L’Amour et le style après le Nouveau Roman

Abstract

How does one attempt to renew the literary style—far from the buttoned-up classics, from perfectionistic Proust, from the Nouveau Roman and its cold epigones? To renew the style is to first succeed in renewing the imagination of the public. Starting with the “écriture blanche” theorized by Barthes, Fargues’ reflections begin with Céline, whose work marked the end of a centuries-old conception of the literary language as aesthetic and monolithic, and the beginning of a liberated and simple writing style with no bombast. In the contemporary field, Michel Houellebecq is one of his most significant heirs, and in the same sense, Fargues evaluates the contribution of Angot, Carrère (and his narrative investigations), and Despentes. He sees in it a reinvented “écriture blanche” reconciled with life, a peaceful synthesis of all literary experiences: a simple, direct sentence, without artifice, on the border of banality, economical without ostentation, where meaning and clarity prevail, where the expression seems to go without saying, without effort, like a conversation. The dream of “écriture blanche” is finally fulfilled: the style has disappeared. The simplicity of a primitive “I” is reinvented, distancing itself from the jumble of classical narrative, the simple past, and purely decorative sentences such as “La marquise sortit à cinq heures.”