Echenoz's Modern-Day Mystics

Abstract

Back in 1988, in an article on Echenoz published in a special issue of Yale French Studies devoted to contemporary French novelists, I wrote: Although the Medicis prize awarded to him for his second novel, Cherokee, has begun to familiarize the public with his work, Jean Echenoz is still a new name in contemporary French fiction. No critical studies are available on him yet, but a number of short articles can be found in different periodicals.1 In 2005, Jean Echenoz is no longer a new name in contemporary French fiction. With a dozen novels published (all by Editions de Minuit), numerous literary prizes (including the Prix Medicis for Cherokee in 1988, the Grand prix du roman de la Societe des gens de lettres for Lac in 1989, the prix Novembre for Les Grandes Blondes in 1995, and the prestigious prix Goncourt for Je m'en vais in 1999), and a well-developed and growing critical bibliography, Jean Echenoz is now a familiar figure in the literary landscape. Articles appear regularly in the press, and an entire program of France-Culture devoted to his work aired recently (December 2003). On the scholarly side, the first international colloquium on Echenoz's fiction was organized by the Universit6 de St-Etienne in 2004. His latest novel, Ravel, a fictionalized narrative of Ravel's last ten years of life, came out in January 2006, and the impatient fan could read excerpts and reviews on the official Echenoz website even before its publication. Jean Echenoz is beginning to establish himself on the English-speaking literary scene as well, where five of his novels have already been translated by Mark Polizzotti. Equally familiar to readers is what has come to define Echenoz's trademark manner: his novels are playful, ironic reworkings of popular genres, particularly detective novels, spy novels, and corresponding thriller movies. Lac, his award-winning 1989 novel, a sophisticated and clever spoof of spy fiction, is an exemplary case of a narrative that plays on generic cliches and readers' expectations. Two stories, however, are somewhat atypical in his oeuvre and seem to me to handle the usual Echenoz themes of disappearance, death and grief in a more melancholy and serious tone. The short story, L'Occupation des sols (1988) and the 2003