Review: [untitled]

Author(s): Allen Thiher

Source: The French Review, Vol. 61, No. 2 (Dec., 1987), pp. 282-283
Published by: American Association of Teachers of French
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/393921 .
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282 FRENCHREVIEW

a method can bear fruit when applied to a wide spectrum of works dealing with
contemporary social and political concerns. In particular I found her readings of two of
the masterpieces of this period, Celine's Voyage au bout de la nuit and Malraux's L'Espoir,
to be fresh and provocative. Throughout her study, Green's style is crisp, clear, and
cogent. Referring to a selection from Brasillach's Les Sept Couleurs, Green writes: "In this
passage Brasillach, who was to be condemned to die at the age of 36 for his activities as
a Nazi collaborator, seems strangely to prefigure his own fate, or at least the image of
his life that would be piously preserved by family and friends" (203).
Three minor problems surfaced in my reading of Green's book: although she admits
some bewilderment at the complex task of selecting labels for the two sides at war in
Spain between 1936 and 1939, the term "Falangist"is probably an inappropriate choice
to designate Franco and his supporters, whose ranks were composed of ardent Catholics,
monarchists, as well as a minority of militant Falange party members. A second flaw is
found in her reference to Drieu's reaction to L'Espoir'sapparent pro-Communist stance.
If, according to Green, Drieu's observations appeared in the NRF in November 1936, a
full year before first excerpts of Malraux's novel were published, it is impossible for
Drieu to have been one of the "commentators"of L'Espoir,as she suggests (226). A final
slip occurs in a quotation attributed to the character Manuel in Malraux's Spanish Civil
War novel: "1l n'est pas un des echelons que j'ai gravis dans le sens meilleur [should
read: "dans le sens d'une efficacite plus grande, d'un commandement meilleur"], qui ne
m'ecarte davantage des hommes" (228).
Fiction in the Historical Present is an important study of an era which, though recent,
in many ways seems quite remote to the 1980s. Green's study revives the ideological
fervor of the time, describes the French intelligentsia's response to the triple menace of
communism, fascism, and a new world conflict, and provides thoughtful analyses of
part of the entre-deux-guerresliterary production.

University of Tennessee, Knoxville John B. Romeiser

LOMBARDO,PATRIZIA. EdgarPoe et la modernite:Breton,Barthes,Derrida,Blanchot. Birming-

ham, AL: Summa, 1985. Pp. v + 180. $16.95.
This book does not exactly conform to the format of a standard academic thesis.
Rather than a thesis I would call it a "derive a partir de Poe," or a kind of associative
collage that demonstrates how a good critical mind can construct for itself those
intellectual patterns that are as much a product of the critical mind as intrinsic to any
(problematic) nature of things. But the critic may well pay a price for this kind of
freedom: for example it is not clear to me who is going to read this book. A third of it is
devoted to a very French modernist reading of Poe, involving an understanding of the
kind of semantic excess that allows one to equate "eye-I-Oeil" in a way that generates
in-sight. Americanists who are not armed with a bit of Lacan or Derrida will probably
not get very far in this reading of Poe that makes of Poe, once again, our contemporary.
Or perhaps this will be merely another chapter in the history of the French reading Poe,
and Americans wondering why.
The ideal reader for this book is probably an imaginary intellectual, one Borges might
have created (in order to have a reader in the text), who can pursue purloined letters
and their transformation as they cross the Atlantic; a reader who loves intertextual
constructs that go from Breton to Barthes and Sartre, from Bataille to Derrida and
Blanchot, and not merely as a form of name-dropping. Lombardo knows her texts, writes
cogently about them, and her reader must have the same desire to entertain ideas much
REVIEWS 283
as one might play with characters in a novel. Of course, for Lombardo as for Derrida,
the distinction between literary and philosophical discourse is a dubious one, and ideas
may well function as characters in the drama of certain kinds of discourse that we
traditionally call "philosophical.' The reader who is willing to skip ludically but intelli-
gently from discourse to discourse will find him or herself more than a little rewarded
here.
If there are any special readings here that recommend themselves it is perhaps
Lombardo's way of reading Derrida's Glas and her understanding of Derrida's relation
to literary modernity. Especially interesting is the way Lombardo makes the transition
from Derrida to Blanchot's La Folie du jour. The question of Blanchot's affiliation to
Derrida, and vice versa, is central to a reading of contemporary French culture, and
Lombardo is exemplary in the clarity of her presentation. In fact, I might in this regard
recommend another, more conventional reader for this book: the student in a class on
literary theory, especially one in which Blanchot's Folie can function as a limit text for
all theory and which can offer a way of reading Derrida in a new light-jour.

University of Missouri Allen Thiher

RousSET,JEAN. Le Lecteurintime de Balzac au journal. Paris: Corti, 1986. Pp. 220.

Let the reader beware: Jean Rousset's lecteur intime wants nothing to do with reader-
response criticism or reception theory. This book discusses an internal reader discovered
in fiction, theater, travelogues, and diaries by explicit references in the text to his/her
presence. Rousset's stated goal is to use this lecteur intime to uncover the writer's (hidden)
intentions by examining the narrateur-narratairerelationship. Rousset categorizes the
different types of destinataire or narrataire(the terms are used interchangeably): he/she
can be outside the text (narrataire externe), as is the reader to whom Balzac often
addresses himself (e.g., "Le lecteur, s'il est de Paris . . ."). The narrataire interne is a
character in a work, a spectator or listener who comments on a story being told or read.
Variations on the theme narrataire externe/narrataireinterne fill the first half of the
book. After spending over twenty pages applying his typology to La Comedie humaine,
Rousset then permits himself to roam throughout the period from Corneille's Illusion
comique to Maupassant's La Rempailleuse, with no global conclusion to his wanderings.
Indeed, his observations about authorial intention differ in each case.
Examining the destinataire in La Comedie humaine, Rousset finds a fundamental
ambiguity in Balzac's fiction, a desire to create an autonomous fictional world whose
goal is nonetheless to interpret and to influence contemporary society. Balzac promotes
confusion between the inscribed reader and the "real" reader in order to produce
continuity between the fictional and the real worlds. Unfortunately, the analyses of
other works (especially La Fontaine's Psyche and Les Liaisons dangereuses) seem all the
more superficial in comparison to the more extensive remarks devoted to Balzac. The
length of the Comediehumaine and the exciting variety of narratairesprovided by Balzac
according to Rousset's demonstration could in fact inspire an even longer study, with
perhaps different results from those that flow from a focus on authorial intention.
By applying his list of the various narratairesto so many works, Rousset risks not only
superficiality but an occasional inaccuracy, as when he compares Corneille's treatment
of the theatrical illusion in L'Illusion comique to the eighteenth-century debate about its
nature. (Rousset insists that Corneille wanted only to induce a hypnotic or dream state
in the spectator, whereas in fact his position on illusion was more nuanced than that
even in 1635 when L'Illusionwas first produced; and the Corneille of the Examenswould