Les barrages de sable par Jean-Yves Jouannais

Abstract

Reviews 273 the reader in all this? Far from being a self-indulgent self-exploration, this récit highlights the importance of literature in our lives. It shows us with elegance and gentle humor how we construct stories to make sense out of chaos and how this helps us chart our course. Metropolitan State University of Denver Ann Williams Jouannais, Jean-Yves. Les barrages de sable. Paris: Grasset, 2014. ISBN 978-2-24685197 -4. Pp. 204. 17 a. A long meditation about building sand castles and their analogy to military defense, the narrative moves amoeba-like into various genres. It represents serious inquiry, using citations of writers from ancient, medieval to modern times. The book reads at times like a personal journal, at times like a treatise, and at times like a novel. The text begins like a novel in which a father is supervising the playtime of his two young children on a beach as they build a dam in the sand against the Atlantic. Explaining the movement of tides, his thoughts wander to ancient writers and to Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic Wars. Later, when remembering this evening, he recalls telling his children the story of the King of Sparta during his siege of Mantinea. It was the proposal to block the flow of a river that caused flooding in this town and made its capture feasible.His children learned that they too were playing at subjugating the waters to meet their own ends. The childhood practice of making sandcastles is thus connected to the strategies of waging war. Connections are also made to writing and literature in an analogy between the activity of writing and the building of blockades. Concurring with Alfieri, the author believes that writing poetry is similar to the building of a barrage. While a barrage may let water pass through its tiny openings, a poem by its arrangement of blocks of words has spaces through which other voices are allowed to pass. Unique events that changed military outcomes are presented such as the defeat of the German forces at the Battle of Yser in Belgium during the Second World War. On the march toward Dunkirk, the Germans were able to push back the Allied forces. A simple lockkeeper, Hendrik Geeraert, proposed to open the floodgates of the dams and all the weirs. This maneuver surpassed all his expectations. The entire area was inundated and transformed into a lake. The Germans thus confounded, were forced to retreat. Sand structures can metaphorically serve as monuments to soldiers missing in action. One such case is that of Japanese soldier Hiro Onoda, charged to serve on the Philippine island of Lubang in 1944, during World War II. Onoda hid in the hills, faithfully defending his post until 1974. The Japanese government had to locate his original commander, Major Taniguchi, to order him to surrender. The text moves in and out of amazing ruminations: letters to Proust; the Song of Roland; the story of Alexander the Great, whose coat of arms showed a sand fortification facing the tide; the etymology of the word infantry; all flow one after another. The word infant links to foot-soldier taking us back to the earliest methods of war. Readers who enjoy military planning, strategies of defense, recondite and surprising facts, literary or historical reflections from diverse epochs and nations, will savor this book. It provides moments of wonder; one reading will not suffice to justly assimilate this composite of styles. Neumann University (PA) Maria G. Traub Laroui, Fouad. Les tribulations du dernier Sijilmassi. Paris: Julliard, 2014. ISBN 9782 -260-02141-4. Pp. 324. 20 a. Ce roman est un pur joyau dont il faut saluer la truculence de la première partie, car les choses se gâtent dans la seconde. Adam Sijilmassi, jeune ingénieur marocain, mène une vie très pleine, qu’il décide de changer radicalement pour se replonger dans sa culture. Le personnage est, pour son malheur, le fils d’une famille connue qui se retrouve pris dans les mailles d’un filet, entre l’État omniprésent et une non moins pesante secte islamiste dont il n’a que faire. Quoique souvent juste...