Everyday Life: Theories and Practices from Surrealism to the Present by Michael Sheringham

Abstract

524 Reviews Clermont-Ferrand in March 2004, isnot concerned with Larbaud as linguist, his ac tivityas translator and promoter inFrance of a diversity of foreign literatures,butwith his style (or styles) and more generally his literary techniques across thewide range of formsof creative writing he employed. Three contributors do touch on 'langues', none the less.Freddie Plassard seeks inLarbaud's essays on translation a forerunnerof modern 'traductologie', Carmen Licari and Solange Montagnon explore the creative use of Italian inBarnabooth and Amants, heureux amants respectively.And a fourth, Christine Kossaifi, expands the significance ofLarbaud's quotation fromTheocritus inBeaute, mon beau souci into a discussion of the protagonists' failure to fusewith nature or to rise above suffering into art, as Theocritus himself invites.As to the totality implied by the title's definite article, there are some gaps. Fermina Mairquez is approached only from an unexpected, indeed unlikely, angle, as 'roman politique' (by Stephane Chaudier), while Enfantines and Aux couleurs de Rome arementioned only in passing. But Barnabooth is addressed by no fewer than five contributors, two concentrating their highly technical gaze on the poetry.Michel Murat finds in Barnabooth's vers libre a Frenchification of contemporary Anglo-Saxon free-verse practice, while Anne-Marie Prevost sieves through the poems' many parentheses, wherein she detects a second, muted, voice, that of Larbaud himself, contrasting the one he attributes toBarnabooth. Several lesswell-known texts are scrutinized closely: Allen for its 'polyphonie') (Nelly Chabrol-Gagne), Jaune bleu blanc for its 'poetique du paysage') (Agnes Fayet), and a rediscovered early texton Le Palais de Cristal, our very own Crystal Palace, for its 'ecritures de la sublimation'), both of an unhappy love and ofLarbaud's difficult relationswith hismother (Gil Charbonnier). Jean-Bernard Vray homes in on themere six pages of Sa moitie d'orange, though relating it intimately to one of Larbaud's abandoned fictions,Luis Losada, in a kind of dance of 'l'esquisse et l'esquive'. Other contributors prefer to rangewidely across the collected works to offer a clue, or a key, to the specificity of Larbaud's writing personality, his styleor his 'ton'. For Jean-Claude Corger it may lie in 'l'entre-deux'), in keeping a delicate balance between diverse extremes. Serge Saulnier points to a misleadingly distanced and pacific image of childhood covering disturbing depths. Hugues Marchal leaps from theBorborygmes to the inner-monologue stories, via Lar baud's reading of Samuel Butler, to unearth a completely modern 'double langage du corps'. Double also the conclusions of Ivan Farron, speculating on his 'liberte contrariee', as inhis crossing of the Joycean innermonologue with a strictlyFrench classical order. Though the collaborators, to judge by the surnames, are largely fran cophone, even French, a fair,ifnot always quite Larbaldian, range of criticalmethods is represented. He would himself probably have preferred thepractical and scholarly descriptive approach of Paule Moron, reviewing some aspects of theYournal, to the verbal pyrotechnics of Saulnier, or of FranSois Berquin, rounding offa tour de force on 'L'accent de Larbaud', predictably,with theone that isnot there (on his forename). As the fiftiethanniversary of his death approaches, in France at least Larbaud's di verse and frequently genre-challenging, ifquantitatively modest, output continues to fascinate new generations of professional readers. As to the 'amateurs' Larbaud might himself have preferred, one can only hope. UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS DAVID ROE Everyday Life: Theories and Practices from Surrealism to thePresent. By MICHAEL SHERINGHAM.Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress. 2006. 448pp. ?55. ISBN978 0-I 9-927395-9. 'What happens every day and recurs every day: thebanal, thequotidian, theobvious, the common, the ordinary, the infra-ordinary, the background noise, the habitual, MLR, I02.2, 2007 525 how can we give some account of it,how can we interrogateand describe it?'Georges Perec's question reminds us that the everyday or the quotidien can be 'themost dif ficult thing to uncover' (L'Infra-ordinaire (Paris: Seuil, I990), p. ii), as Blanchot asserts in his critique of Lefebvre (Maurice Blanchot, L'Entretien infini(Paris: Gal limard, I969), p. 355). That was the challenge taken up byMichael Sheringham in this immensely rich, diverse, and scholarly discussion, the firstcomprehensive investigation of a concept and practice central to contemporary French culture, no tably in...