Le jeune homme par Annie Ernaux

Abstract

Reviewed by: Le jeune homme par Annie Ernaux E. Nicole Meyer Ernaux, Annie. Le jeune homme. Gallimard, 2022. ISBN 978-2-07-298008-4. Pp. 48. Concise and pivotal to better understanding the oeuvre of the prolific Annie Ernaux, this work cements the crucial link between lived event and coming to writing. "Si je ne les écris pas, les choses ne sont pas allées jusqu'à leur terme, elles ont été vécues" (9). Ernaux takes up with a young student, a fan, almost 30 years her junior, noting that "souvent j'ai fait l'amour pour m'obliger à écrire," even admitting that she may have initiated the affair in order to write it. References to story, writing, exploring her own student past (lovers, future husband, limited finances) and original social class (of her parents) through the relationship with the young student, simply named A., erupt in links to previous works and trauma (e.g., L'événement, Les années, Une femme). Their trysts take place in his tiny apartment, coincidentally located close to the hospital where she recovered from hemorrhaging after the long ago clandestine abortion. His poverty reminds her of her "début de ma vie en couple avec mon mari" when they were students at the same university as the young man. Being with the latter brings her back to her youth, distancing her from her middle-aged concerns. However, she does not merge into his generation nor with him and finds discomfort in returning to remembering her parental upbringing. The young man "était le passé incorporé" (21). Indeed, with A., she writes that "je parcourais tous les âges de la vie, ma vie" (21). The complex relationship between time and memory provides a profound backdrop to every page of the narrative. Fascinated by this revisiting of the past of previous decades that she had lived in the present, she becomes a character in a fiction that she is both writing and living. Previously published works subtly intersperse themselves here, sometimes juxtaposed within single sentences. At the same time, she dominates this story that begins with A.—simply designated by the first letter of the alphabet so necessary to the writing of any text. Ernaux changes the story's narrative, determines the rules, and "brutally" controls her young lover through the financial and other advantages of her success as an author. Furthermore, she determines the end of their story in which she becomes "le personnage de fiction" (25) who relives past familial and sexual experiences, however without shame. The exclusion of shame here suggests that Ernaux's reader should return to her recounting of the abortion contained within L'événement, a text she completes during the events of Le jeune homme. A must-read for any fan of Ernaux, this brief work reveals how the solitary act of writing triumphs overall. [End Page 230] E. Nicole Meyer Augusta University (GA) Copyright © 2023 American Association of Teachers of French