Anne Fabre-Luce
PARIS LETTER
Whether one likes it or not, the literary crop this fall doesn't
promise to be particularly brilliant. Of the ninety-three novels which
came out in September, a large number aren't worth mentioning. But
one should take note of Ionesco, who makes an attempt at the novel
with
Le Solitaire
(Mercure de France), in which he describ es the hell of
the everyday; this pursuit of paradise lost, this waiting for I don't know
what redemptive grace, has already been expressed in a far more con–
vincing manner in his plays than it is in these reflections at once morbid
and a trifle smug. There is also talk of the "maturity" achieved by
Suzanne Prou in her latest novel,
La Terrasse des Bernardini
(Calmann–
Levy); I myself find the achievement highly relative. Monique Wittig's
Le
Corps Lesbien
(Minuit) may be the most interesting book of the lot; it is
an incantation, addressed to the female body on the level of physi ology
as well as that of eroticism, a series of lyrical emblems which breathlessly
recount the epic of woman.
Among the new first novels, one notes a considerable number
by women authors: Florence Delay's
Minuit sur les Jeux,
for example
(which is being pushed by Gallimard for the Prix Goncourt, I hear); and
-- also from Gallimard --
lei Commence,
by Natacha Michel;
Marie-Josephe Gautier's
Les Armes du R'eve,
and Elizabeth Huppert's
La
Terrasse.
All
of these books are largely autobiographical; they re count
various childhoods and sentimental educations, startling to one degree or
another. There are undeniable literary gifts in evidence at times -–
particularly in the case of Florence Delay -- but none of these novels
could be regarded as signifying the appearance of a greater writer.
Personally, I prefer Henri Raczymow's
La Saisie
(Gallimard), which
is the account of a bank employee who finds himself in his apartment
after it has been emptied out by sheriff's officers. Alone with his own
speech, the narrator embarks on a kind of autoanalysis in which deli-
