Les onze by Pierre Michon

Abstract

I, What we have of Levin's work 1 reveals a startlingly innovative , observer of urban life,ofwhat New 1 Directions' James Laughlin called i "all that Bronx stuff." "Main charac j tersand centralplots are out/' Levin ? wrote to Laughlin in 1939. Little 1 happens; a girl sits at awindow lis 1 tening to the radio; a man watches , hiswife feed theirson. From Levin's 1 perspective, lulls in the action are 1 also the action: "The watch on Sid's 1 bony wrist beat out loudly; theonly i other sound was a couple of pairs J of shoes making theirway down 1 the Terrace to the Eighth Avenue , station." 1 But Levin is no patient docu , mentarian. His sentences carry sur 1 prises, moving forward, sometimes 1 steadily, sometimes not, seeming to J rush and stumble into saying more ? than theyhad intended, looking for ] a place to stop and sit down. They * move, again and again, into unfore 1 seen territory.A piece about the 1 appointment of a male president at 1 a women's college inNew England J begins with mock-journalese, shifts i to the interior monologue of a lonely ] letter-writing student on campus, ? pulls away to focus on the life of , the postman collecting the campus 1 mail, follows a mail train toNew 1 York, and ends in theNew York 1 apartment of an alumna who has 1 mailed an angry letterto thecollege, j The effect ismagical: How did we ? end up here? Simon and Schuster , could not find a place for Alvin 1 Levin. But we can. ,Michael Leddy 1Eastern IllinoisUniversity II Pierre Michon. Les onze. Lagrasse, i Verdier. 2009.137 pages. 14. isbn978 [ 2-86432-552-9 , Since inaugurating his career with Michon has built a reputation for minute scrutiny of phenomena that play themselves out within a dramatically limited arena. His latest novel confirms that reputa tion abundantly, for it is devoted to a close analysis of Fran?ois-Elie Corentin's painting of the Comit? de Salut Public during the French Revolution. Entitled simply Les onze, it is perhaps themost immediately recognizable work in the Louvre, indelibly inscribed as it is on both the collective and the individual imagination. You know thepainting Imean, don't you? Ifnot, you will undoubtedly feel a bit benighted in the early pages of thisnovel (as did I, Imust confess), frettingabout such a massive lacuna in your cul tural literacy. Until thenickel drops, that is,and you realize that Michon has invented both Corentin and Les onze out of whole, cloth. Yet even then, thehyperrealism that charac terizes his narration is enough to shake one's faith ineasy distinctions between fact and fiction. Michon's conceit,which recalls that of Georges Perec in Un cabi net d'amateur: Histoire d'un tableau = (1979), is that under certain con- = ditions, figments can be made to = seem more real tous than objects in = thematerial world. That imagined = reality fuels, in turn, a textwhere = a baldly constative tone coaxes the = reader into a labyrinthof doubt. Ut = pictura poesis indeed. Michon is a = very canny and subtle writer; it is = thus reasonable to assume that the = multiple ironieswhich circulate in = thisnovel are notmerely otiose, but = are intended to signifyin someman- = ner.Quite apart fromhis reading of = Corentin's masterpiece (which is in = itselfwelcome, of course), Michon = is trying to get at another kind of = reading here, I think. Vigorously = rubbing history against fiction, hop- = ing thus to make sparks fly, he asks = us to reflectupon narrative and its = uses. More particularly still, Les onze = invites us to savor a story so well = told that itdeserves tobe true, in a = world where nothing of real conse- = quence can be taken for granted. = Warren Moite = University ofColorado = Orhan Pamuk. The Museum of Inno- = cence. Maureen Freely, tr. New York. = Knopf. 2009. xi + 535 pages. $28.95. 1 ISBN 978-0-307-26676-7 1 Like Orhan Pamuk's first novel, Cev- = det Bey andHis Sons, TheMuseum of = Innocenceportrays theeconomic and = ideological sympathies of theTurk- = ish upper class in a panoramic way. = Unlike his 1982 familynovel, how- = ever, The Museum of Innocence has = a more limited chronological scope = and takes place in...