14 by Jean Echenoz

Abstract

Echenoz, Jean. 14. Paris: Minuit, 2012. ISBN 978-2-7073-2257-9. Pp. 128. 12,50 a. The incipit of 14 consists in a virtuoso description of actions that abruptly reverses course, so to speak, when the novel questions the random status of description in the text. No, it seems to say, this description, this series of actions described is not here randomly, in fact, it has been placed here precisely for the reader’s benefit. This mise en abyme, novel within a novel, was a favorite procedure of Gide whose Les caves du Vatican featured a character by the name of Anthime. During the first chapter of 14 it is a character named Anthime who is bicycling the countryside when the abovementioned reversal takes place. First the text describes muscular effort caused by the sloping terrain and the wind in his face. When he sees church bells waving in the distant church steeple before the sound can reach his ears, he knows that war has officially been declared. What then has really taken place? The overabundance of phenomenological descriptions becomes the cause of outside, extra-diegetic commentary. In Blanche’s room, for example, the pieces of furniture have assigned roles. An acajou desk contains letters from her fraternal admirers, Charles and Anthime, that are tied together separately using ribbons of opposing colors. The semiological opposition is continued in the description of their respective homes: one is tall and thin, the other short and plump. The reader gets the idea of satiric intent in the narrative presence of the respective residences—“comme s’il fallait décidément qu’une demeure tel un chien, fut homothétique à son maître” (35)—but could be forgiven in this novel within a novel for asking whose. The descriptive text can also be self-consciously clumsy, such as when war is compared to an opera. Of course, a comparison between a war novel and an opera would be just as relevant. It is this indefinite logical quality or status of narrative against which, novel within novel, the intrigue advances. Nevertheless, at 130 pages in length this novel is barely an opérette. It is as if the description of the horror of war and the details of battle, absurd in themselves, have inevitable and yet random consequences. Everything is also experienced scientifically like the colored illustration of an anatomy textbook that is explicitly evoked to describe the brutality of battle. Anthime, readers are told, nevertheless cannot recall what he saw—whereas his brother semiotically opposed in every way—is a photographer, a documentaliststyle photographer who intends to make a visual record of everything he experiences. Each chapter is a model of narrative concision that contains self-enclosed accounts of the expiring Belle Époque with its dilapidated manners and social institutions. Despite their manifest avarice (still another ironic attribute of characters dating from Gide) readers will care for the characters that struggle almost comically to remain human in the wake of horror. Télécom école de management (Évry) Charles Egert 204 FRENCH REVIEW 87.3 ...