to the core. D. P.
OSTENDE Jean-Pierre
La présence
[The Presence]
[Gallimard, coll. “Blanche,” September 2007, 244 p., 18 €, isbn: 978-2-07-078433-2.]
Jean-Pierre Ostende has written about fifteen books (including three books of poetry) and here his
eighth novel comes to deliver a veritable modern “comédie humaine.” Since his powerful Voie Express [Express
Lane] (Gallimard, 2003), Ostende has created a fictional world, the Explorateur Club, with dozens of characters,
and a universe he now dips into for the writing of his fiction. La Présence brings us Jacques Bergman, who
is employed by the Explorateur Club as a professional admirer (you praise someone and this gives you doses
of good feeling to see someone who admires you). As the novel begins, he is sent to a mansion to ascertain on
site how best to transform it and the space around it into an amusement park. Meanwhile, the site is haunted
55

y a presence—that of its last owner who left it to the state with the express condition that visitors sense her
presence while there. The novel mentions Kubrick’s Shining and plays with that model, as a threatening sense
hovers (coming from the silent gardeners, the ravaged forest, the nearby nuclear power plant, grounds set up as
a “terror” park, etc.). Ostende multiplies inventions in this domain (such as giving electrical appliances names:
Eric for an Ericsson telephone, Philippe for a Philips recorder), to bewitching effect. In the end we learn that
the threat does not come from outside and is not due to any violence. And that is Ostend’s great strength: what
hovers over Bergman is inside the writing and its gentle hypnotism. And what threatens Bergman also threatens
every reader of La Présence. You do not merely read this novel, you get to live through the unspoken experience
it exposes you to... with a kind of pleasure you could not have anticipated. t. G.
OVIDIO Pierre (d’)
Les Enfants de Van Gogh
[Van Gogh’s Children]
[Phébus, coll. “D’aujourd’hui,” August 2007, 204 p., 14.90 €, isbn: 978-2-7529-0300-6.]
Les Enfants de Van Gogh is an extremely enjoyable read. A small group of artists in the 1970s, craving
freedoms and desiring to change their way of life decide to make their lives into an exemplary micro-society. Each
person lives that idea according to his or her own understanding and more or less to the detriment of the others.
They set themselves up in a scruffy old house they call “the vessel.” A few years later the narrator returns and
offers his reflections on that utopian, leftist and youthful experiment where, despite the community, everyone
did what they wanted, sometimes to the detriment of the more sensitive members. Jean-Baptiste, for example,
put up with the fantastical moods and actions of his housemates who looked to him when they needed help
but who, within their individual pursuits of absolute pleasure paid him little head otherwise. After years of
political disillusionment—the left no longer in power, it is the Giscard years—their ideals remained unsatisfied,
projects aborted and finally they all effectively found themselves within traditional enough family and professional
constraints. A strong point of the book is its depiction of interpersonal relationships inside a community.
And it is all told with humor and affection. The reader quickly becomes attached to the group of young people,
their loves and sufferings because who hasn’t dreamt of living as they do off of love and fresh water alone? Who
hasn’t at some point dreamt of the bohemian life, of living like Mathias, Arthur, Nadia, Claire, Jean-Baptiste
and Martin through their art and their ideals? Chosen by Sophie Dulin, L’Échappée Belle bookshop, Sète
PAVLOFF Franck
La Chapelle des apparences
[The Chapel of Appearances]
[Albin Michel, coll. “Romans français,” August 2007, 296 p., 18.50 €, isbn: 978-2-226-17965-4.]
With La Chapelle des apparences, and its fine poetic metaphor, Franck Pavloff has written a novel about
the conflict between the real and the ideal, like, in another time and another form, Baudelaire gave the world
with the Les Fleurs du Mal. Here it is the story of directing a film on the life of Mandrin, that is, the story of a
man outraged at oppression. There are very different sorts of characters: a Greek film director who suffered under
the dictatorship of the colonels, an Italian screenwriter with a past as a terrorist (or a resistant?) and a Chilean
woman who suffered under the Pinochet regime. What do they have in common? The little cracks, the fragility
and the incurable trauma of a past combined with the present in the effort to give meaning to the future. The
immobility of time: Mandrin, Darfur, African poverty, clandestine migrations, immigration, epochs and countries
fall away and are blown away by bombs of baroque beauty. “The briefness of the moment is its beauty… people
who die are not symbols.” Behind striking aphorisms is an estheticized writing. If there is any denouement it
would be inelegant to reveal it, “lost soldiers, terrorists, Mandrin’s band, Chechen resistance fighters brought
together on the same level of sequencing,” this denouement has “the luminosity of a rapid movement of a head
toward the sky.” Chosen by Corinne Salles, Blanche Neige bookstore, Amberieu-en-Bugey
PELOT Pierre
Les Normales saisonnières
[Seasonal Norms]
[Héloïse d’Ormesson, September 2007, 222 p., 19 €, isbn: 978-2-35087-061-8.]
Mr. Datier is a strange one… That’s certainly what the employees at the hotel on Audierne Bay think,
the place where he has reserved a room, supposedly to change scenery, read, take some walks… With his old-
56

cowboy looks complete with boots and knapsack, he spends his days crisscrossing the Brittany coast, going
all the way to Van point, not far from Raz, within the confines of a Brittany hit with incessant winds and the
roaring sounds of spindrift. Who is this Datier who walks over the beach that is “interminable and straight up
until the rocky overhang, very far down that way, more than two kilometers”? Who is this man with the calm
appearance and the 455 Webley revolver in his bag? “You have only returned to the scene of the crime,” reads
one of the italicized passages interrupting Cochise Datier’s wanderings. His first name appears in the novel in
the same kind of surprising way. Slowly one comes to understand that there is a matter of vengeance, definitely
of dangerous excitement, and also irrationality… In any case, Pierre Pelot, a prolific 62 year-old novelist, the
well known author of L’Été en pente douce (Summer Downhill) and C’est ainsi que les hommes vivent (Men Live
Like This), as well as the famous Sous le vent du monde (Under the Wind of the World) saga with Yves Coppens,
takes us far from his native Vosges, his science fiction novels, and the graphic novels and Westerns of his early
days—although the atmosphere often makes one think of a Western, and the commix genre is also creeps in a
bit… With Les Normales saisonnières Pelot gives us an interesting sort of thriller that is very contemporary and
filled with false clues and dead ends. In truth, not much happens in this story of a man who is overtaken by his
past and in search of the woman he loves. Is it also the story of a reader overtaken by an enigmatic plot? One
finds oneself willingly caught… D. P.
SERAFFIN Didier
Un enfant volé
[Stolen Child]
[Philippe Rey, August 2007, 144 p., 14.90 €, isbn: 978-2-84876-092-6.]
The story in this author’s fist novel is strange and disturbing. It begins with a murder scene depicted with
cold violence in which the narrator indifferently kills the animals and humans he comes across and continues
with his quests and wanderings—and tenderness, as the narrator of this initial scene grabbed up an infant whom
he calls “Li’l Angel,” whom he carries on his back. As one reads one wonders more and more about the identity
of this silent baby, whose quiet presence borders on the nonexistent, who asks for nothing and is apparently
content with looking at the world around without doing anything. It evidently is not a realistic novel or an old
fashioned psychological novel, and even less so it a sociological or naturalist novel. What does this “Li’l Angel”
have to say, this mute seraphim who accompanies the antihero and keeps him company in the circus where he
works? And above all, will this seraphim grow up? Will he himself be able to grow up in the circus of life where
wild beasts are not the cruelest beings one encounters? Swaddled up like a mummy or a caterpillar in a cocoon,
“half pink, half blue,” this “Li’l Angel” makes one think about a nascent writer, psychically androgynous and in
search of a voice. Or is it the opposite, the writer cannot find his particular voice without getting free of that
infant which the narrator really has “on his back”? In any event, above and beyond the anecdotal story, Enfant
volé interrogates the cruelty of the world, the conjunction of the necessity and the impossibility of adapting and
living and the writer’s capacity to transform the walls of his prison into a magic writing bloc. In other words,
the book is an entry into literature… l. l. l.
SIMAAN Arkan
L’Écuyer d’Henri le Navigateur
[The Squire of Henri the Navigator]
[L’Harmattan, coll. “Roman historique,” July 2007, 308 p., 26 €, isbn: 978-2-296-03687-1.]
This historical novel, based on medieval accounts some of which haven’t even been transcribed into
modern Portuguese, takes place in the fifteenth century and concerns a true icon of Portuguese history, Prince
Henry the Navigator. From the conquest of Ceuta (1415) to the first African slave market in Lagos (1444) this
novel takes us from Cape Bojador in 1434 (the largest maritime expedition of the period) to his search for Prester
John, to his discovery of the Cape Verde islands and the African coast. Against a background of religious
fanaticism and the round up of slaves, we encounter Europeans’ first contact with peoples that were unknown
until that time. The forgetting of a good portion of these events, including by Portuguese general memory,
raises a number of questions. Is it because this moment in history was dominated by an unflattering image of
a religiously fanatical prince who was at the same time an unscrupulous slave trader? Arkan Simaan was born
in Lebanon, immigrated to Brazil with his family at age two, and studied at the University of Sao Paulo. His
mastery of Portuguese enabled him to read the medieval chronicles in their archaic language. A professor agrégé
in physics and very involved in the diffusion of scientific culture, he has already published several books on the
57

history of ideas and the history of science. This is his first go in the novelistic genre and he takes some liberties,
as is necessary, with historical events. J.-P. l.
THOBOIS Ingrid
Le roi d’Afghanistan ne nous a pas mariés
[We Were not Married by the King of Afghanistan]
[Phébus, coll. “D’aujourd’hui,” 146 p., 13.50 €, isbn: 978-2-7529-0257-3.]
This inventive and sensitive novel won the 2007 First Novel Prize. It is written in the first person and
leads us along in the life of a young female narrator in Afghanistan shortly after the American intervention
there following the September 11 attacks. “Urgent. Seeking French teacher. Kabul. Three-month renewable
contract.” The opportunity was too inviting for this young woman with a traveler’s soul chomping at the bit
in Paris. Then she falls for her employer, Nathan, another expat. But Nathan is married, even if he doesn’t live
with his wife. But this does not prevent the narrator from charging headlong into a passion that is doomed to
fail. Also, as if to get free of this doomed relationship, she launches headlong into encountering Afghanistan,
a country which also soon makes her heart race. “Afghanistan is dry like the wrists of the old men who keep
watch over the streets. Like a well proportioned man as well. It’s beauty is only matched by its prudishness and
its violence,” writes Ingrid Thobois, in this novel of restrained, ardent and always eloquent style. Thobois was
born in 1980, and has lived several years abroad, some of the time pursuing personal travels, as well as being
involved in humanitarian missions and radio reporting. She gave herself a nomadic year following the route of
Nicolas Bouvier in L’Usage du monde [The Way of the World], before stopping in Kabul. Le roi d’Afghanistan
ne nous a pas mariés naturally has some autobiographical resonances to it, which does not prevent Thobois from
delivering up a view of this captivating country that is new and beyond the confines of the clichés of news reports.
Taking her heroine from Kabul to Jalalabad to Bamyan, the author succeeds with reserve and by degrees
in presenting the soul of a people tried by war and poverty. She also succeeds in revealing her talent at the level
of the word. D. P.
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MUSIC
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JAZZ–DISCS
Selected by Philippe Carles
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CHARMASSON Rémi
Manœuvres
[Ajmi Series AJM 13, October 2007, 1 CD, 19.97 €.]
The first thing to open up here are what one inevitably calls the wide-open spaces where we develop
a whole imaginary world – a patchwork of violence and ruptures, memories of westerns, and rock and blues
seasoned with hillbilly warbles and other North American “arts of the poor.” The interlaced routes of hobos
and bums more or less celestial with Rémi Charmasson’s and the no less essential Philippe Deschepper’s exaggerated
guitars that cut across the depths while Éric Échampard’s lively, and often frenetic, drums and Claude
Tchamitchian’s bass, alternating earthy and almost-solemn echoes reminiscent of tribal rites, dig toward ecstasies
we would have thought forgotten. It isn’t the least exquisite and joyful paradox that such a panoramic journey
should have been conceived by Charmasson, a French musician who, unlike most of the jazz world’s movers,
has chosen to “stay in the country,” the deep south of Provence, as if beyond the fashionable trans-Atlanticism,
this collision of lands would offer the listener an unhoped-for occasion to circulate at the margins of realities
that the dominant import-export never ceases to cast in shadow or negate. It’s a kind of road movie as passionate
and literally derailing in its meanderings and wanderings as a Beat musing or one of Jimi Hendrix’s impro
fantasies, with Éric Longsworth’s cello and Jim Morrison’s words transported by Véronique Maby’s voice, which
blends into the sonic vagabondage less like an off commentary than like a signal of a drama no longer buried,
the musical translation of the slang double meaning of “dig.” [www.allumesdujazz.com] P. c.
FERLET Édouard
L’Écharpe d’Iris
[Iris’s Scarf]
[Melisse/Abeille Musique, October 2007, 1 CD, 17.07 €.]
The title metaphor is fully functional: it floats, fluctuates, frays, and flies away with every wind of
invention while timbres and colors fit together in subtle play, even in moments of extreme speed, or gentle
paroxysm, for here an irresistible fan of oxymorons and interlacings never ceases to unfold. Out of this comes a
sort of jungle with the charm and detail of a French garden, which one might consider a refreshing illustration
of the tireless and ever-flowing diptych – discipline and freedom that marks the work of Sun Ra, George Russell,
and other architects of contemporary jazz, here made current by four weaver-explorers of frank virtuosity:
Xavier Desandre-Navarre, whose drum rolls deliciously infiltrate the collective poem to enliven its prosody or
occasionally melt into another instrument’s song so as to give birth to a third; Alain Grange, with whom this
deep violin called the cello simultaneously participates in various phases of the adventure and at the same time
dissolves the traditional orchestral hierarchy by offering itself as a wholly separate voice, without mentioning
the flows of other types of music (to save time, we’ll call them “classical” or “chamber”) that it inevitably
brings to flower; Simon Spang-Hanssen’s saxophones and flute (Spang-Hanssen formerly did wonders in a duo
with pianist Denis Badault) whose melodies dilate and rise up by infinite degrees of gentleness, while pianistcomposer-leader
of the game, Édouard Ferlet, far from “directing,” sets the course through a territory that he
has elegantly designed and reinvented in light of the global discourse. A sonorous landscape that never stops
offering new perspectives. P. c.
HUBY Régis
Simple Sound
[Abalone Productions/Le Chant du monde/ Harmonia Mundi, September 2007, 1 CD, 18.51 €.]
Violin (Huby), cello (Alain Grange), bass (Bruno Chevillon), electric guitar (Olivier Benoit), clarinet
(Catherine Delaunay), bass clarinet (Roland Pinsard): enough to inspire prejudgment, questions, even polemics,
even in these times of openness to the universe at jazz’s periphery, so much does the instrumentation of such
59

a sextet evoke a certain Acoustic Quartet which twelve years ago brought the same Bruno Chevillon together
with a violin (Dominique Pifarély), a guitar (Marc Ducret), and a clarinet (Louis Sclavis), to shake up the assumptions
of musicologist/taxonomists. Once more into the breach, in the hopes that the evolution of jazz’s
beautiful minds will allow this orchestral chimera to survive beyond one recording adventure and put up with
an absence of drums generally viewed as a sign of non-jazz. In other words, first of all the rhythm here is distributed
between the six “voices” in infinitely variable proportions and is the inevitable function of a dominant
premeditation (of writing), guitar riffs, often alluding to rock, and the deep strings’ pizzicati often having to
de-territorialize or, to use the old term, mix blood. An unavoidably Baroque sound/object thus emerges, striated
with strings’ tutti with a whiff of “chamber,” haloed with clarinets’ scrolls, and occasionally standing on
end with electric surprises and shrills. It’s impossible to ‘locate’ or classify, for sure. And so what? P. c.
LABARRIÈRE Hélène
Les temps changent
[Times Change]
[Émouvance/Abeille Musique, September 2007, 1 CD, 21.50 €.]
You’re within your rights to wonder if this disc’s title doesn’t correspond to a pious wish: from June
Rotenberg’s double bass virtuosity (equally at ease with Art Tatum or Mary Lou Williams as with Bach’s partitas)
to today’s scandalously eclectic Joëlle Léandre, have times changed so much for women who’ve chosen to play
this big violin nicknamed “Grandma”? Hélène Labarrière’s slim discography attempts to prove the contrary. We
truly welcome this quartet recording, where the bassist takes center stage and explodes all her talents not only
as an instrumentalist (who no longer needs to prove her virtuosity) but also, and above all, as a composer and
catalyst, while at the same time avoiding the horrible Franglais term “leader” (which has no feminine). In fact,
this might point to some non-machistic idiosyncrasy: Hélène Labarrière doesn’t act like a “chief” but rather like
an organizer of sound and chance by birthing musical events with the wisdom to bring together the partners
and conditions of a series of happy accidents. For here combinations and meetings of timbres reproduce almost
infinitely: between Hasse Poulsen’s almost-vocal guitar and the fluent depths of François Corneloup’s baritone
sax, while Christophe Marguet’s lyrical percussions team up with each of the three other actors in turn and,
above all, the bass strings come in at every moment and all levels, peppering and dramatizing crescendos as well
as silences. A sound film of adventures whose play of contrasts and suspense never stop fixing our attention,
each new addition offering unhoped-for surprises. P. c.
YVINEC Daniel
The Lost Crooners
[Bee Jazz/Abeille Musique, October 2007, 1 CD, 19 €.]
He “recycled the future,” then “sang under the bombs,” after having played with the “ghost of a song”
and before exploring New York’s “wonderful world.” We get it: this man is an adventurer in current music and
music history, or rather musics’ history, which he plays, invents, produces, consumes, and collects since the
beginning of his career as a musician, for he takes part at every level of sound genesis with the same passion: a
lover of jazz and all other music (with a few rare exceptions), contrabassist and bassist of impressive and eclectic
effectiveness, impressive record collector, and this isn’t the least of the delights that verse us, through the
whim of a sinuous anamnesis, in an astute and surprise-laden “rereading” (harmonies, more or less roundabout
instruments, even “hidden pieces”) of this spectacular mangrove where different types of jazz have been mixing
for decades in the way of the collective unconscious where the voices of Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Julie
London, Nat King Cole, and Mel Tormé never stop haunting the essential element of jazz: improvisation. The
contrabassist undertakes this work of both idler and pioneer with the assistance of Nelson Veras, whom we’d
salute as a true poet of the guitar if the term weren’t so misused, Médéric Collignon, who once again has the
impossible ability to amaze and move us (if only for his pronouncedly phonatory trumpet-playing, to the point
of making breathing/singing a single verb) and Benoît Delbecq, whose piano meanderings undertake the intelligent
effort of renewing old chestnuts, with drummer Stéphane Galland endlessly highlighting and coloring the
least passages. We might as well admit that the group’s reunion augurs a fine future for the Orchestre National
de Jazz, since we’ve just learned while writing this that Daniel Yvinec will be its next conductor. Hallelujah!
P. c.
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JAZZ–BOOKS
Selected by Philippe Carles
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DAVIS Miles and TROUPE Quincy
Miles l’autobiographie
[Miles: the Autobiography]
[Infolio, September 2007, 448 p., 25 €, isbn: 978-2-88474-919-0. Translated by Christian Gauffre.]
GERBER Alain
Miles
[Fayard, coll. “Littérature française,” September 2007, 414 p., 24 €, isbn: 978-2-213-63162-2.]
Editorial calendar happenstance, happy coincidence: here are two works that one would be tempted to
call complementary and almost impossible to dissociate, or rather are indispensable to illuminating each other.
Sure, they’re part of an already-abundant Miles Davis bibliography, but one might wonder if it’s all just fruitless
chatter, with the exception of the trumpeter’s phonographic work. Actually, these books answer the essay
prompt given to students for decades, that of scientific truth vs. novelistic truth, with an exquisite entanglement
of exchanges between the two notions that ends in more or less journalistic interpretations and almost
novelistic embellishments (for, as Gerber repeats with daily radio virtuosity, jazz is definitely a novel). And this
first-person narrative (with its familiarity, informality, and crudeness), compiled by the writer Quincy Troupe,
and beautifully translated, edited, and published (originally appearing in the artist’s lifetime) by Christian Gauffre
won’t contradict us. We can’t encourage potential readers enough to undertake a simultaneous, alternating,
or almost-parallel trip through the two books, a sort of counterpoint reading that might accompany the music
Miles Davis recorded, like the soundtrack of an adventure: from dancer/singer Rubberlegs Williams’s blues to
the inaugural sessions with Charlie Parker, in 1945, to the final Jean Pierre played at la Villette in June 1991.
The trumpeter would die one month later, when the first Autumn Leaves were beginning to fall. It’s up to us
now to turn these essential and exciting leaves. P. c.
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CLASSICAL MUSIC–CDS
Selected by Jean Roy
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GIROD Marie-Catherine
félix Mendelssohn: préludes et fugues op. 35; pièces enfantines op. 72; fantaisie op. 28
[Felix Mendelssohn: Preludes and Fugues Opus 35; Children’s Pieces Opus 72; Fantasy Opus 28]
[Saphir, October 2007, 1 CD, 15 €.]
This second volume of Mendelssohn’s complete piano works brings together works of rather different
character. The Preludes and Fugues, an homage to Johann Sebastian Bach, is succeeded by the Children’s Pieces,
where Mendelssohn resembles Schumann, and the Fantasy, as under the title “Scottish Sonata,” by turns brilliant
and melancholic. Performing Mendelssohn is always a delicate task: one must neither force, nor neglect
the expression while also demonstrating rigor without dryness. The richness of nuance unfolds in a frame that
leaves nothing to chance. The piano’s tone is always superb, without the least complacence. We impatiently
await the third volume of this collection. J. r.
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CLASSICAL MUSIC–BOOKS
Selected by Jean Roy
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Cahiers Debussy n° 31
[Centre de documentation Claude-Debussy, September 2007, 128 p., 20 €, issn: 0395-1200.]
This issue opens with a study by Michel Gribienski, part of his doctoral thesis on “the question of
free verse and prose in the French opera from its beginnings to the dawn of the twenty-first century: metrical,
rhythmic, prosodic, and aesthetic problems.” Problems raised by the silent “e” and the hiatus are applied to
Debussy, who resolved them in his melodies and in Pelleas and Melisande by finding a style of writing that allowed
for “singing like a natural person.” Next comes an article by Ayres de Andrade on the first performances
of two Debussy works in Brazil, 1908: Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and 1920: Pelleas and Melisande. A
significant part of the issue is dedicated to colloquia, exhibitions, and concerts, as well as to the bibliography
covering from 2000 and 2007 and the discography and videography of Cahiers Debussy for 2006. The periodical
was created in1977 by François Lesure, and continues to be an irreplaceable collection of documentation. The
editorial board includes Myriam Chimènes, David Greyson, Denis Herlin, Alexandra Læderich and Edmond
Lemaître. Biographies of the authors and summaries of their articles are also included. J. r.
CORBIER Christophe
Maurice Emmanuel
[Bleu nuit, coll. “Horizons,” October 2007, 176 p., 20 €, isbn: 978-2-913575-79-0.]
Maurice Emmanuel (1862-1938) is recognized as the apostle of modal music and as a professor whose
teaching has influenced composers as different as Duruflé, Messiaen, and Dutilleux, but hardly anything but
the Sonatines pour piano [Sonatinas for Piano] and the Chansons bourguignonnes du pays de Beaune [Burgundian
Songs from the Beaune Country] is remembered from his personal oeuvre, which is profoundly unjust.
Retracing the life of this contemporary of Debussy, Christophe Corbier reminds us that Maurice Emmanuel
is the author of a lyric tragedy, Salamine; a Poème du Rhône [Poem of the Rhone], and various chamber music
works of rare quality. Lavishly illustrated, this biography reveals Maurice Emmanuel’s personality and his works’
importance—already shown in 1947 in a special issue of Revue Musicale put together by Charles Koechlin and
Olivier Messiaen. J. r.
LACOMBE Hervé
Géographie de l’opéra au x x e siècle
[Geography of the Opera in the Twentieth Century]
[Fayard, coll. “Les chemins de la musique,” October 2007, 336 p., 22 €, isbn: 978-2-213-62749-6.]
Author of an excellent work on Bizet (Fayard), Hervé Lacombe knows better than anyone how Carmen
conquered Europe and the world. His study on operatic geography is not only descriptive. It discusses problems
related to the longevity of a genre created four hundred years before broaching the issue of Western culture’s
confrontation with other traditions, like Chinese opera. This confrontation is one of the significant phenomena
of our era; Hervé Lacombe has thus found fertile ground with this subject. Complemented with statistics, his
work urges readers to reflect on their own about that hallmark of our time, in all domains: globalization. J. r.
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NEW “CHANSON FRANçAISE”–CDS
Selected by Radio Néo (Pierre Bourdin-Sauviac and Amaelle Guiton)
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CROZE Pauline
Un bruit qui court
[Getting Around]
[Wagram, November 2007, 1 CD, 14.95 €.]
Un bruit qui court [which means “there is a rumor/gossip,” and literally, “a noise that runs”], Pauline
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Croze comes back to us with a second work. This is no rumor, but the title of the long-awaited second album by
a woman who was one of the big discoveries of the Rennes Transmusicales festival in 2003. Happily delivered
into our lives in February 2005, the young woman has grown and brings us, at 28, a “twelve pack” all original
to Pauline’s delicate pen (unlike the first album, written with help from Dorian, Mickaël Furnon, and Éléonore
Weber), except Baiser d’adieu (Kiss Goodbye), which is signed Arthur H. Pauline still has her charming fragility
and perfectly masters her voice. Her timidity vanquished, she takes control of her choices and co-produces Un
bruit qui court with Jean Lamoot (Alain Bashung, Têtes Raides). The album was recorded at Paris’s studio Ferber
with Simon Edwards on bass, Martin Barker on drums, and Jean-Louis Solans on guitar. Her voice enchants us,
taking us to songs that discuss the body’s vulnerability (in Faux contacts) as well as the mind’s (Les gens qui jasent).
Pauline asks questions with Nous Voulons Vivre: how to realize oneself as a human being in a society that’s both
in constant motion and inclined to violence. She takes on the other in Légère (Soulève-moi) and glosses over Le
bruit qui court, a title that takes us back thirty years to recall Led Zeppelin’s organic sound. The singer enjoys
her work and indulges herself, this album being, without any doubt, more produced. She explores sounds and
really plays with her voice, faintly hip-hop and deep in À l’évidence or jazzy in Sur ton front. Pauline Croze, if
she doesn’t necessarily reveal herself in her songs, must feel the texts profoundly to do them justice: “I need a
personal emotion to get to a satisfying level of performance.” Let’s hope Pauline Croze’s keeps getting around
for a long time. P. b.-s.
DELLECK James
Le Cri du papillon
[The Butterfly’s Cry]
[Tôt ou tard, August 2007, 1 CD, 16.77 €.]
In butterflies, the chrysalis is the developmental stage between the larva and the adult. James Delleck
comes out of his cocoon and brings us a first album of fourteen titles: Le Cri du papillon. Unlike the insect, lending
your ear is enough to hear James Delleck’s cry, an alternative hip-hop mixing rap, song, and punk. Born in
1974 in Vitry, the rapper came onto the French music scene as a dancer and MC with the group La Horde. He
then met Teki Latex (one of the T’s from T TC) and released a mix tape, L’Antre de la folie (Den of Madness), in
1999. No real album yet in 2002, but his first EP, Acouphène, came out. Now the moment has come for James
Delleck to confront the public. The wait is rewarded with fourteen flamboyant titles. The first piece, Chrysalide
(Chrysalis), is an introduction that shows to advantage and draws lucky listeners in from the beginning, letting
them anticipate forty-five minutes of intense happiness. The voyage is off to a good start with Chaman and we
rise up above the relics on James Delleck’s verbal flow of true poetry. The adventure continues with Le Profil
Psychologique, a hip-hop/funk title where James makes a humorous list of all his I love ’s. The artist plays each
role with brio, first of all the melancholy Réverbère, which makes us see city buildings differently. Then with
Gérard de Roubaix an orgasmic screaming in truth, or a solitary man who cannot stop us from losing our heads
for L’amour, which, it’s true, is better with two. La carotte sauvage (Wild Carrot) is a short interlude that prepares
us to relive past moments on the dance floor in Titty twister. We’re surprised with the story of a droplet, Sonate
pour une gouttelette (Sonata for a Droplet), and we learn to be adults in J’ai appris (I learned). It’s a lesson we’ll
remember: Le Cri du papillon, we’ll need to take James Delleck into account. And no one’s going to complain;
the butterfly has emerged. [http://jamesdelleck.com] P. b.-s.
DIONYSOS
La Mécanique du coeur
[Mechanics of the Heart]
[Barclay, November 2007, 1 CD, 15.99 €.]
Originally, it was only going to be a side project, meant as musical accompaniment to Mathias Malzieu’s
second novel, La Mécanique du cœur. In the end, the eponymous disc would be Dionysos’s new album. The
whole group came together to tell, in eighteen pieces, the story of Giant Jack’s youth (a character from the
album Monsters in Love and in Malzieu’s previous novel, Maintenant qu’il fait tout le temps nuit sur toi [Now
that it’s Always Night for You]), born the coldest day ever and saved by Dr. Madeleine, who replaced his frozen
heart with a clock. This gentle giant had to watch out for strong emotions, lest he bring harm to his mechanical
heart, but would be, despite everything, seized by love and hatred a devilishly Burton-like intrigue in which we
find correspondence in the album’s visuals (nicely drawn by Joann Sfar) and in its musical colors, which are as
reminiscent of Ennio Morricone as of Danny Elfman, the pet composer of the father of Edward Scissorhands:
63

flamboyant chords, tic-tac clockwork, toy piano, ukulele, mariachi trumpets but also, more unexpectedly, a
raging hip-hop that effectively comes to renew the Dionysian’ world. To give life to this epic’s characters, driving
Scotland’s chill to the Andalusian heat, Mathias Malzieu and his associates added the reinforcement of this
choice casting: the acid voices of Emily Loizeau as Dr. Madeleine and Olivia Ruiz as Miss Acacia (not counting
Babet, the group’s violinist, who with the extravagant Rossy de Palma narrates the tragic destiny of a hamster
named Cunnilingus mon amour, as well as those of the Grand Corps Malade, Alain Bashung, Arthur H, Jean
Rochefort and Éric Cantona). In the end, La Mécanique du coeur might actually serve as a novel’s soundtrack,
but also as an unbridled, gothic, and occasionally naughty musical. A cruel tale for big children, and certainly
one of Dionysos’ most successful albums. [www.dionyweb.com] [www.myspace.com/lamecaniqueducoeur]
a. G.
DOMINIQUE A
Sur nos forces motrices
[On Our Driving Forces]
[Cinq 7/Wagram Music, October 2007, 1 CD, 14.11 €.]
In almost fifteen years of concerts, Dominique A has not yet made a sacrifice to the tradition of the live
album. Those who hadn’t seen him on stage might have gotten the idea in 2004 with the appearance of a singular
exercise in all senses of the term, the DVD En solo aux Bouffes du Nord. For Sur Nos Forces Motrices, the singer
is accompanied by four musicians (Jérôme Bensoussan, David Euverte, Olivier Mellano and Daniel Paboeuf)
who have been accompanying him since the Tout sera comme avant tour. Three years of working together have
given this quintet the coherence of a group, enlivened by powerful rock energy. That’s one of the disc’s best
qualities: though it might seem at first like a “best of” (all the albums are represented here by at least one title,
starting with two unrecorded ones, Marina Tsvetaeva and Revoir les choses), this homogeneity of sound replaces
Dominique A’s music and lyrics in its continuity and flexibility; versions of the oldest titles prove it (L’Amour, La
Mémoire neuve and an almost post-punk Courage des oiseaux). The other big success of Sur Nos Forces Motrices is
the way it takes the stance of escaping certain occasionally tiresome canons of the live album. Here there is no
linearity and few elements of ambience: all that counts is the performance of the music, its power and precision,
and the album’s dynamic, put together from four recording sessions. It makes sense when Dominique A talks
about a “sixth musician” in the person of Dominique Brusson, faithful sound engineer for his concerts for a
decade now, including this album among others: the strength of the versions offered also comes, in large part,
from the cleanness and remarkable balance of the mixing, a jewelry box in which blooms, simultaneously clear,
trembling, and almost brutal, one of the most poignant voices in the French musical landscape. No doubt that
Sur Nos Forces Motrices, a panoramic album, is one way for Dominique A to mark the end of a cycle. He couldn’t
have done it better than with this intense, rough, and quivering disc, well worth a listen. [www.dominiquea.
com] [www.myspace.com/dominiquea] a. G.
LES WRIGGLES
Tant pis! Tant mieux!
[Too Bad! All the Better!]
[Atmosphériques, November 2007, 1 CD, 13.67 €.]
For ten years, the Wriggles have walked the tightrope between comedy and song. It’s hard to know if
their work began with their performances, followed passionately by ever more numerous admirers, or with their
studio albums. Tant Pis! Tant Mieux! is a new stage in their approach to writing music as well as a testimony to
their new way of being on stage. Les Wriggles became a trio after Franck Zerbib and Antoine Réjasse left. The
new geometry didn’t rattle the group, but led them to rethink things. Moi d’Abord, released in 2005, saw the five
men in red color lend their frankly humorous songs a more serious or tender gaze. As a threesome, the boys have
now continued in this direction with this most recent studio album, Tant Pis! Tant Mieux! Crazy, furious fantasy
now leaves more room for realism, aware of an occasionally unjust society. Les Wriggles concentrate on their
vocal harmonies; the orchestration is more refined, and the trio flirts more and more with a cappella. Make no
mistake: while the Wriggles are becoming more mature this does not mean that they’re taking themselves more
seriously. The songs alternate without a break between sighs and smiles, and when you think they’ve stopped
on a serious note, as in Petit Bonhomme or La chaîne, they leap back into the burlesque with Gros Dégueulasse
or Entre tes Seins. Tant Pis! Tant Mieux! is an album of very successful songs by a trio that perfectly masters its
bittersweet style… their songs are created for their tours before being recorded in the studio, but that’s not
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a necessary effort for the troupe. While Tant Pis! Tant Mieux! is wholly an album apart. It’s also a call to see
the Wriggles stage their auspicious melodies and texts in a vitamin-rich show, choreographed with care. [www.
leswriggles.com] P. b.-s.
THE SHOPPINGS
The Shoppings
[Ici d’ailleurs, March 2007, 1 CD, 14 €.]
The trendy groups are generally tagged as such by an intelligentsia that makes and unmakes trends.
When The Shoppings presented itself as a fashion-drunk duo influenced by “expensive pretty dresses and high
heels,” the effect of making such a pronouncement was faintly against them. Being trendy is not necessarily
an advantage, and to claim that you are is a true provocation. David Lavaysse is an electronic artist already
recognized under the name “I & Fused”, and Pascal Montfort is professor of history of fashion at the Institut
Supérieur Européen de la Mode and a trend researcher at Nike. With that CV, certain MySpacers, where they
became known, thought it was the umpteenth dubious attempt to reproduce the effect of surprise hype that
Yelle generated. Finally, their ironic texts about the bourgeois/ bohemian Paris obsessed by ‘exclusive’ parties
over electro-rap music terrified a simplicity-seeking public in a musical scene that’s already very “Checked me
out yet?” Beyond these misleading appearances, there are two artists who’ve gone much farther than a simple
strike at chance marketing. Sure, there are those stories of fashionable youth who rush after designer clothing
and private parties. But Pascal Montfort and David Lavaysse know this glamorous universe well and aptly mock
it. With chiseled scansion and an arty, cartoonish voice, The Shoppings’ eponymous album shows the void
and a certain human misery that imbues these trendy nights. David Lavaysse has produced a danceable and
effective album in his home studio. We start listening to The Shoppings for their acid chronicles of fashionable
youth, but we stay for these twelve songs fashioned by a duo that’s obsessed with making unstoppable pop. It
would be easy for The Shoppings to foul the gilded nest and judge the milieu they come from, but the duo had
the wisdom to ably distance themselves and provide a very successful, rhythmic disc. [www.theshoppings.net/]
P. b.-s.
65

pHILoSopHY
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Selected by Sylvie Courtyne-Denamy, Guy Samama and Éric Vigne
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oser construire. pour françois Jullien
[Daring to Construct; for François Julien]
[Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond, October 2007, 154 p., 16 €, isbn: 978-2-84671-169-2. Pierre Chartier
and Thierry Marchaisse (Eds.)]
JULLIEN François
La pensée chinoise dans le miroir de la philosophie
[Chinese thought through Philosophy’s Mirror]
[Éd. du Seuil, coll. “Opus,” October 2007, 1,896 p., 39 €, isbn: 978-2-02-094297-3.]
Let us hail both the birth of the new collection “Opus” and the bringing together in its first volume of
François Julien’s essays from 1986-1996. These are incursions into Chinese thought which allow one to discover
the presuppositions and prejudices upon which European thought relies and which also provides its coherency.
A traversing of Chinese thought in order to access the foundations of European thought is the constant and
accomplished subject matter of François Julien’s work. The book’s innovation resides, independent of the new
introduction and Chinese and European indexes, in the sort of summaries provided of each essay, from Éloge
de la fadeur [In Praise of the Insipid] to Traité de l’efficacité [Treatise on Efficacity]. These summaries trace
so many itineraries, and explain that even if there is no Chinese metaphysics there is a coherence to Chinese
thought based most often on the continual process things go through and the transformations pursuant of the
interaction of opposing and complementary poles. This therefore is not a panorama of Chinese thought, but
of various entries into Chinese thought which is less different from the European than indifferent to its major
questions, such as Being, God, creation, meaning, morality, history, power, art, etc. This book thus provides
an invitation to put European thought under tension and then to discover, through the tension created by a
comparison with Chinese thought, Western thought’s implicit choices, what it leaves unthought. We know well
enough that Julien disturbs, just read him and you understand the extent to which he re-routs us and forces us to
think in a new way. Because constructing in thought forces continual de-and re-categorizations. So, is it necessary
that a sagacious team come to his defense against the attacks of colleagues and sinologists (particularly those
occasioned by Jean-François Billeter’s Contre François Jullien [cf., VDP 26]? Wouldn’t that be an admission of
the weakness of Julien’s thought which should a fortiori suffice in legitimizing and “defending” itself? A pleiad
of intellectuals, academics, anthropologists and philosophers did not think so, and this book is the result of
their support. They all agree that not only does François Julien open up a gap in thought, he also works that
gap. Working through China is not the same as Chinesifying philosophy: it is a matter of renewal by recasting.
And the compilation of essays on Julien provides ample evidence of that. G. s.
BOUVERESSE Jacques
Satire & prophétie: les voix de Karl Kraus
[Satire and Prophesy: Karl Krauss’ Voices]
[Agone, coll. “Banc d’essais,” September 2007, 216 p., 20 €, isbn: 978-2-7489-0077-4.]
Jacques Bouveresse has held the philosophy of language and epistemology chair at the Collége de
France since 1995. For more than a quarter century he has been interested in Karl Kraus’s voice. Notably, when
the French translation of Krauss’ Die ditte Walpurgisnacht [The Third Walpurgis Night], which was written in
1933 and first published in 1952, was published with an introduction by Bouveresse (Agon, 2005) it provided
the occasion for a conference, Les Guerres de Karl Kraus whose proceedings were also published (Agon, 2006);
Bouveresse had already published a book on Kraus in 2001, Schmock ou le Triomphe du journalisme; La grande
bataille de Karl Kraus. With the latest publication’s return to the subject (only the third chapter, “The Coming
Night and Expectations of Nightmare: 1919-1933” has never been published before) Bouveresse again marks
his contribution to a renewal of Karl Kraus reception in France. The lucidity of the Krauss’ criticism of the
warmongering of World War I as well as his analysis of the dissolution of the intellectual and moral context as
Nazism approached, made him a combatant and a resistant of the earliest moment. And this is so despite the
66

misunderstandings relating to the paradoxical and provocative first sentence of The Third Night: “About Hitler,
nothing comes to my mind.” These misunderstandings were in part due to the fact that Karl Kraus rallied
around the nationalist regime of Chancellor Dollfus—even as he was condemning Mussolini’s cult of leadership
as early as 1915 in his review Die Fackel—which he saw as the only chance Austria had for maintaining its
independence. Many supporters of his work, particularly Elias Canetti, could not forgive him for this. To Kraus
the only possible way to fight against the defeat of the intellect, as evidenced as much in linguistic clichés (die
Phrase), empty journalistic phraseology—“National Socialism did not annihilate the press, the press created
National Socialism”—as by intellectuals—and notably Heidegger who “aligned his muddled blue ideas with
the Browns”—consists in caring for the integrity and purity of the language, because speaking and thinking
are one and the same, “language [being] the mother not the daughter of thought.” Krauss died in 1936 and it
was then up to the publication of Victor Klemperer’s work on the language of the Third Reich, Lingua Tertii
Imperii to point to how words can transform into small doses of arsenic. s. c.-D.
DUPONT Florence
Aristote ou le Vampire du théâtre occidental
[Aristotle or the Vampire of Western Theater]
[Aubier/Flammarion, coll. “Libelles,” October 2007, 314 p., 22 €, isbn: 978-2-7007-0046-6.]
This book has at least a double project: to deconstruct Aristotle’s Poetics and its categories and to get us
out of a current “ambient Aristotelianism.” The first consists in a critique of the imaginary three-pillared device
of mimesis, catharsis and muthos, and the imposition of the idea that Western theater is dependent upon the
conception that there cannot be theater without a text or a narrative which gives meaning to the performance
because it sustains the notion that the action is constituted and organized by the narrative itself and by a poet:
in other words, the supremacy of the theater of the text, associated with the illusion that to understand theater
one merely has to understand Greek theater, a theater of origins and thus contemporary theater in the West is
to be understood as a development. But, in parallel with the reminder that there were Roman comedies and that
Plautus and Terence are not authors of literary theater but must be understood within the context of an historical
reality, it is above all the idea that the fabula is the heart of theater that Florence Dupont condemns. Over and
beyond the basic Aristotelianism we continue to be subject to, she brings to light an entire ideological complex.
It is comprised of a holy trinity: Dionysus, seen as a God of the trance or of marginality, providing theater with
a libertarian or mystical guarantee; Aristotle, who is at the origin of making theater an object of analysis by
reducing it to the text; and democracy, that is the idea that theater is a site for political debate, or better, that its
function is social or political. Aristotle is thus just one of three pillars of the ideological cathedral of European
discourse on theater and its assimilation or reference to ancient Greek theater. But Dupont is not content with
pointing out problems. Through insightful analyses of Roman comedy she invites us to change our hierarchizing
habits concerning what a theater production is. Instead of text, fable, and staging she describes performance,
ritual and celebration, whether joyful or mournfully dark, as in Kantor. She proposes a substitution of drama
for muthos—action for narrative—as the only way to get beyond ethnocentrism and the false universality in
the name of which theater has for long been detheatralized. G. s.
LÉVY Benny
pouvoir et Liberté
[Power and Freedom]
[Verdier, coll. “Philosophie,” October 2007, 188 p., 13 €, isbn: 978-2-86432-514-7. Gilles Hanns, (Ed.)]
Pouvoir et Liberté is the title of a book of interviews Benny Lévy conducted with Sartre. The book was
never published, but the interviews took place regularly over a seven year period, a period which corresponded
to the disbandment of the proletarian left, in 1973. From 1975 to 1980, Lévy, who had a very precise and
longstanding knowledge of Sartre’s work, wrote about these discussions in his notebooks. Excerpts appeared in
Le Nouvel Observateur in 1980 under the title L’espoir maintenant [Hope Now]. It is these notebooks which are
published here. It all begins with a rereading of Critique de la raison dialectique, Sartre’s last great philosophical
work. A good portion of these discussions turn to the subject of the French Revolution, Napoleon, freedom,
the relationship between intellectuals and the leader, a recasting of the theory of the view, the Rousseauist idea
of democracy and general will, a reading of Hobbes, a “biographical” discussion on the notion of equality as
the blind spot in Sartrean thought, the philosophical revolution worked by Sartre with a break from the cogito
(“Sartre did not go all the way: he guillotined the cogito, but he tried to maintain its prestige and philosophical
67

function”), an attempt to think beyond public demonstrations which would not be a totalitarian approach, etc.
These pages not only teach us about Sartre’s thinking in the last ten years of his life, they also reveal his growing
interest Judaism through Levinas, and the emergence of the Hebrew language. Thus, positioning in relation to
philosophy and Judaism puts us in the presence of a(n immemorial) novelty: the injunction to do as the unseen
mode of presence. These pages enrich our knowledge of both of these men while at the same time offering new
paths for reading Sartre. G. s.
MALDINEY Henri
philosophie, art et existence
[Philosophy, Art and Existence]
[Cerf, coll. “La nuit surveillée,” September 2007, 224 p., 18 €, isbn: 978-2-204-08367-6.
Chris Younès (Ed.)]
“Encounter” and “Opening” are the two master-terms in the thought of Henri Maldiney, a philosopher
whose originality is situated at the crossroads of phenomenology, existentialism, esthetics and psychiatry—“Art,
psychiatry, existence… are domains which in reality are one.” Maldiney taught successively at universities in
Ghent and Lyons, and is thought of in France as a representative of Daseinsanalyse, from which he took his
distance in Regard, parole, espace (1973) as much in relation to phenomenology of Hegel—for whom certainty
by the senses is the most “poor” and the most “abstract”—as to Husserlian intentionality which according to
him fails to sufficiently account for presence. As opposed to Heidegger who only accords minor import to the
particularity of a work, Maldiney, who was a collaborator on the review Derrière le miroir, considers those who
have “grasped,” “surprised,” and/or “made exist,” e.g., Tal Coat, Bazaine, Braque, Miro, or Chinese painting
centered on landscape which takes the dimensionality of space into view. As opposed to Emmanuel Levinas for
whom an art work can become human only when a philosopher takes it up into discourse and thus into a “history,”
for Maldiney the work of art itself is its own foundation. Escaping signification—“the rose has no why”—it
is precisely the domain of encounter which opens the way for us toward the presence of the other and radically
transforms us. The work of art thus appears as L’Éclair de l’être (2003) [the Flash of Being]: “The apparition
of a work of art… is a… transforming… event… an event which opens the world and a new form of presence
and existence.” Maldeney considers this sort of encounter, the presence of which is apparently impossible for
psychotic persons (as his Penser l’homme et la folie, 1991 shows) with reference to the works of the psychiatrists
Ludwig Binswanger and Roland Kuhn. The writings here are presented by Maldiney’s former student, Chris
Younès and are comprised of two of Maldiney’s lectures, “Philosophy, Art and Existence” and “Encounter and
Place.” Also included are two interviews where we read about his intellectual itinerary and several contributions
on Maldiney’s work which effectively honor the multiple facets of his work. s. c.-D.
MESCHONNIC Henri
Heidegger ou le national-essentialisme
[Laurence Teper, coll. “Essai,” October 2007, 190 p., 14 €, isbn: 978-2-916010-23-6.]
To think about the theory of language according to the interaction language-poem-art-ethics-politics
and not to separate them as academic disciplines do: this is what Henri Meschonnic calls “thinking” instead of
simply “attending to ordinary matters” through “small-thought.” This book could have been called realism and
nominalism, as the author, poet, translator of the Bible, emeritus professor of linguistics takes up arms against
“Heidegger’s language” (Langage Heidegger is the title of one of his books, 1990): “In truth, it is language which
speaks not man. Humans only speak to the extent that they correspond to language.” So we read in “Questions
III,” on Heidegger’s “phobia of the subject,” his “essentialization” of language, even his “essentialization” of the
Germanness of the race. What is at stake is “liberating oneself of Heidegger,” a major task given the “globalization”
of Heidegger and how most contemporary philosophers have adopted realism—which comprises a continuous
relation between words and what they designate—and not nominalism—which, considering words as names
applied to things is the only mode allowing for an “ethics and thus a politics of subjects.” Meschonnic points to
the nominalist functioning of abstract terms in Hebrew, chayim, life, designating living beings, neurim, youth,
designating young people taken as a singular entity. In other words, essentialization leads to a dilution into
mass phenomena—humanity, the Jew, the Black, woman… which leads directly to a fascism of thought as the
individual is no longer considered as a subject but as a simple “fragment” of a group. Meschonnic thus risks
hypothesizing that the globalization of Heidegger is in fact the globalization of the essentialism of thought, with
language reduced to being an instrument of communication. No contemporary thinker, be it Edmund Husserl,
68

in whom Meschonnic already senses “a whiff of essence,” Karl Jaspers, Hannah Arendt, for whom the concept
of plurality however is central, Claude Lévi-Strauss, or Emmanuel Levinas, not to mention Jean-Claude Milner,
Alain Badiou or Marlène Zarader escape this condemnation of essentialism. s. c.-D.
NANCY Jean-Luc
À plus d’un titre, Jacques Derrida. Sur un portrait de Valerio Adami
[Under More than One Head, Jacques Derrida; On a Portrait by Valerio Adami]
[Galilée, coll. “Écritures-Figures,” September 2007, 100 p., 18 €, isbn: 978-2-7186-0745-0.]
In his eulogy for Emmanuel Levinas Jacques Derrida pointed to how “the greeting of the A-Dieu does
not signal the end.” In this book Jean-Luc Nancy takes us beyond his tears and into an analysis of an “allegorical
portrait” of his friend, that other philosopher of the trace, Jacques Derrida, which was executed during that
philosopher’s lifetime (27 January 2004) by Valerio Adami (pencil on paper). Note that the Derrida and Adami
met at the behest of the poet Jacques Dupin who hoped they might work together. The result was a poster
where Adami, impressed by his reading of Glas took up Derrida’s calligraphy as evidence of their affective affinity.
Nancy leads us through his personal meditation on the “allegory” this portrait with “J.” Derrida—Jacques, Jacky,
J(e) is supposed to be. Derrida is pictured at work at his desk, pipe in mouth, pen in hand, together with his
cat Lucrèce and ten books; ten: Plato’s Republic about which Nancy has him talk on the telephone. Then there
is the decoding of Adami. Each of Adami’s drawings details an event,” wrote Derrida in La Vérité en Peinture
[Truth in Painting]. Now the event here is a sensing of Derrida’s disappearance in October 2004. What is it that
survives the disappearance of a human being? Shortly before his death in an interview with Pierre Birnbaum in
the newspaper Le Monde and published in its entirety in the short book Apprendre à vivre enfin [Learning to
Live Finally], Derrida responded, “The trace I leave signals to me my death to come or already come, and the
hope that it will survive me.” s. c.-D.
PINTO Louis
La Vocation et le Métier de philosophe
[The Philosopher’s Vocation and Work]
[Éd. du Seuil, coll. “Liber,” October 2007, 320 p., 22 €, isbn: 978-2-02-096339-8.]
Louis Pinto has given himself a particular challenge in endeavoring to reveal the “sociology of philosophy
in contemporary France.” The effort is to respect ideas in the sense of not offering reductions to simple social
determinations but also not offering a kind of unqualified respect which would see them as great empyrean
battles. How is it that in a current atmosphere philosophy provide the cover material of popular magazines?
The same term can refers to the “work” of an extraordinary thinker and a media intellectual, a college preparatory
professor and a Collège de France professor? What are the institutional arenas where the expression and
thus the formatting of discourses can be implicit strategies for academic power and competition and also serve
as credentials in public forums under the pretext of giving a push to the academic world and at the same time
creating new thralls of expression and thought? This is a sociological analysis of its great rival discipline. É. V.
SCHAEFFER Jean-Marie
La fin de l’exception humaine
[The End of the Human Exception]
[Gallimard, coll. “NRF Essais,” September 2007, 446 p., 21.50 , isbn: 978-2-07-074999-7.]
While recognition of humanity’s animality is becoming a statement of the obvious, its consequences
have in fact shaken “classical” philosophical anthropology to the very foundations, to what had been considered
most evident since Descartes’ cogito. The cogito established a double break: between soul and body and between
humans and other living beings. This Cartesian legacy and its prolongation into phenomenology is what Jean-
Marie Schaeffer blows apart. He masterfully studies every aspect and implication of the proposition that the
question of the identity of humanity is its specific animality. In a way that is analogous to the Kantian critique,
he constantly reframes the very basis of argumentation. Thus for example, he displaces the traditional question
of the consciousness of conscious beings over to the main thesis he argues for in this book, gnoseocentrism. This
is because making consciousness the foundation of human identity means saying that consciousness is the specific
activity of humans. It is the multifunctionality of human representations as it emerges from a “naturalist”
inquiry which allows for an inversion of the epistemic perspective at the core of this work. By the same token,
Darwinism is discussed in terms of its four essential propositions: the basic unity of the living thing in its archi-
69

tecture as well as the evolution of its forms; the diversification of life; “natural selection”; and the determination
of species in terms of Mendelian populations. The debate between Gould and Dawkins, and thus also Dennet,
is surmounted by adopting a moderate position which rejects the idea that there is a breach between cultural
sciences and empirical knowledge of the human. The book thus also provides a detour for looking at artistic
creation and human cultural productions in another way: without belonging to nature, they join into natural
history. G. s.
SLOTERDIJK Peter
Colère et Temps
[Anger and Time]
[Libella/Maren Sell, coll. “Philosophe,” October 2007, 320 p., 26 €,
isbn: 978-2-35580-001-6. (Trans. Olivier Mannoni.)]
Following upon earlier work, Peter Slterdijk here develops psychological and political considerations
on the breaks, or the aggressions, which cleave society. He does so by taking as his point of departure, and
his point of arrival, the analysis of the avatars of a thymotic world over the last two centuries and from Homer
and Achilles’ anger to September 11, 2001 (the collapse of the World Trade Center towers in New York) and
including Catholicism (the “theology of God’s anger”) and Communism. The book’s central thesis is that anger
in conjunction with pride, the need to prove one’s worth and resentment, represents the decisive force in the
ecosystem of affects, from the interpersonal, political or cultural perspective. We thus encounter an economy
of the potentials of anger and protest through history in the form of an analysis of the world’s current psychotic
situation. It is a question of the modalities according to which the energies of anger are “condensed” or even
collected in history. From Nietzsche to Baudrillard the idea was to break fictions of the metaphysics of vengeance
and its political reflections and to replace them with exercises in balance. In studying a new distribution
of the potential threats to the geopolitical maps of our current world, this book is disturbing, especially when
it characterizes Islam as Communism’s potential successor, irritating in the insistent blurriness of some of its
formulations, and stimulating in how it tramples on the mythology of globalization. G. s.
VIRILIO Paul
L’Université du désastre
[The University of Disaster]
[Galilée, coll. “L’espace critique,” September 2007, 150 p., 25 €, isbn 978-2-7186-0722-1.]
This philosopher and former director of the Collège International de Philosophie, emeritus professor
of urbanism at the École Spéciale d’Architecture; even if he had the ambition of becoming a painter and had an
apprenticeship with a master glass artist, in an interview Paul Virilio has expressed regret that “people don’s look
at the stars, they look at screens.” In this book, his eighteenth published in Éditions Galilée’s “L’espace critique,”
which he has headed since 1974, we find the leitmotif of his critical reflection: the dominance of speed in our
time. He argues against the tyranny of real-time, live synchronization which characterizes our world, resulting
from the undeniable revolution of the Internet, the cell phone—which he compares to the traceability of the
criminal’s electronic bracelet—and the surveillance camera which condition behavior to the point of substituting
virtual tele-presences for human contact. The greatest threat at the turn of the third millennium is not terrorism,
but the ways in which we have become addicts of progress. The advent of technological sciences brings the end
of the world’s diversity to be replaced by uniformization—man finding nothing but himself, as the philosopher
Hannah Arendt presciently put it. Hungry for “extreme” sensations, thanks to the democratization of travel, we
no longer travel so much to see the world as to experience directly the extent of our planetary confinement and
its tragedies—the Intifada in Palestine, African poverty, economic misery in Latin America are listings on travel
agency brochures—our voyeurism brings to completion the exhibition of atrocities presented on television. Far
being only a characteristic of the medieval era, obscurantism is also the mark of our age of progress, affecting
every area of knowledge: it is a reflection of crisis in the European university, “the loss of universal values in
the age of cathodic globalization.” That is the thesis of the fourth part of the book, from which the title of the
book derives; the supremacy of the screen over the written leads to the “disaster of the university we inherited
a thousand years ago.” s. c.-D.
70

SCIENCE
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Selected by Jean-Pierre Luminet
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CHEMILLIER Marc
Les Mathématiques naturelles
[Odile Jacob, coll. “Sciences,” March 2007, 238 p., 24.50 €, isbn: 2-7381-1902-6.]
Marc Chemillier is a mathematician and a musician who for the past seven years has been studying
“natural” mathematics, which here means the innate numeric capacities which are used by societies without
writing. Natural mathematics is called upon in decorative arts, game strategies, divination techniques and music.
Thus in Madagascar Chemilier applied his attention to thousands of aligned circles in the divination notebooks
of a famous shaman. Of course Chemillier did not manage to decipher the future, but he did discover that they
correspond to formalized mathematical principles known in the West as “group theory.” The intuitive strategies
used by masters of awale, an African game which consists in moving seeds to different hollows on a board, can
be described in terms of “cellular automaton,” mathematical models composed of cells on grids whose states
vary in time as a function of the values of neighboring cells. On the sandy beaches of the Vanuatu islands the
surf inscribes and erases designs in the forms of complex and interwoven curves which artists repeat using a
single stroke, the line never crossing itself. This performance relies on the solution of the “Konigsberg Bridge
Problem,” solved by Leonhard Euler in 1736 and the origin of topology and graph theory. Figures, formulas
and theorems over here are drawings, games, and tacit codes over there… So what is the difference between
these two mathematics? Chemillier shows that the difference is only in their representation. This observation
opens myriads of questions which are as interesting to anthropology and the pedagogy of mathematics as to
the neurosciences. In particular, if artists are doing math without knowing it, the conclusion is that the human
brain has an aptitude to think mathematically which is just as innate as its capacity to produce language: Is
mathematics the innate language of the brain? J.-P. l.
LODÉ Thierry
La Guerre des sexes chez les animaux
[The War of the Sexes in the Animal Kingdom]
[Odile Jacob, coll. “Science,” March 2007, 368 p., 23.50 €, isbn: 978-2-7381-1901-8.]
Opposition between the sexes is not a uniquely human phenomenon. Even for animals the sexes disagree.
Thierry Lodé, a professor of evolutionary ecology in Angers, describes with relish the ferocious strategies
and amorous peculiarities which make the human species seem almost sensible. With frogs, several suitors pile
onto the female managing embraces worthy of the Kama Sutra. Less well known is the isolation of the polecat,
the jealousy of the toad, the monogamy of the penguin, the harem of the elephant seal… Male dolphins gather
together to harass females, ending in forced couplings. As for the fruit fly, they combine toxic substances into
their ejaculations which prevent females from pairing up again. Why is there so much violence? And then there
is homosexuality which, a priori at least, is totally fruitless. And yet nearly 450 species practice it, sometimes
for lack of partners, sometimes as a strategy, but most often as a deliberate choice. If homosexuality weakens
reproducibility, why does it persist? This was for a long time a taboo subject because it touches the limits of
Darwinian theory. For a long time it was thought that natural selection favored the reproduction of animals
with better genes. Now we find there are no norms: evolution favors the variation of sexual behavior. Those who
succeed are not the best, they are the most blustering, the most opportunistic, the most violent. In addition, all
sexual behaviors are essential for biodiversity. The lesson is clear: there are no best genes. Adaptive dynamics are
created by conflict. Amorous biodiversity appears to be one of the fundamental principles of life’s adventure!
J.-P. l.
PAUTRAT Jean-Louis
Des puces, des cerveaux et des hommes: quand l’électronique dialogue avec le cerveau
[Chips, Brains and Humans: When Electronics Dialogs with the Brain]
[Fayard, coll. “Le Temps des sciences,” April 2007, 335 p., 22 €, isbn: 978-2-213-62347-4.]
The neurosciences, in parallel with microelectronic technology and computing, have recently achieved
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considerable progress. And the dialog between the brain and electronics is about to become a reality. By gathering
the nervous influx of some neurons, cerebral orders can be known and effective brain-machine interfaces
fabricated. Thus electrical signals can be sent to the brain with implanted electrodes: animals can be controlled
by this means (in this case rats) to make them go where one wishes. These advances open up stunning therapeutic
possibilities, such as restoring paralyzed persons to complete autonomy, refitting people who lost limbs, and
caring for Parkinson patients who can no longer be treated with the arsenal of available medications. Jean-Louis
Pautrat is a former scientific counselor to the French Atomic Energy Commission. Here he treats extensions
we can expect from the considerable progress already made. He also carefully underlines the ethical questions
raised by the nonmedical use of these technologies. How can the lawful and the illicit be separated in the
neurosciences? When it comes to detecting lies, orienting marketing techniques, detecting addictions or even
discerning subjects with “great potential” what is the limit between a medical aim and objectives to control or
normalize individuals? Finally, what about the many efforts to “augment the human,” often brought up within
the context of futurist military research? J.-P. l.
PAVÉ Alain
La Nécessité du hasard. Vers une théorie synthétique de la biodiversité
[The Necessity of Chance; Toward a Synthetic Theory of Biodiversity]
[EDP Sciences, coll. “Essais,” January 2007, 186 p., 19 €, isbn: 978-2-86883-942-8.]
Chance is essential for living systems and their evolution. An external factor, it is also and above all
the product of internal mechanisms; it is found at all levels of organization of the living world, from the gene
to the biosphere. Chance is not suffered, it is very simply necessary for life: it is at this price that life has been
able to maintain itself on this planet. Alain Pavé shows how internal mechanisms, real biological and ecological
“roulettes” whose nature is determinist, function in chaotic domains to produce chance results. In the face of a
changing environment which is unpredictable and often aggressive, they engender the biodiversity that allows
organisms, populations or ecosystems to subsist, adapt and evolve. Biodiversity is a word that is currently very
popular. It is a major societal and scientific preoccupation which can be interpreted fundamentally as a means
of resisting environmental hazards to the extent that the mechanisms involved in its diversification could have
been selected in the course of evolution in order to counter the risks of disappearance: is there a necessity to
chance? By tracing the major themes of a synthetic theory of biodiversity in its biological and ecological aspects,
Pavé extracts practical consequences for the management and engineering of living systems. He insists on the
significance of chance in contemporary sciences and in living systems, on teaching for the management of these
systems, and on usefulness of modelization. J.-P. l.
POSTEL-VINAY Olivier
La Revanche du chromosome X. Enquête sur les origines et le devenir du féminin
[Revenge of Chromosome X; An Inquiry into the Origins and Future of the Feminine]
[Lattès, February 2007, 438 p., 20 €, isbn: 978-2-7096-2686-6.]
A revolution in the relations between the masculine and feminine is underway. Where does it come from
and where is it leading us? Is it right to speak of a war of the sexes? Are we heading toward female domination?
Sex is the only characteristic capable of separating a species into two groups. In mammals, and thus in humans,
the base-level sex is feminine. What does this mean? Olivier Postel-Vinay, a science journalist with a passion for
philosophy attacks the terribly over-visited theme of the difference between the sexes from a genetico-biological
perspective. With his meticulous investigation into the abundant scientific literature of recent years seasoned
with a fine twist of humor, he tries to answer some crucial questions: Why do women live longer than men?
Why are girls more successful than boys in school? Is having two X chromosomes actually an advantage? Is the
Y chromosome endangered? Postel-Viney then opens the scientific debate onto the social and amorous relations
between men and women. As Henry Kissinger said, “No side will win the Battle of the Sexes. There’s too much
fraternizing with the enemy.” J.-P. l.
VANNUCCI François
L’Astronomie de l’extrême univers
[The Astronomy of the Extreme Universe]
[Odile Jacob, coll. “Sciences,” May 2007, 268 p., 23.90 €, isbn: 978-2-7381-1913-1.]
For millennia humans have looked toward the sky to marvel as well as with the hope of finding answers
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to their fate. Astrology was invented through the knitting of an emotional connection to the mysteries of the
universe to personal existence. That irrational pursuit mutated into the rational study of celestial objects: today
it is not individual futures that are elucidated from the skies above but the foreseeable future of the universe
in its entirety. A new level has been reached lately: following upon astronomy and astrophysics, observations
have recently been opened up by high energy waves. Physicists are researching extremely violent sources which
produce high energy photons, protons, neutrinos and gravitational waves arriving on earth. These emissions
provide evidence of cataclysms which bring phenomena into play which are still little understood. New maps
of the universe are being drawn and new conceptual horizons plotted. These observations bring us behind the
scenes of the skies where under extreme conditions the life of stars, their births and deaths, are underway. Vannucci,
a physics professor at the Université de Paris 7, is a specialist on elementary particles and neutrinos and
has already written several books on these subjects. In this book he describes the paradox of this new area of
physics, a domain which brings together the infinitely large province of stars and galaxies and the infinitely small
realm of photons, protons and neutrinos. In doing so he makes what is at issue very clear: a unification of the
four fundamental forces governing the universe (the strong and weak interactions of atoms, electromagnetism
and gravitation. J.-P. l.
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HUMAN SCIENCES
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Selected by Marc Blanchet, Sylvie Courtine-Denamy, Christian Delacroix, François Dosse, Gilles Fumey,
Louise L. Lambrichs, Boniface Mongo-Mboussa, Guy Samama and Éric Vigne
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ATTIAS Jean-Christophe and BENBASSA Esther (Eds.)
Des cultures et des dieux. Repères pour une transmission du fait religieux
[Cultures and Gods; Roadmaps for the Transmission of Matters of Religion]
[Fayard, coll. Bibliothèque de culture religieuse, September 2007, 450 p., 32 €, isbn: 978-2-213-62473-0.]
As the recipients of the 2007 Françoise Seligmann Foundation Prize against racism, injustice and intolerance,
Esther Benbassa and Jean-Christophe Attias are in a good position to know that violence and hatred are
only too often expressions of lack of knowledge of others’ differences, culture and/or religion. Both are professors
in religious studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études. Well aware of the confusions experienced by many
of our contemporaries on this cusp of the twenty-first century as inaugurated by the September 11 2001 attacks,
in addition to the religious conflicts which are intensifying to a global level, the editors have succeeded here with
the twenty-six contributors–historians, musicologists, anthropologists, religious scholars–they have brought to
the project: providing the general reader with a compendium of knowledge on the three major monotheistic
religions–Judaism (this section is written entirely by the editors themselves), Christianity and Islam–as well as
African religions, religions of Latin America and Asia, and also including new religious movements. Readers can
satisfy their curiosity by delving in at any point of this sizeable work which is written by secular contributors
in clear and precise language. Its text boxes in the margins, less off-putting than your usual end-of-book notes,
provide definitions of foreign and technical terms, and are complemented with entries on the authors referred
to in the main entries, maps and color illustrations of paintings, sculptures and photographs. Those who would
like to pursue readings further can refer to the bibliographic references. It is a useful body of work for teachers
and students, satisfying a current need for material on the subject. s. c.-D.
BANTIGNY Ludivine
Le plus Bel Âge ? Jeunes et jeunesse en france de l’aube des « Trente Glorieuses » à la guerre d’Algérie
[The Best Time of Life? Young People in France from the Beginning of the 30 Glorieuses
to the Algerian War]
[Fayard, coll. “Histoire,” September 2007, 498 p., 28 €, isbn: 978-2-213-62870-7.]
The book under review is a fine example of new work in cultural history which considers the fact that
semantic categories such as youth, rather than being reducible to objectifiable entities, are in large part products
of imagination. Ludivine Bantigny moves between both registers to give voice to a generation who, having lived
through a nameless war remained voiceless. Bantigny also chips away at the great myth of the bel âge. It is clear
that being twenty years old in the Aures Mountains is not a particularly enviable fate. She shows how youth
came to be designated as a category requiring particular policies linked to specialized professional functions
to deal with the “black shirts” in “dangerous lower class” neighborhoods: social workers, specialized educators,
legal designations for minors… The book is strong on statistics concerning this demographic, consumerism
and mass society, and the author gives ample space to the experience—reduced as it was to silence—of the Algerian
War. She follows the soldier’s path from conscription to discharge and farewell to arms, and the violent
fighting experiences on Algerian turf in between. What one can object to in the work, however, is the major
thesis seeks to demonstrate, that “these young people did not really reveal themselves to be against anything
and hardy contested the established order.” Such claims can only be made by ignoring the sense of opposition
which was rising since the 1950s to hit its high note in May 1968. The book does not go into such areas as the
“Communist path,” which outside the government apparatus opposed the war in Algeria; the Oury brothers (no
Jean, no Fernand), no La Borde or Félix Guattari; and while young people’s appreciation of songs by Aznavour
and Bécaud is signaled, why not discuss the kind of inspiration other young people got from the poetry and
songs of Léo Ferré? f. D.
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BONAFOUX Corinne, COCK-PIERREPONT Laurence (de) and FALAIZE Benoît
Mémoires et histoire à l’école de la République. Quels enjeux ?
[Memories and History in the Republic’s Educational System; What is at Stake?]
[Armand Colin, coll. Débats d’école, November 2007, 158 p., 17 €, isbn: 978-2-200-34635-5.]
BORNE Dominique
Enseigner la vérité à l’école. Quels enjeux ?
[Teaching Truth at School; What is at Stake?]
[Armand Colin, coll. “Débats d’école,” November 2007, 160 p., 17 €, isbn: 978-2-200-34634-8.]
BORNE Dominique and WILLAIME Jean-Paul (Eds.)
Enseigner les faits religieux. Quels enjeux ?
[Teaching Religious Matters; What is at Stake?]
[Armand Colin, coll. “Débats d’école,” November 2007, 224 p., 18 €,
isbn: 978-2-200-34640-9. Preface by Régis Debray.]
BOSSY Jean-François
Enseigner la Shoah à l’âge démocratique. Quels enjeux ?
Teaching about the Shoah in the Age of Democracy; What is at Stake?]
[Armand Colin, coll. “Débats d’école,” November 2007, 182 p., 18 €, isbn: 978-2-200-35124-3.]
These four titles usher in a new collection edited by Dominique Borne and Benoît Falaize, published
by Armand Colin. It aims to go into controversial or sensitive contemporary questions, usually in relation to
France’s educational system. There are three guiding principles: to inform beginning with onsite knowledge of
the area, to diagnose the social and political forces “at work” in schools (understood as a social and historical institution),
and to help understand the most recent research on the legitimation of the transmission of knowledge
in the educational system. Thus the four titles under review and the rigor as well as ardor of their approaches
exemplify a concern both not to dissociate education completely from societal tensions, and to shelter it from
the violent effects these tensions can produce. The memory of the genocide of Jews and an ambivalent attitude
in the face of a traumatic past, the presentation of different domains of truth leading to the recognition of proven
facts but not an absolute truth (which would be the mark of fundamentalism), the contradictory relationship
to people of the cloth within the educational system and modern society, phenomena of competing memories,
and the complex relations between history and memories are all strong factors in education and the modern
world, and provide subject matter for moral consideration. G. s.
CABANIS José
Le Sacre de Napoléon
[The Coronation of Napoleon]
[Gallimard, coll. Les journées qui ont fait la France, October 2007, 296 p., 22.50 €,
isbn: 978-2-07-078620-6. Postface de Patrick Gueniffey.]
JOUANNA Arlette
La Saint-Barthélemy. Les Mystères d’un crime d’État
[The Saint Barthelemy Day Massacre; the Mysteries of a State Complicit Crime
[Gallimard, coll. “Les journées qui ont fait la France,” October 2007, 408 p., 26 €,
isbn: 978-2-07-077102-8.]
At first it seemed that this new “old” collection was going to dust its catalogue off with resolve and take
off in refreshingly new directions. Relaunching the series with a new edition of Georges Duby’s Le Dimanche
de Bouvines (1973) [The Legend of Bouvines, 1990], which revolutionized historical writing by showing that
events can be described otherwise than in a positivist historical manner, was a fine sign. But this double autumnal
publication brings us back to the reality principle of commercial imperatives. A book on Napoleon sells itself
to the general reader. So an already old work by José Cabanis dating from 1970 is taken up again and a simple
afterward is added situating the author like a Saint-Simon wandering about the splendors of the Consulate
insisting on the quality of the portraits while at the same time deploring the time limitations of its pageantry.
Arlette Jouanna’s work offers a new reading of the generalized carnage of the Saint Barthelmy Massacre. The
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event has a long history of being presented as the work of Catherine de’ Medici as a Machiavellian woman, or
as a Spanish plot. Jouanna takes the latest historiograhic advances on the question into account, such as those
of Dennis Crouzet (2005) and Thierry Wanegffelen (2005). It is a solid work on the mysteries of that August
24, 1572 Sunday when the streets of Paris were humid… with blood. One nevertheless can regret that the study
of the posthumous fate of an event which definitively made France into a non-Protestant nation did not lead
to more than just a few conclusive considerations. If any event has marked the collective memory of the French
people, this is certainly it–so why limit oneself again to the shorter view of simple factual narrative? f. D.
CASALI Dimitri and SCHIFFER Liesel
Ces immigrés qui on fait la france
[The Immigrants who Made France]
[Aubanel, October 2007, 224 p., 35 €, isbn: 978-2-7006-0511-2.]
The recent opening of the Cité Nationale de l’Immigration marks the recognition of France’s composite
past and the import of immigration in the history of French society. This is why the publication of Dimitri
Casali’s and Liesel Schiffer’s Ces immigrés qui ont fait la France is to be hailed. Dimitri Casali heads the history
section at the publisher Vuibert, and Liesel Schiffer is a novelist. The authors show how since the Middle Ages
France, the heir to centuries-worth of migrations, built its identity upon its diversity. Beginning from there,
Casali and Schiffer provide numerous portraits of great historical figures: politicians such as Cardinal Mazarin,
military figures such as General Yusuf al-Azmah, scientists such as Marie Curie, explorers such as Pierre Savorgnan
de Brazza, artists such as Marc Chagall, performers such as Josephine Baker, etc. There are twenty-one
portraits in all, each accompanied with an impressive set of images. We’ll simply note a passage that will interest
the literary-minded reader; the book opens with this citation from Romain Gary: I do not have a single drop of
French blood, but France runs in my veins, and closes with a photograph of the publisher presenting the recent
Goncourt Prize winner Émile Ajar [Gary’s penname for the award-winning book] and his La Vie devant soi [tr.
Momo, 1979] to the public. These details point to the extent to which French identity cannot be separated from
its literature and how French immigrants have an idea of France before France becomes a reality for them. It is
also a wink toward young Black and North African French people as it shows how a young Polish immigrant
who was raised without a father and by force of character and will became an important Resistance fighter, a
dedicated writer, and for whom the French Republic held a national funeral at the Invalides upon his death.
The idea one comes away with upon reading this book is, as the authors put it, “to remember the determinant
role immigrants have played in French history as they become influential figures, and to show that the French
nation is heir to centuries-worth of migrations and métissages. The book is thus both a paean to the nation’s
diversity and an homage to great individual immigrants.” a. M.-M.
DAUZAT Pierre-Emmanuel
Les Sexes du Christ. Essai sur l’excédent sexuel du christianisme
[The Sexes of Christ; an Essay on Surplus Sexuality in Christianity]
[Denoël, coll. Médiations, October 2007, 250 p., 15 €, isbn: 978-2-207-25747-0.]
We have made reference to the work of Pierre-Emmanuel Dauzat on numerous occasions. In work after
work he convinces us that one of the most spiritually and intellectually intense periods in history was the time
of the Fathers of the Church. In our time, with the recognition of sexualities, with an s (homo-, hetero-, trans-,
bi-, queer: and this is a non-exhaustive list), Dauzat looks back at the Christian framework of sexuality and
points to the sexual extremes vis-à-vis the canonical forms of traditional societies: the immaculate conception
and virgin birth; woman as daughter of the first man before becoming an incestuous mother; son who is also
father of his mother; father who is mother; Christ as having two sexes—the theological elaborations of the
Trinity boggle the mind with their ingenuity while simultaneously reining the language in to most mundane
in dealing with what can be considered the most radical of new sexualities. É. V.
DEBRAY Régis
L’obscénité démocratique
[Democratic Obscenity]
[Flammarion, coll. “Café Voltaire,” September 2007, 92 p., 12 €, isbn: 978-2-08-121002-8.]
This brief piece began as the opening contribution at a conference on theater, politics and religion at the
University of Montreal. With the aim of delivering a discourse “In Praise of Spectacle,” Debray here decided to
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sketch out this argument, “mediology exists to bring down discussion, that is its purpose and even its prideful
ambition.” It is Debray himself who is speaking here, exercising that very art, and let’s face it, he excels at it. Far
from delving into the role of the media in democratic societies—its role as a critical counterbalance without
which public opinion has few means for knowing what is really at stake in the country as well as internationally—
he mixes up the imaginary and reality, history and legend, confession and religion, grazes over the surface of
things without taking interest in the language used to express them, bemoans the end of ceremony and argues
for a return of spectacle. In this way, this short piece is a fine symptom of the much lamented contemporary
poverty of analysis and the loss of yardsticks. Of course, Debray, who saw nothing of what was happening when
he went to Serbia during the war (and seems to have read nothing on the subject since), also argues in favor of
Peter Handke whom he sees as a victim of “media criteria of the moment.” We never would have believed it if
thirty years ago we had heard that the veterans of 1968 who then shouted “we are all German Jews,” would later
become the spokespersons of negationism. Well, reality (which Debray defines as “what does not depend on
us”) is always more extreme than fiction. After this you have to think Nicolas Sarkozy has little to worry about:
there’s no need to kill the spirit of ’68, it’s already dead. The current question is rather whether that spirit is in
any way like the Phoenix, and can be born again from its ashes. l. l. l.
DÉCULTOT Élisabeth, ESPAGNE Michel and LE RIDER Jacques (Eds.)
Dictionnaire du monde germanique
[Dictionary of the Germanic World]
[Bayard, September 2007, 1,100 p., 129 € until 31 January 2008 then 149 €, isbn: 978-2-227-47652-3.]
This dictionary has more than 500 entries. It is the result of a collaboration including three hundred
European authors from all disciplines, and the work of ten years of research by a CNRS group specializing in
European cultural transfers. It is exemplary in more than one regard. First, it is original in focusing on the German
world in all its aspects, that is on a linguistic space rather than a geopolitical entity. But this “German world”
is not limited to strict linguistic boundaries either; it also spreads out into culturally mixed domains born of
encounters with German culture and language—it’s second kind of originality. A third: that German developments
are not only reducible to post-1945 frameworks. They begin with the Wufila Gothic Bible translation in
the fourth century and extend along dotted lines into many virtual and continual directions. Another strong
point is that the difficulty in the term “culture” was resolved by taking up the following malleable definition:
the internal evolutionary coherence of a social group which is connected to a common language and history
in a given geographical space. From the first entry, “Abutir and Matura” (French courses designed for German
speakers from Germany and Austria, respectively) to the last, “Stefan Zweig,” it is clearly an instrument that
will prove to be an essential reference for those who are interested in the German world as well as in how the
European Union is coming together. The book under review can assume a sort of pride of place similar to Barbara
Cassin’s Vocabulaire européen des philosophies, both of which are untranslatable dictionaries. G. s.
GUATTARI Félix
Soixante-cinq rêves de franz Kafka
[Sixty-five Dreams of Franz Kafka]
[Lignes, October 2007, 62 p., 10 €, isbn: 978-2-35526-002-5. Préface de Stéphane Nadaud.]
After having written a work with Gilles Delueze on Kafka in 1975 (tr. Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature
1986) which was extremely important by providing testing ground for what came to be the Anti-Œdipe
(1972; Anti-Oedipus, tr. 1977 and 1999) and Mille plateaux (1980; Thousand Plateaus, tr. 1988) where they
put forward such concepts as the rhizome and agencement-assemblage in relation to Kafka, and while Deleuze
was totally involved in his work on film in the first half of the 1980s, Guattari went back to the Kafka worksite
Kafka being, along with Joyce, his favorite author. He is, and he continually says he is, taken up with a true
passion for Kafka. He tells Jack Lang the Minister of Culture at the time about his intentions to do something
for the centennial of Kafka’s birth, and, in fact, he was an important player in the large Kafka exhibition at the
Beaubourg in 1984 he conceived it and wanted Kafka to appear as the expression of the twenty-first century, the
source of numerous events. As Stéphane Nadaud suggests in his preface, for Guattari, the multiple components
of the Kafka reading machine cannot be separated from each other. As Guattari wrote, “in fact, I do not think
it is right to distinguish between what constitutes the short fiction, the novels, the journal, the correspondence.”
Both before and after this show, Guattari wrote and published a series of studies which make up this short book.
They are mainly works that are already known, but which appeared separately, including the article written in
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1985 but published in 2002 which gives the book its title, 65 Dreams of Kafka, as well as “Procès et procédés”
his contribution to the Beaubourg Le Siècle de Kafka show catalog, excerpts from his journal from the period
of the “Kafka’s Band” exhibit, and finally his plans for a film on Kafka from the Guattari archive at the IMAC
which has never been published before. f. D.
HARTMANN Florence
paix et châtiment. Les guerres secrètes de la politique et de la justice internationales
[Peace and Punishment; the Secret Wars of International Politics and Justice]
[Flammarion, September 2007, 324 p., 19.90 €, isbn : 978-2-08-120669-4.]
Florence Hartmann was a reporter in Belgrade when Milosevic began his all-out war against the other
republics of Yugoslavia, and then the spokesperson for six years for the chief prosecutor of the UN War Crimes
Tribunal in the Hague. Here she publishes her journalist’s understanding of the underside of the Court. For those
who followed the events closely, the book provides confirmation of what they long knew to be true, that in this
all-out war launched by Belgrade, Milosevic pulled all the strings from the start of aggressions against Croatia.
On the other hand, those who no longer remember the events may accept the Court’s former spokesperson’s
well constructed and glorious legend; a glorious legend which, while making a hero of the prosecutor Carla
del Ponte may at the same time turn against the international court venue itself, because one gets a deplorable
impression of it here as a den of vipers. A posteriori the reader has to wonder what the book’s objective is. If it
is to rouse argumentation then it is successful as all the media are brought into the picture. But if it is to clarify
anything for the public it fails. This is because, while entertaining confusions relating to real responsibilities
(London is frequently attacked and Paris mainly spared when the two capitals shared the same position in
1991; the Americans are sharply criticized when without their intervention Milosevic would still be in power,
etc.) it is also wary of dealing with real questions relating to the presuppositions of the court whose judgments
are often, and rightly, experienced as affronts by victims (in Coratia in particular). If the “truths” revealed in
this book seem to betray the insufficient analysis of the court itself and if at the same time justice itself is not
seen to be present, why be surprised if negationists take pleasure in seeing this book as proof of their position?
l. l. l.
HARTOG François
Vidal-Naquet, historien en personne. L’homme-mémoire et le moment-mémoire
[Vidal-Naquet, Historian Personified; Human-memory and Memory Moment]
[La Découverte, coll. Textes à l’appui. Histoire contemporaine, October 2007, 144 p., 12 €,
isbn: 978-2-7071-5319-7.]
VIDAL-NAQUET Pierre
Les Images de l’historien. Dialogues avec françois Soulages
[Images of the Historian; Dialogs with François Soulages]
[Klincksieck, coll. “Les rencontres de la mep,” September 2007, 86 p., 11 €, isbn: 978-2-252-03634-1.]
François Hartog, the major specialist on historiography from Ancient Greece to the current day was
particularly well placed to trace the trajectory of a man Pierre Venant called the “historian personified,” the
recently deceased (2006) Pierre Vidal-Naquet. The book is particularly dense and suggestive. It is solidly extended,
as was its subject, between two poles: a Dreyfusard core which made Vidal-Naquet on the one hand an
historian intent on getting at what occurred and on the other the innovator of what is called the Paris school,
the historical anthropological school which completely revised our views of Ancient Greece by looking to the
Greek imagination. Hartog correctly insists on this “and,” the conjunction at work for Vidal-Naquet who conceived
of history taking place between the two, and pointed to the missteps of those who abandon one pole
for the other. Hartog reminds us that this path of an historian both punctilious in his respect of the truth and
responsive to the exigencies of his time is largely determined by what Michel de Certeau called the “tomb for the
dead” function of history. In Vidal-Naquet’s case, the traumatic scene was certainly his parents “arrest” on May
15 1944 and their deportation to Auschwitz. In his Journal in 1942 Pierre Vidal-Naquet’s father condemned
the silence of abjection : the son who became an historian was also the outcry of indignation concerning the
Audin affair, the use of torture, the denials of negationists, etc., while always remaining a particularly erudite
specialist on the Athens of Cleisthenes and the Homeric world. As an heir simultaneously to Jaurès and Plato,
Vidal-Naquet incarnated the historian’s highest function, in the manner of Jules Michelet; he honoring his
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debt to the preceding generation. His last public dialog, with François Soulages on May 9, 2006, is also quite
instructive. Vidal-Naquet discusses his mentors, Marrou, Momigliano, Finley… as well as the problematics of
historical readings of images.
f. D.
JAEGLÉ Claude
L’Interview. Artistes et intellectuels face aux journalistes
[The Interview; How Artists and Intellectuals Face Journalists]
[Presses universitaires de France, coll. “Perspectives critiques,” September 2007, 288 p., 19 €,
isbn: 978-2-13-056492-8.]
Claude Jaeglé is notably the author of a brilliant book on Gilles Deleuze’s voice, Portrait oratoire de
Gilles Deleuze aux yeux jaunes [Oratory Portrait of Gilles Deleuze with Yellow Eyes]where he shows the extent to
which the same person deployed a multitude of different faces with different tones of voice in his pedagogical
presentations: the ogre, the seducer, the clown, the mischief-maker, the suffering Jaeglé takes up the subject of
orality again here in this new and just as brilliant book. He looks into the largely shared reticence intellectuals
have about being interviewed and looks at it in relation to the attitude of jazz musicians who excel in this
improvised form. He touches on a major point in our time, an extreme valorization of the written word over
the spoken. The latter can only be considered an offense against the dominant order, as in May 1968 with what
Michel de Certeau called “the taking up of public speech.” He also compares the event/effacement of orality, its
disqualification, to how the Catholic church puts speech in the service of Holy Writ: of course there is preaching
and the priest’s words, but they must be kept close to serving the text. The rest seduction, attraction are
considered befouling, obscene, contemptible. By contrast the written word is made holy. The author makes a
comparison between the holy Word and the impossibility of a similar holy Written; the latter is unimaginable,
given that the written is great and big by definition. Jaeglé thus looks closely at a large portion of our culture
and the question of the place of orality in communication. The suppressed word returns, like a ghost, a deathridden
element which interrogates and weakens established certainties. Let’s add that Saussurian structuralism,
by evacuating speech from the study of language accentuated this civilizational trend. While this reticence in
the face of the constraints of an interview is a rule, there are exceptions, such as Sartre who excelled at this art
and willingly participated. One might also wonder whether behind the reticence toward being interviewed
there may also be a desire to keep the personal and intimate at a distance from public view, as opposed to what
happens in the English-speaking world. As you can see, this one book broaches major questions. f. D.
LIAUZU Claude
Histoire de l’anticolonialisme en france. Du xvi e
siècle à nos jours
[The History of Anticolonialism in France; from the Sixteenth Century to the Current Day
[Armand Colin, October 2007, 304 p., 24.50 €, isbn : 978-2-200-35093-2.]
Concerned by the way the contemporary culture of memory is engulfing the field of the history of
colonization, the recently deceased Claude Liauzu is among those historians who first argued for a devoir
d’histoire as the only way to get past the “colonial memory wars.” It is a position as far from the ideologies of
repentance as it is from those who laud “the positive role of colonization.” This book is to be considered from
the perspective of the choice of a long term historical approach to the cultural construct of anticolonialism.
The author reminds us that the battlefield of ideas against colonization is an old one (contemporary with the
colonial phenomenon itself) takes many forms but which always has political and economic dimensions. He
points out that anticolonialism itself has been infrequently studied: it has consistently divided historians and for
a long time been a subject of polemics, following the ups and downs of historians’ commitments to the Third
World, a sense of commitment that disintegrated after the 1960s and 70s to be replaced by a “reevaluation of
colonization.” It can be divided into periods: the “Algerian debates” of 1830 to the1870s; from 1880-1914, the
increase in colonialism was accompanied by an inevitable new anti-colonialism, and Liauzu is particularly good
in his treatment of the Rif War in 1920 and the Popular Front. The last two chapters are devoted to the wars
in Algeria and Indochina. Also noteworthy are the analyses of “colonial socialism” and the Communist Party’s
positions which demonstrate the difficulties the French Left had in thinking about colonization outside the
frameworks of a Eurocentric mentality and the “racial representation of populations” and, in a general way, the
difficulties French Marxists had in clearly differentiating social and national struggles. These difficulties were
compounded in Algeria with the particularities of the Islamic question which was most often underestimated
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y the anti-colonialists whose thinking was suffused with secular categories. The book ends with an examination
of contemporary “memory wars” which are stoked up by the government’s inability to handle the crises of
decolonization underway and the loss of France’s status as a great power. Liauzu is highly critical of the French
government’s initiatives to act through a “commemorative accumulation which attempts to satisfy the most
divisive of claims” and questions the existence itself of “Post-colonial France.” He explains that French society
may be post-colonial from the perspective of no longer being colonial, but not if the contemporary social crises
of the urban outskirts are explained in terms of a “colonial wound,” as some do. The history of colonial realities
in the construction of national identities, Liauzu reminds us, mainly remains to be done. b. D.
MARAN René
félix Éboué grand commis loyal et loyal serviteur (1884-1944)
[Félix Éboué, Loyal Government Administrator (1884-1994)]
[L’Harmattan, coll. Autrement mêmes, September 2007, 96 p., 14 €, isbn: 978-2-296-03919-3.
Présentation de Bernard Mouralis.]
The Guyanese writer and colonial administrator who was awarded the Goncourt Prize in 1921 for
Batouala [tr. 1922], René Maran, is considered by African literary critics to be the precursor of Negritude. But
Maran was also a biographer who celebrated the colonial works of De Brazza, Faidherbe and others. The collection
“Autrement memes,” edited by Roger Little, which presents otherwise unavailable texts which have fallen
into the public domain, has published Maran’s biography of his friend and compatriot Felix Éboué. Maran
retraces the itinerary of this important government official who was born in Cayanne, French Guyana, in 1884
and died in Cairo in 1944. He was a French colonial administrator in Central Africa, and the secretary general
of Martinique and Guadeloupe. He made his mark in history when, as the Governor of Chad, he joined the
ranks of General de Gaulle, thereby delivering equatorial Africa to the man who made the famous radio appeal
on 18 June 1940. That is why his ashes (as well as those of Victor Schoelcher) were transferred to the Pantheon
in 1949. Using Félix Éboué’s unpublished correspondence and his own memories René Maran paints the portrait
of an ardently French Black man (de Gaulle’s expression) who during his career in the colonies endeavored
to serve France loyally while at the same time being sensitive to the political and social progress of African
populations. This is why the republication of this book is so important: it comes to us at a moment when attention
to colonial questions are giving rise to much argumentation. This edition is edited by professor Bernard
Mouralis who in his preface goes over the book’s context at length. “It is within our rights to wonder about the
significance of the publication year of this biography of Félix Éboué. In 1957 there was an intensification of
the Algerian War, marked by the systematic violation of public freedoms On the other hand, the situation was
quite different in sub-Saharan Africa. The previous year, Gaston Defferre, France’s Overseas Minister in Guy
Mollet’s government, sponsored the ‘loi-cadre’ which enabled the formation of the AOF [Afrique Occidentale
Française] and AEF [Afrique Équatoriale Française] federations. Both were then able to elect an assembly by
universal suffrage and without restrictions. The leader of the majority party became the chief executive of the
territory with the representative named by the French government then exercising only an a posteriori control
of the actions accomplished by the executive leader. When René Maran published his biography of Félix Éboué
the ‘loi-cadre’ was beginning to be applied and France’s African territories were progressively electing themselves
democratic governments.” All of this indicates the political import of this biography, which is also effectively an
oblique autobiography. For we should realize that René Maran was forced to resign after the publication of his
novel Batouala, véritable roman nègre. In this ambiguous book, Réné Maran in no way calls for rising up against
the colonial order, he implicitly shows us the difficulty of being both black and a colonial administrator while
expressing his wish for reforms in the colonies: which is what the Gaston-Defferre’s ‘loi-cadre’ achieved a few
years later. Seen from that angle the biography he wrote about his friend and compatriot Félix Éboué provides
the opportunity to think back on his own past as a colonial bureaucrat in Africa. a. M.-M.
NICHAPOUR Azadée
pour l’amour d’une langue. Lettre ouverte d’une immigrée « intégrée »
au président de la République et aux français
[For Love of a Language; an Open Letter from an “Integrated” Immigrant to the President of France]
[Le Bord de l’eau, coll. “Documents,” September 2007, 104 p., 10 €, isbn: 978-2-915651-80-5.]
“I was born on a morning in May in Nishapur”: Nishapur is the city of the Persian poets Khayam and
Attar, and such is the name chosen by the poet Azadée Nichapour, whose family had the courage to exile them-
80

selves from Iran a quarter of a century ago. As it does for some Maranos exiled from Spain by Catholic kings,
the place one comes from is valued in one’s identity. This narrative of successful “integration” is dedicated to
her parents and has a double ambition. It shows what the costs have been: the life of eight people in one studio
apartment, the forfeits of a father who was a professor of literature working as a substitute doorman at primary
schools, the anguish of a mother who does not manage to master the language of her new country, failing entrance
examinations to medical school, the impossibility for a foreign-born woman to practice the profession
of midwife, the series of little jobs she was employed at while studying literature at the Université de Paris-VIII,
the experience of everyday prejudice including by a “major professor” at the university, the difficulty of being a
woman doubled by that of being from another country even when it comes to matters of the heart. Not being
“born French,” Azadée Nicapour nevertheless could pass as an out “of synch French person” in her native country,
this same early mastery of the “language of Molière” led to her amazement upon hearing refuse collectors speak
upon her arrival in Paris; and it was on French television with anchorman Roger Giquel that she followed the
war in Iran, a country she has never returned to but whose language she has sought to maintain, having earned
a bachelor’s degree in Persian and adapted Attar’s Conference of the Birds for children. So now the two languages
live in peace within her, and Nichapour, who has worked with a number of government ministers, has the right
to be proud to find her own words and reflections of her experience in their speeches. Which does not prevent
her from protesting against—and this is the book’s second ambition—political exploitations of the immigration
question. s. c.-D.
OFFENSTADT Nicolas
La Grande Guerre
[The Great War]
[Geste, coll. “En 30 questions,” November 2007, 64 p., 9 €, isbn: 978-2-84561-345-4.]
The “En 30 questions” collection which is a part of the very dynamic Geste publishing house (created
by the Union for Popular Culture in Poitou-Charente-Vendée) provides authors with an opportunity to achieve
an amazing feat: to ask themselves thirty questions on a given subject and to answer them all in sixty pages!
Nicolas Offenstadt has, among other works, edited a book on the Nivelle Offensive. Here he brilliantly risen to
the occasion in writing about World War I itself. A look at the questions alone already reveals the success of the
book; they are divided into three categories: “Wars,” “Practices of War,” and “Traces, Memories, Present Tense.”
This tripartite division is itself an historiographic position-taking in a considerably noisy field divided by (to
sum up quickly and offer somewhat of a caricature) the “école du consentement” (Stéphane Audouin-Rouzeau
and Annette Becker) and the “école de la contrainte” (Frédéric Rousseau and Rémy Cazals). There are confirmations
in the wording of some of the questions that inspiration was taken from these debates: “How can the
endurance of soldiers in the trenches be understood?” “What kinds of interactions took place between enemies
on the front?” “What forms did criticism and resistance to the war take? What kind of weight can witnesses
accounts be given?” “And in general the war is approached by more expected questions as well (such as How
can we explain the beginning of the conflict?” “In what way was the Great War a world war?” “What is trench
warfare?”). Offenstadt’s answers are both very informed by the most recent historical research including works
in English and German and clearly opposed to historiography of consentement and the culture of war.” The last
question, “How can we speak about World War I today?” opens the way for Offenstadt’s conclusions which
not only summarize his position in the epistemological debates which extend beyond the domain of historians
to include the subject of the Great War in the public forum, “Historians presumably have a particular place
in these debates, notably in framing, as long as they do not assume a position from above, but rather work to
enrich their approaches with issues relating to memory.” This is thus a useful little book because of the lexicon
it provides as well as because of the dependability of its references and the way in which it takes up positions in
the recurrent debates about the role of historians in society. b. D.
PAQUOT Thierry, LUSSAULT Michel and YOUNÈS Chris (Eds.)
Habiter, le propre de l’humain. Villes, territoires et philosophie
[Dwelling, Intrinsic to the Human; Cities, Territories and Philosophy]
[La Découverte, coll. Armillaire, October 2007, 376 p., 26 €, isbn: 978-2-7071-5320-3.]
“Let’s make it more complicated, more,” was Paul Ricœur’s wise counsel about making what seems obvious
more intelligible. Such is the strategy of this collection on the basic, porte-manteau and easy to apply term
habiter, meaning to live or to dwell. Various social-scientific disciplines as well as philosophy have taken it up
81

with a resultant polysemy that is well worth looking into and examining together, not for the purpose of arriving
at some loose synthesis, but in order to get the differences of approach to work with each other. This book’s
great achievement is in getting philosophers to dialog with geographers, urbanists, anthropologists, architects
and sociologists; our only regret is the absence of historians. Thierry Paquot reminds us that the term habitat
derives from botany and zoology before being it was taken up by geographers to designate a milieu. But attempting
to clarify contemporary uses is an imperious ambition given that, as the anthropologist Georges-Hubert
de Radkowski puts it, “if you try to get a grip on the reality designated by the concept it slips away in every
direction like water through your fingers.” As one reads through the contributions one can begin to constitute
a genealogy of those whose work has enriched the question of living/dwelling/habitat in the philosophical sense
of what is essentially human: “To be a human being means to be on the earth as a mortal; it means to dwell,”
wrote Heidegger. Among others, we will mention the important role of the philosopher Henri Lefebvre, the
independent-thinking Michel de Certeau who brought attention to the arts of doing, the multiple uses planned
urban spaces are put to by those who use them, Deleuze and Guattari with their concept of the rhizome, Peter
Sloterdijk’s concept of “spatial foam,” and Hans Jonas’ imperative of responsibility. Contemporary mutations
result in a more nomadic, or rather a “polytopic” urbanity characterized by having several more or less permanent
sites of residence. This book’s cross-sectioned view offers neither nostalgic grousing nor catastrophic prophesies
as it calls for an approach bringing together ethical and esthetic dimensions of the question of dwelling in an
existential perspective, since dwelling is, as Maldiney writes, “setting up one’s existence.” f. D.
RAUFER Xavier (Ed.)
Atlas de l’Islam radical
[Atlas of Radical Islam]
[CNRS Éditions, September 2007, 400 p., 28 €, isbn: 978-2-271-06577-3.]
The wave of “Islamic” terrorism that Western and Muslim countries have been facing since the beginning
of the 1990s has deep roots in the state-sponsored terrorism of the preceding decades. The internationalization
and violence of a fringe group of the Muslim Brotherhood (who assassinated Anwar al-Sadat); Saudi Islamic
activism after the Iranian Revolution; and the international use of Sunni Islamic fundamentalist movements
by United States secret service agencies and their allies against the Soviet Union are the three primary activators
(according to Alain Chouet of the French secret service, DGSE) of present-day terrorism in its global and
difficult to anticipate forms. Terrorist activities have been financed by the emergence of an oil-backed Islamic
banking sector whose precise funding sources (various taxes, socially justified illegal activities) which Richard
Labévière (of Radio France Interational) describes as difficult to trace. This atlas is mapped out onto regionally
divided theaters of Sunni terrorism (A.-L. Didier, Institut de Criminologie of the Université de Paris-II) and
Shiite terrorism (Leyla N.). Iraq has become the epicenter and hotbed of the “world jihad” which has engulfed
the country in fire and blood. Iran is seen as the ongoing epicenter of radical Shiism affecting all categories
of activism, including clerics whose closed-door proceedings are no longer a secret. In its many forms, radical
Islamism is hard to grasp–which is why this Atlas is such a work of editorial and analytical success. G. f.
RIOUX Jean-Pierre (Ed.)
Dictionnaire de la france coloniale
[Dictionary of Colonial France]
[Flammarion, October 2007, 936 p., 69 €, isbn: 978-2-08-120558-1.]
French colonial historiography has been put to the test most recently by the boost memory has been
given by the detonative conjunction of the Law of 23 February 2005 defending the “positive aspect” of French
colonization in Algeria and the development of “postcolonial anti-colonialism” by those who define themselves
as the “indigènes”—and are discriminated against as such—of the French Republic. This dictionary, which explicitly
points out its connection to the “classical” colonial historiographic tradition as particularly illustrated in
the works of Charles-Robert Ageron, can thus serve as a useful tool for clarifying and untangling the crossings
among historical, social and political factors which have recently come together around the French colonial
past. It is this very positioning which aims to legitimize the object “colonial France” through social science and
at a distance from memory and partisan commitments, that the authors mobilized for this event by Jean-Pierre
Rioux are supporting. They are mainly academics who are not engaged in the “war” of colonial memory and
who specifically seek, to take up the title of Benjamin Stora’s piece, to “get out” of it. The ten sub-sections of
the dictionary comprise both a narrative whose rhythmic moments are marked by seventeen “important dates”
82

(without getting into the question of exhaustiveness, we can signal the absence of 17 October 1961 here) and
fifteen figures, a geography of colonized territories which does not leave out metropolitan France, a sociography
of the colonizers and the colonized, and ending with an entry on “representations” (all but “required” in the
context of French historiography’s contemporary cultural obstinacy). An eleventh subsection entitled “What
is at Stake” finishes off this trajectory and broaches questions relating to memory—see particularly an entry
by Romain Bertrand, “Our ‘Memory of Empire.’” The images, chronology and bibliography are additional
benefits of the work. It is a contribution to the field which seeks to be both out of step and completely in line
with contemporary society’s encounter with one of those “pasts we cannot get past.” c. D.
ROUQUET François, VIRGILI Fabrice and VOLDMAN Danièle
Amours, guerres et sexualité 1914-1945
[Love, War and Sexuality, 1914-194]
[Gallimard, BDIC/Musée de l’Armée, coll. “Connaissance,” September 2007, 178 p., 23 €,
isbn: 978-2-07-011896-0.]
This fine work which delved into the archives of the Bibliothèque de Documentation Internationale
Contemporaine (BDIC) and the Musée de l’Armée led to an exhibition at the Invalides from September to
December 2007. For those who did not get a chance to see it, there is this magnificent work which skillfully
brings together an original iconographic selection and historical commentary in the new cultural historical
vein. It reveals the productivity in the oxymoronic treatment sex and love in wartime and during the barbarous
periods of the two world wars. Yes, the body has its reasons which military reasoning doesn’t recognize or tries
to put to its own uses. Beyond what leads to the pitting of military troops against each other and the culture of
war, the collective experience of what women and men express is in great measure the intensity of desire and
the importance of love. Death’s omnipresence stirs up the desire to live and to enjoy present pleasures. Eros has
always been closely connected with Thanatos. And this is what the thirty contributors to this book well show.
Under the exceptional circumstances when norms fall away, what remains are the necessary controls of the
body by the authorities, not to mention the abuses committed by the current victors (rape, mutilation, forced
prostitution…). How does love and attachment to someone far away stand the trials of separation, how does it
come to be expressed? How does distance from the loved one get transformed into fortitude at arms? Such are
the questions this book raises, as it makes use of all sorts of visual resources: posters, photographs, caricatures,
and thousands of objects from daily life which reveal the strength of fantasy and the individual imagination as
well as a common imagination which looks toward love to transcend the military conflicts of belligerent nations.
f. D.
SMOUTS Marie-Claude (Ed.)
La Situation postcoloniale
[The Postcolonial Situation]
[Presses de Sciences Po, coll. “Références”, September 2007, 452 p., 20 €,
isbn: 978-2-7246-1040-6. Preface by Georges Balandier.]
Long-relegated to the English-Speaking world where they first began, postcolonial studies came crashing
onto the scene in France against the background of uneasiness in France’s outer-urban neighborhoods: a fact
that unsurprisingly has led to a number misunderstandings. As Marie-Claude Smouts puts it, “this approach
which originated in universities in the English-speaking world, is at times called forth to criticize France’s slowness
in considering postcolonial realities and at other times rejected as a means of condemning actions of the
past which at the same time endangers national cohesiveness.” By proceeding in this manner advocates of this
approach obscure its genesis and evolution. Smouts, an honorary research director at the CNRS (CERI: Centre
d’Études et de Recherches Internationales de Sciences Po) brought together thirty contributors in an effort to
fill this epistemological lacuna. They are French political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists and writers
whose dispassionate and often contradictory viewpoints on the concepts and problematics of postcolonial studies
were presented at a conference sponsored by CERI on 5 and 6 May 2006, Que faire des études postcolo niales?
[What to Make of Postcolonial Studies?]. Here, postcolonial studies in France are seen to begin with Georges
Balandier, with whom African studies in can be said to have begun in France and the inventor of the notion
situation coloniale with which he interrogated the influences of various forces in the field. He included himself
and his research in Africa in how these forces played out, effectively disqualifying the work of his predecessor,
Marcel Giraule, as ethnologie de l’intemporel. Entitling their book La Situation Postcoloniale disqualifies or at least
83

implicitly offers a critique of postcolonial studies as it is approached in the English-speaking world. Balandier
himself wrote the preface in which this point is borne out. “In order to discuss studies of the postcolonial one
has first of all to get free of the effects of the dominant situation, get a hold of one’s independence of thought,
and not consider that everything began somewhere in America and that it is there that one must necessarily look
to today.” Jean-François Bayart raises the question of the very legitimacy of postcolonial studies: “The problem
is that postcolonial studies are largely superfluous; most of the discussion, most of the areas on which one can
work have been approached by other authors, other disciplines, and other kinds of learned disciplines” very
often in a more fruitful way. Gramsci of course, Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari, historians who wrote in Past and
Present—E.P. Thompson, but also—as we have already been reminded—in literary criticism of colonialism in
France. And to the names Georges Balandier already mentioned, I’d like to add Michel Leiris who, of course
comes to mind, as he should. You could also add Gérard Althabe. “The historian Françoise Vergès offered this
response,” in starting with the definition Stuart Hall provides of the postcolonial, I would insist on the necessity
of a rereading of the colonial and the anticolonial. We have to reread texts not only as “tropicalized” responses
to things that happened in the West, but as coolly thought-out responses. For Stuart Hall, two promises need
be critiqued: a critique of the promise of the Enlightenment (the promise of progress which was to have accompanied
colonization) and a critique of the promise of nationalism. b. M.-M.
SURYA Michel
portrait de l’intermittent du spectacle en supplétif de la domination
[Portrait of Contract Workers in the Performing Arts as Accessories to Social Domination]
[Lignes, September 2007, 64 p., 10 €, isbn: 978-2-35526-001-8.]
Recent protests and demonstrations in France by contract workers in performing arts productions,
the intermittents du spectacle, whose efforts to maintain their particular status in relation to employment and
unemployment coverage reached the point of leading to the cancellation of the Festival d’Avignon in 2003,
provide Michel Surya an opportunity for measuring a kind of political activity which is difficult to label, but
which he indicates concerns individuals who, if there is anyone who can do so today, understand the workings
of capitalism. Let us first point out that the publisher, Lignes, has published other authors, such as Alain Badiou
and his De quoi Sarkozy est-il le nom? [Sarkozy Stands for What?] which bear witness to a certain kind of critical
intensity but may be lacking in depth and style. (Also note a text by Félix Guattari on “dreams of Kafka” in these
pages, and a dialog between Raymond Aron and Michel Foucault, and let us also celebrate Lignes twenty-year
anniversary—the review edited by Michel Surya, about which we hope to return in these pages too). Surya
knows how to write, his previous work, such as Humanimalités, has already proved that, as the density of his
language serves the strength of his analyses. In 113 propositions, Surya examines his subject with a remarkable
sense of progression. He goes beyond the claims of the intermittents, who by their very status serve the interests
of capitalism—the domination about which Surya has already written—in order to write about how these artists
serve the state through their involvement in festivals and events. One can certainly object to some of his
points, recalling that many artistic domains (including publishing) benefit from state funding which enables
them to survive—the difficulty of any critique when the Prince contributes to one’s provisions. But focusing
on that would be a little cheesy. Discussing the work in terms of its true intellectual exigencies would be more
worthwhile than welcoming a refutation aiming merely to defend the cause of the individuals that the author
shows to be more the protégés of the system than its victims. M. b.
VIGNA Xavier
L’Insubordination ouvrière dans les années 68. Essai d’histoire politique des usines
[Worker Defiance in the Nineteen Sixties; An Essay on the political History of Factories]
[Presses universitaires de Rennes, coll. “Histoire,” August 2007, 378 p., 22 €, isbn: 978-2-7535-0446-2.]
The subtitle of Xavier Vigna’s book—which derives from a dissertation in history defended in 2003—first
of all indicates the originality of this approach to studying workers’ politics from the beginning of the 1960s to
the end of the 1970s, with its endpoint defined by the defeat of the steelworkers in 1978 and with 1968 as its
fulcrum. Accessing heretofore unused archives, Vigna puts a solid hypothesis to the test, an hypothesis which
breaks with the strictly social understanding of the factory: factories are not only a political object, they are
also a site where workers produce politics in the sense of propositions and theses which, without constituting a
specifically coherent program, are the expression of factory worker politics. This is a promising new perspective
on the social history of the workers’ world. The research is based on a workers-factory-politics troika aiming to
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“get a hold of workers’ points of view on the world of the factory.” This approach, which postulates the political
capacity of workers, while making the connection between workers and the workers movement and unions and
worker experience less solid, enables Vigna to reevaluate more powerfully the initiatives and disinclinations of
the worker base in relation to the activity of traditional worker organizations. The first part of the book analyzes
worker opposition around 1968, the “inaugural” core of which was the “event” May-June strikes in1968.
Looking directly at the lives and experience of workers in this way brings unexpected aspects of worker activities
to the surface, particularly all those coming from worker hostility to the state-boss partnership and more
generally in relation to the radicalness of workers in certain forms. Importantly, the analysis confirms that the
major breaks effected by the strikes led to a new kind of social and political experience (which for a long time
remained beneath the radar and) which broke with the routine factory order of things. The chapter on worker
struggles after 1968 ends by reporting the failure of worker resistance in the face of economic crises and the
firings which accompany them, a failure which marks the exhaustion of the cycle. The two final sections, “Elements
of Worker Politics Around 1968” and “Shifts and Resistance,” are more reflective, and offer stimulating
theses—the intersection between worker politics and populist politics (which have in common resistance to
innovations seen as threats to economic or other security), and the specificity of worker politics taking place
as the work in factories. State control of worker struggles as led by unions (above all the CGT [Confédération
démocratique du travail] and then the CFDT [Confédération française démocratique du travail]) and
the Communist party are finely analyzed in the third part in relation to its main core: the desire to maintain
hegemony in factories and to contain worker action within a traditional framework of the conquest of central
power which, according to Vigna, makes abundantly clear “the totally chimerical” nature of the revolutionary
project if one brings it back to the reality of the workers’ situation in the late 1960s and beyond. This book
makes the passage from worker defiance to worker fragmentation to the critical situation of the worker in the
world the problematic material of an inquiry that is both minutely documented and well thought out while
making use of new categories (such as “factory politics” and “factory situation”) to come up at the end with an
even more fundamental interrogation concerning “the very precariousness of processes of political opposition
which can never be perfectly represented or solely delegated to what happened around 1968.” All of which goes
to show that the life and experience of workers, while no longer a central aspect of our society, continues to
be an operative testing ground for those with a strong interest in trying to understand how society functions.
c. D.
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Coupe de france, la folle épopée
[The French Cup, One Tremendous Epic]
[L’Équipe, October 2007, 432 p., 39.90 €, isbn: 978-2-915535-62-4. Pierre-Marie Descamps (Ed.)]
The French Cup is the most popular contest in French football/soccer because it is played on the single
elimination model—after the League Cup from which its inventor Henri Delaunay took inspiration—which
makes it possible for smaller teams to surprise the heavy hitters. And the theme of surprise, of the rags-to-riches
and Cinderella story sort, is one of the attractions of this monumental work on 90-years worth of the competition.
In fact, no less than 100 pages are devoted to clubs which from Ajaccio to Villenave-d’Ornon, Blénod,
Calais, El-Biar, Endoume, Mutzig, and Quevilly achieved the feat of taking down clubs two, three, four or five
divisions above them. But in this exceptional work masterfully guided by Pierre-Marie Descamps and including
some of L’Équipe’s best voices on the round football, including Didier Braun, Vincent Duluc and Gérard Ejnès,
no aspect of this flagship contest is missed. From its birth during World War I in homage to Charles-Simon, to
the great dance of French presidents awarding the trophy, or sending the ball into play as General de Gaulle did
in 1967, as well as the stadiums (Olivier de Serres, Colombes, Parc des Princes, Stade de France), refs, mascots
(hello, Dudule, Sedan’s boar), and fans, particularly the unknown; it is all there, superbly presented, told, compiled.
Certainly the winners and stars of the first ninety cups saw a lot of Marseille’s Olympique team—ten time
winners, and Somerlinck, Bathenay and Roche—quintuple winners, not to mention the 780-odd others. Then
there are the ninety detailed recaps of every cup starting with the thirty-second round. It is a vast panorama
which also makes you realize the irresistible rise of the competition: from forty-eight clubs in 1918 to 6,581
in 2007. It is a complete success, and its icing on the cake is a preface by Jean-Pierre Papin, triple scorer in the
final match of 1989 and a geographic epicenter of all the David and Goliath and Cinderella stories… To say
such is the breath of epic is really not saying ennough because it really blows you away… s. l.
BIENVENU Alain and CONNEN Fabrice
La Voiture de papa
[Terres éditions, October 2007, 336 p., 26 €, isbn: 978-2-35530-015-8.]
In the wake of the nostalgia and spell of Louis Bédarieux’s Rugby de papa and his Vélo [Bicycle] de Papa,
we now have this explosive and sparkling “cars of yesteryear.” The party includes Louis de Funès and Bourvil in
300 pages plus the dust, sorry, plus the ignition vectors of 36 sparkplug pages more; a real catalog of everything
we’ve been rolling in on four wheels since Benz, Daimler, Mercedes, Renault and Peugeot decided to facilitate
the movement and transportation of their fellow man. As a result, all the progress and every variety pass before
our amazed eyes, from the moon to the Elysee, and including the Tour de France, movies, the Le Mans 24
hour race, and automobile shows. To head south on vacation people constructed true works of art, and increasingly
dependable models as car fever mounted. Since the authors are as reliable, precise and knowledgeable
as a Michelin guide book, they’ve forgotten nothing of this saga and deprive us of no detail or model. Thus
you do not have to worry, the Aronde, the 2CV, the Floride and the Chambord are all there, like hundreds of
other speedsters jammed up in the corners of your sentimental memory banks. But take note, the iconographic
work of Loïc Besnard and the layout of Jean-Louis Massardier are so strong that page turning traffic comes to
a stop time after time. It’s a perfect book to keep at your side for leafing through, it will bring back childhood
memories, even pedal cars are represented in the manner of every other aspect of this likeable collection; here
a selection of Épinal images combined with photographs, advertisements, posters, designs and drawings. s. l.
86

BRUNEL Philippe
Vie et mort de Marco pantani
[The Life and Death of Marco Pantani]
[Grasset, coll. “Document,” October 2007, 266 p., 17.90 €, isbn: 978-2-246-67521-1.]
Marco Pantini was a great Italian champion cyclist, an unbeatable climber, known as “the Pirate” because
of his bandana, “Mr. Mortirolo” after the peak on which he chipped away Indrian’s image as the winner
in 1994, and “Elefantino” because of his large ears. As the savior of the 1998 Tour de France which was marred
by the doping scandals of the Festina team, Marco de Cesenatico (his real name) was also a former small time
poacher and the son of a mama who loved him so, a woman who still makes delicious piadinas and who has a
hard time accepting his death. Marco “was an extremist” confided a childhood friend adding, “he always said,
I’ll either end up either a champion or a criminal.” Pantini actually lived out both these fates. The epigraph
Philippe Brunel placed at the beginning of this “obsessional and painstaking counter-investigation” into the
champ’s mysterious death on 14 February 2004, “basically, all lives are failures. Life is a chaos from which one
can only extract fragments of truth” (Alberto Moravia), can serve as the keystone to his brief life in which the
heights of glory and fame were combined with hellish depths. Marco was a beloved champion after his successes
in the Tour and the Giro, an amazing climber reminiscent of Fausto Coppi, with a 36 beat per minute pulse,
magical feats, litanies of falls, and exclusion from the race during the 1999 Giro which he was on the verge of
winning after a surprise blood test at Madonna di Campiglio. The pink jersey was gone for doping, and this
cycler was gone overnight from the well-healed top to exclusion. He was broken-hearted and disoriented. It
was incomprehensible. It seemed like a plot. The spring couldn’t bounce back. Those close to him tried to get
him back into the saddle, they succeeded for a while, but no, the champ was too brittle, his pride wounded.
Sure, the latest highest flying eagle wasn’t perfect and doped like the others, but no more than they did. He had
become friendly with Philippe Brunel, a reporter at L’Équipe, a specialist on Italian cycling, a disciple of Pierre
Chany, and most of all a receptive and perspicacious individual. Philippe, who followed his career and had
sung the praises of his amazing exploits without skipping over the cracks in his armor, could not avoid feeling
strongly about this painful death, said to be from a drug overdose at a hotel called Le Rose di Rimini: there
were too many discrepancies and contradictions in the investigation. “Okay for the loneliness, the cocaine, the
barbiturates, the night-time joyrides and the prostitutes. Okay for the wild life, a response to the monastic life
of a champion in training. Okay for everything. But not for that death; a simple question of style; of dignity.”
And so the author, a tremendous stylist, like his subject, followed in Pantani’s footsteps, painstakingly and affectionately.
The result is a great book “a true novel” that is disturbing, touching and painful. s. l.
CHEVALLIER Jean-Pierre
Le Tennis en france
[Tennis in France]
[Alan Sutton, coll. “Mémoire du sport,” June 2007, 190 p., 22 €, isbn: 978-2-84910-626-6.]
Nostalgia is in style; it’s part of the lifecycle of things. And its appeal is understandable when you look at
the images in this book, ready for the young to discover and the not young to see once again. Here once more,
with Le Tennis en France by the former tennis coach Jean-Pierre Chevallier, we get the flavor of Rugby de Papa
(Éditions Terres Bleues), as Chevalier proceeds with the same gusto. The author, who doubles as an avid collector
shares his passion with us through 190 pages that are literally chock full of the most unexpected images.
In nine chapters divided into two main chronological sections (1875-1918 and 1919-1955) you encounter the
most interesting combination of old postcards—all the more exciting for often including their original written
messages—magazine covers, caricatures, and advertisements for equipment which provide an excellent sense
of yesteryear’s gear as well as our ancestor’s sense of humor and the evolution of all things tennis over time.
In fact this seventy-five year old saraband dance reflects the sport’s spread into modern society as a whole. As
you turn the pages you cavort through prehistoric seaside and hotel courts, Roland-Garros-style sports palaces,
the courts at Saint-Cloud, and the covered courts in Lyons and Paris’ Rue Suffern. And from sand to wood,
via grass and clay, balls fly by along with long skirts, large hats, and sailor collars. Long pants once cost 7.50
francs and with a flannel jacket you’d simply pay double—speaking of which, doubles pop up here and there
as ground for flirtation, as some prints from the satirical English magazine Punch (which Chevalier has happily
made use of, despite the promise of the title) attest. From the rocky shores of Trégastel on Belle-Île-en-Mer and
Puteaux, we see crowds coming to the net with Sarah Bernhardt, Marguerite Broquedis and Suzanne Lenglen
who, along with the Mousquetaires, contribute to the democratization of the sport. Legendary figures such as
87

the “Bounding Basque,” Jean Borotra (never without his beret,), and drawings by Mich, Lorenzi, Effel, Sennep,
Don and Ordner so characteristic of the Belle Époque and roaring twenties, when the Peugeot 301 was already
“a winner,” and female tennis players washed their outfits with Soleil detergent and sported Getien girdles, and
Kayser hosiery. Doping? Well, it was more like tonics such as Globéol, and Pink pills, and while Suzanne the
great did not turn up her nose at cognac, Mariani wine was all the rage. Initially taking off with aristocrats,
tennis turned into a new professional world. In our case, we temper our loss of the old with a burst of oxygen
and warm feeling from the superb color chapter on fashion. s. l.
DELERME Philippe
Au bonheur du Tour
[Thrilled by the Tour de France]
[Prolongations, November 2007, 176 p., 26 €, isbn: 978-2-916400-19-8.]
His La Première Gorgée de bière et autres plaisirs minuscules [The First Taste of Beer and Other Miniscule
Pleasures] certainly proved Philippe Delerm’s love and knowledge of sports. In La Tranchée d’Arenberg et autres
voluptés sportives [The Arenberg Trench and Other Intense Pleasures in Sports] we found a connoisseur, almost
an expert, with a view as sharp as it is poetic and just the slightest hint of nostalgia. One can’t help but recall the
canvasses of Gustave Caillebotte when encountering the masterful angles of his natural investigatory approach:
yes, we’ve seen this landscape a thousand times, but not like that. Here again he provides us with that happy
impression of discovery and rediscovered freshness but to the thousandth power in the exciting Au bonheur du
Tour. We all know how much the greatest cycling race has suffered in recent years due to the problem of doping;
well this text applies a balm right where it is needed, looking back to childhood memories, treasures which no
harsh words or scandal can touch. Delerm sings it right and prettily, and since the photographs included thanks
to the iconographic research of Philippe Le Men sing just as strongly, the book is like a “treasure island” for us
to walk along with enthusiastic zeal. A valuable and comforting Tour; a sanctuary bathed in a shower of youth,
of course it’s not always perfect, but with its timeless scapes and scenes, scorching summers, yellow jersey, slate,
red lantern, ardent fans, Jean-Paul Ollivier (aka Paulo le Science) and Yvette Horner “represent a part of humanity
that dishonest participants cannot override, because it is a part of a shared heritage.” Jacques Goddet, Sacha
Distel and Eugène Christophe who were crazy about the Tour would have loved this book, where along these
improbable sun- and rain-drenched roads workers, soldiers, stylish city people and country dwellers, school kids,
and vacation-goers cram together, join together, to see generations of champions pass by, the courageous, in a
word, the giants of the road. As an incomparable social connector and a perfectly unique cement of national
unity, the Tour breathes passion and compassion combined. In Marseilles and Portet d’Aspet it is the rage, in
Monaco, between Astrua and Atalante, it is princely, and Eddy, like Raymond, Gaul, Koblet or Le Guilly cut
to roads and hearts. This Bonheur du Tour is truly a bonheur du Tour, a joy. s. l.
POIRÉE Raphaël
Raphaël poirée
[Jacob-Duvernet, November 2007, 170 p., 19 €, isbn: 978-2-84724-170-9.
WithYves Perret. Preface by Jean-Claude Killy.]
This autobiography of a modern champion in a sport as difficult and as little-covered by the media as
the biathalon, written in conjunction with a journalist, the brilliant and responsive Yves Perret of the Dauphiné
Libéré, is valuable and important. It is valuable because of its realness, the realness of a winter sport which devilishly
and magically alternates cross-country skiing and rifle-shooting. And it is important because it masterfully
shows us the successful trajectory of a contemporary champion whose credo is as modest as it is exemplary, “you
are not born a champion, you become one.” This was already the credo of the illustrious author of the preface,
Jean-Claude Killy. About the first meeting between the triple Olympic gold winner in Grenoble in 1968 and
Poirée, the latter writes, “When we first met he asked me the right questions, questions which were useful for
me to further my own fate.” And a simple fate it has been, “that of a kid from the Vercours who took control
of his fate.” He did such a good job that the angelic and shy tyke from Chapelle-en-Vercors (born August 9,
1974) started from point 0 and became the grand, adulated and recognized master of the biathalon. His training,
the first stages on the French team, his first medals, and “that spark in his black eyes” which Perret perceived
in the rising champion in 1994, the major competitions, the intense and exciting duel with the Norwegian
Ole Einar Björndalen, his main competitor; it is all told with accuracy and measure. This discipline is kind of
private, rigorous, difficult, at the mercy of the elements, but oh how fine it is as experienced by Raphaël Poirée.
88

And within the confines of this cold, untamed and also fraternal and particular competition, love must also
exist, because the discipline is also practiced by women. And an idyllic relationship indeed formed between the
French champion from the Vercors with the well tempered character and the top female Norwegian biathlete,
Liv Grete. Over the course of international meetings and bus rides between Vercours and Bergen, connections
consolidated to the point of marriage. “The warrior became a teddy bear.” At the 2004 World Cup Biathlon
in Oberhof, Germany the couple brought in 9 medals, seven of them gold, fine playthings for their children,
Emma and Anna, who are never far off as Grete moved away from competition and Raph tried to get a hold of
an Olympic gold which kept slipping away. And while he missed the mark at the Turin Games in 2006, Raphaël
Poirée had a no less successful goodbye at Anterselva in 2007 where he joined a final world title to the seven gold
medals, ten silvers and bronzes decorating the house in Eikelandsosen where the happy family lives surrounded
by nature in the Norwegian style, “without a watch and without stress.” A full blown champion between two
cultures, a champion who succeeded in taking his exceptional discipline out of the sidelines, Raph, the courageous
perfectionist, a champion who remained at the top between 1998 and 2007 provides a fine instruction
manual for becoming a “dad, husband and champion” as his wife agreeably puts it. s.l.
89

THEATRE
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Selected by Jean-Pierre Thibaudat
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25 petites pièces d’auteurs
[25 Plays Short Plays]
[Éd. Théâtrales, coll. “Répertoire contemporain,” September 2007, 386 p., 25 €,
isbn: 978-2-84260-253-6.]
The publishing house Éditions Théâtrales is now twenty-five years old and is celebrating with two magnum
works: this book, which brings together plays published by Éditions Théâtrales’ authors, and an Anthologie
critique des auteurs dramatiques européens (1945-2000) edited by Michel Corvin. What a path they’ve tread in a
quarter century! When Éditions Théâtrales began publishing the landscape for the publication of works in drama
was in a disastrous state. Today with the three “large” publishers, Actes Sud-Papiers, Solitaires Intempestifs, and
Éditions Théâtrales (not to mention the inalterable Avant-Scène and the always bold flame of the Théâtre Ouvert
and its eternal “Tapuscrit” [“typed manuscript”] editions), prospects have opened a great deal and authors
know where to address themselves to be published. The Éditions Théâtrales catalog is not small: five hundred
plays, six hundred authors, most of whom have remained faithful after the first publication, such as the pillars
Noëlle Renaude, Xavier Durringer, Daniel Besnehard, Philippe Minyana, Roland Fichet, and Michel Azama
who are anthologized here. There are also foreign authors, from Gregory Motton to Howard Baker to Hanokh
Levin. The authors are classified by order of appearance in the publisher’s catalog: the first being a living author
who nonetheless is long dead, Karl Valentin, the last is a French author who entered into Éditions Théâtrales
in 2004, Sylvain Levey. It is difficult to find a unity in this abounding diversity. But we are living in a time of
intersections rather than schools, and Éditions Théâtrales is a publishing crossroads with a devotion to theater.
J.-P. t.
ANOUILH Jean
Théâtre
[Gallimard, coll. “Bibliothèque de la Pléiade,” October 2007, two volumes, 1,504 p. and 1,584 p.,
(62.50 € each until 31 January 2008) 69 € each. isbn: 978-2-07-011587-7 and 978-2-07-011588-4.
Bernard Beugnot (Ed.)]
There is a certain paradox in seeing Jean Anouilh enter the prestigious Pléiade collection at a time when
his œuvre is suffering an enduring purgatory; his œuvre, meaning his theater (and his writings on theater) since
Anouilh was a complete homme de théâtre intégral, exclusively. His passion began precociously in 1918 (he was
born in Bordeaux in 1910) when he saw a puppet show performed, “my first theatrical magic,” he recalled late
in life (he died in Paris in 1987). The magic of the theater was his chimera and his priesthood. Bernard Beugnot,
who edited this edition with care, had to work ceaselessly at undoing the misunderstandings Anouilh was subject
to, sometimes complaisantly, such as defining himself as “an old hopeless playwright of mainstream farces”
even a penpusher who wrote plays “like an artisan makes chairs.” While among the thirty-five plays he left us
some are forgettable or worn out like an chair on which one has long been seated, the best cannot be reduced
to bedroom farces or to simple artisanal work: they have a touch, or more than that, a style or in any case an
atmosphere belonging to the author—as in the plays Le Rendez-vous de Senlis [Dinner with the Family], Le Bal
des voleurs [Thieves’ Carnival], Le Voyageur sans bagages [Traveler without Luggage], Pauvre Bitos [Poor Bitos,
or The Masked Dinner], Léocadia [Time Remembered] or the indefatigable Antigone. Time will tell concerning
this talkative work, but a good bet is that Jean Anouilh will stay on like a period perfume, a sort of theater
in black and white, with dialog handmade in the old style and comfortable and somewhat dreamy bourgeois
characters up on stage. He is the last representative of the literary tradition in theater, and he always got close
to the stage and signed or cosigned (with Roland Pietri) the directing of his plays (after having scene the work
of André Barasq who effectively got closer than any other to his friend’s theater work) or tossed in characters
from the theatrical seraglio. Crushed by the bulldozer of modernity in the 1950s, Anouilh’s plays then aged fast
and still suffer the consequences. When he said he wrote plays “to amuse himself” he was sincere, but he was
also being quiet behind a veil of reserve about a higher ambition which it was not his way to cry out from the
rooftops: to last. His humor and warm feeling for his characters will probably save him from being forgotten
forever; this edition is the proof. J.-P. t.
90

ARIAS Alfredo and CECCATTY René (de)
Divino amore
[Actes Sud, coll. “Actes Sud-Papiers/ Les Ateliers du théâtre,” October 2007, 48 p., 8.50 € ,
isbn: 978-2-7427-7102-8.]
This play was written by two friends with a common fascination for a small theater they attended in
Rome in the 1960s. Near the Vatican, in the Borgo Santo Spirito theater, the Origlia-Palmi troupe presented
melodramas of an often religious or social character, which already was fine enough, but what was most important
was the atmosphere which combined the age of the actors, the family in the strictest sense of the term
which they formed, the quirky plots, and the gaps in the actors’ memories (they would lose track of the play
they were in, putting on several in a single day), and exchanges between the stage and the audience which were
not exempt from name-calling. The great actor-writer-director Carmelo Bene who lived in Rome often went
to see the Origlia-Palmi troup in action. Alfredo Arias, after leaving his native Argentina at age 23, also went
to see them when he spent time in Rome and he became interested in the story behind this unique troupe. The
play he wrote with his friend René de Ceccatty aims to pay homage to this family troupe, bringing it back to
life within a framework of representing what could have been one of its performances and in staging one of its
successful plays, Salomé. “Suddenly we became followers of a new religion: the theatrical disaster. We developed
a real passion for these fanatics who thought they were divine when they were only divinely bad.” The
authors’ warm sense of their characters who never hold back provides this improbable play with its equilibrium.
J.-P. t.
GODARD Colette
patrice Chéreau, un trajet
[Patrice Chéreau, a Trajectory]
[Éd. du Rocher, coll. “Entrée des artistes,” October 2007, 288 p., 19.90 €, isbn: 978-2-268-06145-0.
With commentary by Patrice Chéreau.]
Unlike some of his peers, Patrice Chéreau is not a man who expresses himself through writing. He’s
written no autobiography or handbook on directing actors, there are simply the productions, some of which are
collaborative (Peer Gynt, Les Paravents [The Screens], etc.). Thus the great interest of this book in two voices: a
career traced step by step by Colette Godard (who, writing for Le Monde, followed almost the entirety of this
trajectory) and, when needed or when he had a disagreement about a particular adjective or analysis, written
commentary by Patrice Chéreau. Those who know nothing on the subject will learn a great deal about a man
and a certain era in theater, which in many ways seems to be behind us. Those who lived through it or study
it will avidly read Chéreau’s remarks which are sincere and hypersensitive. There are the first dazzling steps in
performances at Lycée Louis-le-Grand, his arrival in Sartrouville, Lenz’s Soldiers in which he realized what “his
strength” was going to be, his attention to his elders—from Strehler to Planchon—who gave him the following
advice in Lyons which he never forgot, “Never stop working.” And he never stopped moving from place to place
either: after Sartrouville (with debts it took him years to pay off), he went to Italy, then returned to France for
Richard II (see Chereau’s fine commentary on the importance for him of Daniel Emilfork), success with La Dispute,
etc. It is the itinerary of an exceptionally talented man given over entirely to the theater. Godard provides
abundant citations of articles on performances; they are not always affectionate but they are often intense. The
finest pages are those on the Chereau years at the Nanterre-Amandiers theater probably because for him and
for many others this was “a golden age” for that establishment where Heiner Müller met Pierre Boulez, theater
met cinema, and the acting school met a young unknown named Bernard Marie Koltès. On his complicated
staging of Koltès’ Quai Ouest, Chéreau looks back coolly and even goes so far as to call it a “mistake.” The last
ten years, in their proximity to the present, naturally lack perspective; Chéreau wonders, “Is that irritating,
nervous and dissatisfied man me? I’m not sure.” J.-P. t.
GRUMBERG Jean-Claude
H. H.
[Actes Sud, coll. “Actes Sud-Papiers,” September 2007, 64 p., 10.50 €, isbn: 978-2-7427-6984-1.]
Jean-Claude Grumberg is the author of a good thirty plays (Dreyfus, L’Atelier, etc.) and is always interested
in experimenting anew. This play is “an interactive game for students, those between jobs, and others.”
The play is comprised of characters’ lines but none are attributed to particular people: “they are thus to be distributed
and divided up by the play-master and the [five or more] players themselves.” The plot is as simple as
91

it is formidable: it takes place in Bavaria and a city government is deliberating on how to name a school. They
consider Heinrich Heine. Not a bad idea, but the name is kind of overused already, so they decide they have to
come up with another. However, plaques with the letters HH have already been cast in bronze. What can they
do? Find another HH! A member of the city council comes up with the idea of Heinrich Himmler, who haled
from their environs. Not everyone is convinced this is a good idea, but the councilman offers convincing arguments.
Finally, the divided council decides not to decide. But the powers that be are little inclined to unsolved
issues and stipulate that the problem of the initials be solved. The solution they decide on is an exercise in direct
democracy: the works of the two HH’s are to be compared and a decision made after that. With this conceit,
Grumberg provides excerpts from Himmler’s extremely intense letters. The play, which has some movement
during the animated deliberations of the city council, stops in its tracks at this point: it is literally crushed by
the documents which have to be spoken. It is a game more than a play, a cruel and dark game. J.-P. t.
POMMERAT Joël
Je tremble (1)
[I Shudder (1)]
[Actes Sud, coll. “Actes Sud-Papiers,” October 2007, 40 p., 10 €, isbn: 978-2-7427-6993-3.]
Joël Pommerat’s new play, Je tremble which is billed as the first of a two-part work whose second part
will be published next year is of a piece with the other work (less a continuous story than a series of fragmentary
stories which are often monologs) by an author whose œuvre is becoming quite significant—eight published
plays plus his Théâtres en présence on his practice. He directs his own plays which he personally describes as
simply scripts which only come to be when they are performed. This time theater barges into the writing in the
form of an announcer who declares that he is going to die at the last moment of the evening’s events, before
our eyes. He also says we will be made to tremble and shudder over the course of the evening’s events, whose
title is Je tremble. In fact, this strange Mr. Loyal, who is reminiscent of the narrator of Max Ophul’s Lola Montes,
seems to preside over the no less strange evening banquet where one after another, like so many dance numbers,
people lacking at their cores to the point of no longer existing and prey to appearances or beset by posturing,
people such as one often finds in Pommerat ravaged by loneliness, are let loose. Thus there is the woman who
leaves her books behind to get a hold of herself and loses a finger and then a hand while at the same time giving
up her child whose life story is told by that child who has become a young woman who wants to tell her that
she has become like her. And thus there is the entrepreneur whose business can run without him who and feels
lost and like he no longer exists. The announcer asks the audience, “Is there anyone here who this evening who
does not exist?” The play ends with a glimmer of fraternity, the hint of a smile from the announcer. The show
must go on. Life must go on as well. J.-P. t.
SARRAUTE Nathalie
Isma
[Gallimard, coll. “Folio théâtre,” October 2007, 144 p., 6 €,
isbn: 978-2-07-032009-7. Arnaud Rykner (Ed.)]
After Le Silence [Silence], Pour un oui ou pour un non [For No Good Reason], C’est beau [It’s Beautiful],
Elle est là and Le Mensonge [The Lie], Arnaud Rykner has now edited another edition of a Sarraute play in the
“Folio théâtre” series: Isma. As in each of the earlier cases we find a remarkable fitting out of notes, commentaries
and complementary material on productions. Rykner was also Claude Régy’s assistant for several years. Now
this same Claude Régy once (in1973) put Isma on stage, a play that was originally written for radio, with an
actor whose career was just then dawning: Gérard Depardieu. Rykner tells about this in detail. He also shows
how this play is a sort of condensation of Sarraute’s modes and methods: a way of embracing the world through
a breakdown of language, a snag or glitch, focus on a detail, a tropism, to use the her terminology. Isma, which
sounds like a pronoun (and is one), represents the way a couple named Dubuit pronounce the last syllables
of words which end in “ism” [isme in French] which causes condemnation and even ostracism from the eight
characters on stage, of the Dubuit couple that is not present. Sarraute always keeps a tight control over the history
represented in her plays, the characters are reduced to anonymous voices (Him, Her, H1, F1, etc.), as the
smallest wrinkle in mispronouncing the end of a word can always have large repercussions and provide keen
questioning of how people get along or interact. Every reader, every viewer, has an intense response to one or
another of Isma’s lines, a play about which Sarraute wrote, “I also do not expect theater to be didactic, calling
on rational judgment. I would like to communicate what is ‘felt’.” J.-P. t.
92

TRAVEL
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Selected by Gilles Fumey and François de Saint-Chéron
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Le Voyage de Magellan (1519-1522). La relation d’Antonio pigafetta & autres témoignages
[Magellan’s Voyage (1519-1522); Antonio Pigafetta Account and Other Testimony]
[Chandeigne, coll. “Magellane,” October 2007, 2 vol., 544 p., (68.50 € until 28 February 2008) 75 €,
isbn: 978-2-915540-32-1.]
Here it is, the crowning achievement and fortieth work in the “Magellane” collection, the set which
includes every document on the great navigator’s epic travels collected and translated into French for the first
time. Magellan sought to reach the Maluku Islands from the west and return via the same route, but it was Juan
Sebastian Elcano who got the glory upon his return to Sevilla in September 1522 aboard the Victoria, the only
vessel in the expedition that made it back. Magellan was the first to prove the circumnavigability of the earth,
and for three months he braved the extent of the Pacific without touching ground thanks to an antiscorbutic
gathered in the straight which bears his name. He avoided the Molukus by way of the north going from island
to island, and eventually attacking the indigenous peoples of Mactan where he died in the midst of the hearty
riposte of those whom Gines de Mafra called “the barbarians.” But did he already know that he risked being
called a traitor in Spain where his unlikely ideas and his violent response to attempted mutiny in Patagonia
were not looked on positively by all? The thirty-five who navigated completely around the world were called
upon in judicial contexts to detail the tragedies which occurred on this three year voyage. Letters written by
Antonio de Brito, who captured Spanish sailors in the Molukus, and passages from Herrera’s General History of
the Deeds of the Castilians in the New World (1601) which cites sources no longer available are choice morsels of
this edition which is also embellished with illustrations from Yale University. The Xavier de Castro, the chief
editor, is right in situating the focal point of these conquests in this way: the savory flavor of the spices which
had bewitched Europe and compelled it to rewrite the map of the world. G. f.
GERMAIN-THOMAS Olivier
Le Bénarès-Kyôto
[From Varanasi to Kyoto]
[Éd. du Rocher, coll. “La fantaisie du voyageur,” September 2007, 276 p., 18 €,
isbn: 978-2-268-06289-1.]
Olivier Germain-Thomas’s account begins in India. The impressions he had and which he transmits
to us are usually punctuated with passages from Montaigne’s Essays (which accompanied him to Japan where
he would reread a passage “in order to get closer to the teaching of Buddhism’). “Travel has been my school”
writes our writer-traveler. Yes, but also books, several of which are referred to along the way. After India, he
goes to Thailand and then Laos, where beside a little thatched hamlet he has the perception that “there is no
single universal conception of life” or might it be “song, dance, love perhaps”? Then from Hanoi he went to
China. There, wanderings, trains, encounters—including a striking one with Joseph Lewin—, a nighttime
altercation, and a mediation on Christianity in Beijing. He reached Kobe on a Chinese ship, and the Japan he
offers us leads beyond well worn paths: Shintoism, a solitary walk in a forest, Empress Michiko’s poems. The
passage on kamikazes is one of the stronger parts of this chapter. The last section of the book is entitled “Endless
Kyoto.” It includes an homage to the eminent Japanese scholar, Bernard Frank, and a meditation in front
of a Zen garden. In all it is a fine journey in the company of a sensitive and intelligent guide; Germain-Thomas
never stops questioning himself and the work was awarded the Renaudot Prize. f. s.-c.
LAPOUGE Gilles
L’Encre du voyageur
[Travelers’ Ink]
[Albin Michel, September 2007, 260 p., 19 €, isbn: 978-2-226-17704-9.]
Gilles Lapouge wants us to make us believe that traveling is nothing “but ink.” Of course one wouldn’t
expect a traveler-writer to renounce his pen. But travel is also the desire for encounter, the excitement of upcoming
discovery, the mind chock full of maps, companions encountered in books that impel one to go beyond
93

oneself, and that is exactly what Lapouge recounts. And yet he manages to convince us that his writing could
suffice. It is sumptuous in its imagery, bold and modest and all in the contemplation of the words which recount,
in their way, the islands, countrysides, cities and, above all, Europe “jam-packed with geography, Lapouge’s
phrase sketches out the contours of the elsewhere. One laughs at the author’s jibes at writer-travelers who called
themselves as much and is amused by the account of shipwrecked writers in the case of Querini, the Venetian
who thought he was going to be selling wine on Crete but who strayed to the coast of Iceland. With Lapouge,
the traveler is accompanied by light for Europe and wind for Brazil. There is no unrefined geography; everything
happens through the prisms of Plutarch, Hannon, Raleigh or Bougainville who offer our present-day desires
their adventures from a world they knew how to charm with their talents and unbridled passion. Julien Gracq’s
Ardennes in his Un Balcon en forêt [Balcony in the Forest] echoes with André Breton’s Les pas perdus [The Lost
Steps]. You will find the best fellow travelers in the world of ink. G. f.
MICHIELS Alfred
Montagnards, chasseurs d’antan
[Mountaineers and Hunters of Yore]
[Montbel, coll. “Vers les cimes,” September 2007, 254 p., 22 €, isbn: 978-2-914390-60-6.]
Travel is the art of reaching places beyond human time. From this perspective there are a number of
inviolate—or almost inviolate—mountains; the havens of chamois, izards, and ibexes which offer a new frontier
of discovery and attract boldest adventurers. What could be more rewarding and enjoyable than the sight of
agile chamois whose movements no one has been able to quantify or explain! This was so true that observers of
yore passed on superstitious beliefs like their communication with the devil and their pushing hunters off cliffs…
The accounts of Frédéric de Tschudi which date to 1858 alone provide a full scale trip into the brotherhood of
hunters: the resistance of chamois that, with the energy of desperation, throw one and all to the depths of an
abyss compels the admiration of contemporaries who have a different conception of hunting than Tscudi. If
“tracking chamois provides as many dangers in a single day as a captain is subject to in a lifetime,” it is not certain
that a hunter would come out of the experience today as a hero. Nevertheless, such aficionados of nature and
pioneers of the landscape as the families we read about here who paid heavy tribute to the hunterly adventure
are responsible for beautiful image of the Alpes and the Pyrenees. Accounts of their exploits, along with those
of the learned and the artistic, such as Saussure and Rousseau, have transformed these ugly landscapes into
sumptuous panoramas, “there is in man a feeling of grandeur stimulated by obstacles, exalted and fortified by
danger.” There can’t be a better way of describing such a trip into the solitude of mountain heights and crags.
G. f.
SINETY Renaud (de)
Voyage au pays des Chleuhs (Maroc, début du x x i e siècle)
[Travel to the Land of the Shluh (Morocco, as the Twenty-first Century Begins)
[Cartouche, coll. “Voyage aux pays des…,” October 2007, 116 p., 12 €, isbn: 978-2-915842-26-5.]
Pierre Dac, who popularized the Chleuhs for the French population in the 1930s (“Je vais me faire
Chleuh” [I’m going to make myself into a Shluh]) did not deliver up the geography with his song. For how
many people associate these inhabitants of the Atlas Mountains with the “Boches,” “Teutons,” and “Fridolons,”
[all, like “Chleuh” also is, French terms for Germans)] in the patriotic vocabulary of the Hexagon! The method
of the historian Renaud de Sinety, who has a great deal of experience in the Caucasus and Atlas heights of the
Mediterranean world, is to bring the beauty of the location to life in a nonincursive way. The discovery begins
in Tizi-n-Tichka, a mountain pass that, like the Kasbah of Telouet, is well known to all who have traveled the
Atlas Mountains where the Berbers become the majority population. These non-Arabic speaking people are
proud of the historical highpoint of the Glaoui tribe that dared defy the sultan and the ksar at Ait Ben Haddou,
one of their main domains. Renaud de Sinety takes us by bus to meet Hicham and Adil who explain how these
Shluh villages are real democracies, even if women are constrained to a kind of life we have difficulty interpreting
in a positive way. The trip into Seksaoua is one of the highpoints of the book, with account of devotions to
holymen during Moussems (regional celebrations). The book is bedecked with original drawings—inimitable
goats in argan trees!—and succeeds in its mission: making us want to encounter this world beyond time. G.f.
94

INDEx 25 petites pièces d’auteurs 90
95
A
Action poétique n° 189 46
ALEXAKIS Vassilis 52
ANOUILH Jean 90
ANTONIONI Michelangelo 27
ARIAS Alfredo 91
Art sud n° 25 12
ATTIAS Jean-Christophe (Ed.) 74
B
BALDASSARI Anne (Ed.) 15
BANTIGNY Ludivine 74
BARBÉRIS Dominique 53
BARTHES Roland 39
BAUSSIER Sylvie 31
BEAUVOIR Cécile 53
BELIN Perrine 32
BENBASSA Esther (Ed.) 74
BÉNÉZET Mathieu 47
BENOIT-DUSAUSOY Annick (Ed.) 39
BERTRAND Alain 40
BETTAÏEB Viviane 31
Biennale de Lyon, 2007. L’histoire d’une décennie qui
n’est pas encore nommée 12
BIENVENU Alain 86
BLANCHOT Maurice 40
BLONDEL Jean-Philippe 33
BOLOGNE Jean Claude 8
BONAFOUX Corinne 75
BON François 35
BORNE Dominique 75
BORNE Dominique (Ed.) 75
BOSSY Jean-François 75
BOURRELIER Paul-Henri 35
BOUVERESSE Jacques 66
BRUNEL Philippe 87
BURRUS Christina 16
C
CABANIS José 75
Cahiers Debussy n° 31 62
CAILLOU Pierre (ill.) 33
CARTIER Claudineand 5
CASALI Dimitri 76
CAYRE Hannelore 51
CECCATTY René 91
CESTAC Florence 24
CHARMASSON Rémi 59

CHARRAS Pierre 53
CHEMILLIER Marc 71
CHEVALLIER Jean-Pierre 87
CHEVRIER Jean-Marie 54
CLAIR Jean 16
COCK-PIERREPONT Laurence (de) 75
CONNEN Fabrice 86
CORBIER Christophe 62
CORNEAU Alain 26
COSTA-PRADES Bernadette 16
COTTIN Menena 29
COUCHOT Edmond 16
CROZE Pauline 62
D
DANSEL Michel 8
DAUZAT Pierre-Emmanuel 76
DAVIS Miles and TROUPE Quincy 61
DEBRAY Régis 76
DÉCULTOT Élisabeth 77
DEDIEU Thierry (translator) 32
DEGANS Claire (ill.) 32
DEGUY Michel 47
DELERME Philippe 88
DELLECK James 63
DEMOULE Jean-Paul 17
DESPLECHIN Marie 33
DEUX Fred 48
DIAZ José-Luis 36
DIEDERICHSEN Diedrich 17
DIONYSOS 63
DOMINIQUE A 64
DUFRÊNE Thierry 13
DUPONT Florence 67
DUPUY and BERBERIAN 31
E
ENCREVÉ Pierre 18
ESPAGNE Michel (Ed.) 77
Europe no 940-941 40
f
FALAIZE Benoît 75
FERCAK Claire 41
FERLET Édouard 59
FONTAINE Guy (Ed.) 39
FONTANEL Béatrice 29
FOTTORINO Éric 9
FOURNIER Jean-Louis 9
FOURURE Bruno (ill.) 31
96
G
GAUVILLE Hervé 42
GAY-PARA Praline 30
GELLÉ Albane 48
GENET Jean 13
GEORGEL Pierre 13
GERBER Alain 61
GERMAIN-THOMAS Olivier 93
GIOVANNONI Jean-Louis 49
GIROD Marie-Catherine 61
GODARD Colette 91
GODARD Jean-Luc 28
GRIMM Jacob and Wilhelm 31
GROSLEZIAT Chantal 32
GRUMBERG Jean-Claude 91
GUATTARI Félix 77
GUÉRIF Benjamin 54
Gustave Courbet 13
GUYOTAT Pierre 42
H
HARTMANN Florence 78
HARTOG François 78
HATZFELD Jean 54
HAUTCHAMP Mikaël 49
HUBY Régis 59
I
IBN AL RABIN 24
Incognita n°1 46
J
JAEGLÉ Claude 79
JANSSEN Susanne (ill.) 31
JEANNET Frédéric-Yves 43
JOUANNA Arlette 75
JULLIEN François 66
K
KOVARIK Patrick 10
L
LABARRIÈRE Hélène 60
LACOMBE Hervé 62
LAMARCHE-VADEL Gaëtane 19
LAPOUGE Gilles 93
La Revue littéraire n° 32 37
L’Atelier d’Alberto Giacometti 13

Le Magazine du bibliophile et de l’amateur de
manuscrits & autographes n° 67 38
LE RIDER Jacques (Ed.) 77
LES WRIGGLES 64
LEUWERS Daniel 50
Le Voyage de Magellan (1519-1522). La relation
d’Antonio Pigafetta & autres témoignages 93
LÉVY Benny 67
LIAUZU Claude 79
L’Infini n o 100 45
LIOTARD Martine 7
LOCMANT Patrice 36
LODÉ Thierry 71
LUSSAULT Michel (Ed.) 81
M
MALDINEY Henri 68
MALINEAU Jean-Hugues 33
MARAN René 80
MAZZONI Cristiana 5
Mc NEIL David 29
MEIZOZ Jérôme 36
MESCHONNIC Henri 68
MICHIELS Alfred 94
MILLER Claude 27
MOISDON Stéphanie 19
MONNEREAU Michel 55
N
NAGATA Tatsu 32
NANCY Jean-Luc 69
NATALI (ill.) 31
NATTIEZ Jean-Jacques (Ed.) 20
NEEMAN Sylvie 29
NICHAPOUR Azadée 80
NODIER Charles 43
NOGUEZ Dominique 44
NOZIÈRE Jean-Paul 34
o
OBRIST Hans-Ulrich 20
OFFENSTADT Nicolas 81
ORIZET Jean 50
ORY Pascal 24
Oser construire. Pour François Jullien 66
OSTENDE Jean-Pierre 55
OVIDIO Pierre (d’) 56
97
p
PAGNOL Marcel 28
PAQUOT Thierry 81
PARÉ Ambroise 49
PAUTRAT Jean-Louis 71
PAVÉ Alain 72
PAVLOFF Franck 56
PÉCHEROT Patrick 51
PELOT Pierre 56
PETIT Xavier-Laurent 34
PINET Hélène (Ed.) 21
PINTO Louis 69
Playback 14
PLEYNET Marcelin 13
POIRÉE Raphaël 88
POMMERAT Joël 92
POSTEL-VINAY Olivier 72
POUIVET Roger 18
Premiers poèmes avec les animaux 32
Q
QUIGNARD Pascal 21
R
RAUFER Xavier (Ed.) 82
RAVALEC Vincent 34
Revue internationale des livres et des idées n° 1 39
REZA Yasmina 37
RICARD Anouk 25
RIOUX Jean-Pierre (Ed.) 82
ROBBE-GRILLET Alain 44
Roger Parry. Photographies, dessins, mises en pages 15
ROUQUET François, VIRGILI Fabrice and VOLD-
MAN Danièle 83
RUSCART Marc 51
S
Sacha Guitry. Une vie d’artiste 26
SANDERS Louis 52
SARRAUTE Nathalie 92
SATTOUF Riad 25
SATURNO Carole and BELIN Perrine 32
SCHAEFFER Jean-Marie 69
SCHIDLOSVKI Catherine and 6
SCHIFFER Liesel 76
SCHLESSER Thomas 21
SCHNEIDER Pierre 14, 22
SELLIER Marie and RAJCAK Hélène (ill.) 30
SÉMELIN Jacques 37

SEMPÉ 10
SERAFFIN Didier 57
SERAJI Nasrine (Ed.) 5
SIMAAN Arkan 57
SINETY Renaud (de) 94
SLOTERDIJK Peter 70
SMOUTS Marie-Claude (Ed.) 83
SOLLERS Philippe 45
SOLOTAREFF Grégoire 30
SUET Bruno (photography) 6
SUMA Stefania 6
SURYA Michel 84
T
TAFFIN Nicolas and MELOT Michel 10
THÉRENTY Marie-Ève 38
THE SHOPPINGS 65
THOBOIS Ingrid 58
TITUS-CARMEL Gérard 22
Tod Browning, fameux inconnu 26
TROUPE Quincy 61
U
URBANKOVA Dagmar 30
98
V
VANNUCCI François 72
VIDAL-NAQUET Pierre 78
VIGNA Xavier 84
VILLIERS DE L’ISLE-ADAM 46
VIRGILI Fabrice 83
VIRILIO Paul 70
VOLDMAN Danièle 83
W
WIESENGER Véronique 14
WILLAIME Jean-Paul (Ed.) 75
Y
YOUNÈS Chris (Ed.) 81
YVINEC Daniel 60