Comme une énigme, un nom propre très commun : François Emmanuel

Abstract

In the case of François Emmanuel, the obliteration of his patronym does not stem from a desire to be unique. On the contrary, his gesture – transforming his relatively banal second first name into a patronym, and this during a period of extreme mediatization of authorial figures – belongs more to a tendency toward relative anonymity. It would, however, be reductive to attribute the suppression of his patronym to a simple settling of family scores. Emmanuel himself underscores the notion that his novelistic writing, in a certain sense, does in fact bring him back toward his family. Beginning with an analysis of the nominal and familial relations at work in his body of work (but principally Le sentiment du fleuve), it becomes possible to shed light on the pen name as a privileged vector of what the writer calls « the novelist’s availability », that is, the putting-aside of oneself necessary for the fiction to emerge. In this sense, the pseudonym stands as symbolic matrix for the overall work.