I totally agree with Duane, about Echenoz :" his work can be
entertaining if you're in the right mood for it." and you
better be in a very good mood. I personally do not really
enjoy his novels (at least the two I read) and have the
impression his modernity, deconstruction and post-modern
bazaar leads him (and the reader) to the Big Emptiness... His
French novels were published from day one by "Les Editions de
Minuit", which always harbored avant-garde French lit,
including the debuts of the big names of the "nouveau roman"
like Robbe-Grillet, Claude Simon, Michel Butor... during the
fifties. They all published their complete novels corpus with
this publishing house (founded during the last years of WW2).
As you know, the major benefit of this "nouveau roman"
approach was to destroy the form of classic novels and their
structure, and exploring freer ways of narration. At the time
it was a good shaking up of the French lit novel that was
close to sclerosis. But 30 years later a young writer like
Echenoz applied again a very similar approach , in his way,
with no real value added and with formal "deformation" that
were vastly d骠 vu! Plus a little bit of "distancing". But
(IMHO) he benefited of the "guarantee" of innovation and
quality that was attached to his publisher
reputation...
Now, back to our black sheep... The confusion about Echenoz
and noir, comes from one of his very first novels : CHEROKEE
(1983) in which he mimics some forms of noir and mystery lit,
but it was more an attempt to mock it and to deconstruct. He
applied the same treatment to two other pop lit genres": the
spy novel LAC- 1989) and the "adventure novel" (L'EQUIPEE
MALAISE- 1987). He's definitely not noir and not belonging to
that sphere.
I personally do not consider that sweeping off the
"typographical" forms of all dialogues and diluting them in
endless paragraphs with the narrative, brings anything new to
a novel or is rare innovation. I stopped to read the last one
I tried ( "JE M'EN VAIS" 1999) after 80 pages: the trick was
going on through the whole text...
E.Borgers HARD-BOILED MYSTERIES http://www.geocities.com/Atens/6384
- Duane Spurlock: Echenoz won't be to everyone's taste on
this list. His novels tend to the French version of
post-modern meandering, not the spare hard-boiled prose that
seems most appreciated by members here. But his work can be
entertaining if you're in the right mood for it.
>"Grimes" <
redgrimes@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>...And then when I searched the archives, the
only
>referenceto Echenoz I found was from 1999 by
Mark
>Sullivan, who in response to a query about
French
>noir available in the U.S. wrote, "Jean
Echenoz
>doesn't really count as noir, does he?"
>Five years later, does anyone have anything to
add?
>
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