Mirror Gazing par by Warren Motte

Abstract

the period. One of the highlights of the volume is Élodie Saliceto’s perceptive study of Chateaubriand’s Vie de Rancé, a work whose generic ambiguity puzzled readers at the time, but which today seems quite modern. Equally impressive is Mombert’s treatment of Chateaubriand’s contemporary, Lamartine, who assumed the role of “biographe de gare”(207), intent on educating“ceux que l’époque exclut de l’échange savant comme de la vie politique: le peuple,les femmes,les enfants”(208).The final part of the volume, illustrating “usages littéraires du biographique” (233), examines four instances of biographical writing that have helped forge the reputation (for better or for worse) of well-known literary figures. Melaine Folliard chronicles, for example, the persistent efforts of Théophile de Viau to shape the reception of his own work, and Laurent Thirouin documents the systematic campaign, by Pascal’s sister initially and subsequently by his nephew,to promote the reputation of the author of Les pensées as a“savant chrétien”(278). In quite a different vein, Edwige Keller-Rahbé studies“la construction d’une légende libertine autour de Mme de Villedieu” (297), resulting in a negative portrayal that persisted well into the twentieth century.Finally,Laetitia Perret illustrates how educational authorities under the Third Republic carefully tailored versions of Montesquieu’s biography in order to present to lycéens the desired image of an author “cultivant la sagesse à l’écart des passions”(353). The editors provide a bibliography for the volume as a whole as well as summaries, in French and—rather unexpectedly—in English, of each article. As is frequently the case with collections of this nature, this one will appeal above all to readers whose own interests match those of individual contributors, but certainly the volume as a whole is professionally done. University of Kansas John T. Booker Motte,Warren. Mirror Gazing. Champaign, IL: Dalkey Archive, 2014. Pp. 205. ISBN 978-1-62-897014-2. $35. Idiosyncratic and unfettered, this joyfully experimental book owes its genesis to a peculiar note-taking practice that its author, a self-described “inveterate reader” (9), adopted some thirty years prior to its writing. When reading works of fiction of whatever provenance, in translation or in the original,“serious”or popular, and always from start to finish, Motte systematically flagged those scenes in which characters gaze into mirrors. An index card filed in the spine of each book marked these disparate “mirror scenes” for potential future use. Going public in 2004 with his archive at a lecture at Johns Hopkins (reproduced in extenso 11–29), Motte noted that his collection easily exceeded ten thousand in number—and this, without having ever sought out mirror scenes expressly or accepted references from third parties. What to do then with this wash of material? Taking cues from the consummate ludic modernist Vladimir Nabokov, he reflected that reading itself “can be conceived as a kind of 226 FRENCH REVIEW 89.2 Reviews 227 mirror-gazing”(25); our encounter with fiction, and especially with those fictions that bring mirrors into play, cannot but leave us“reflecting upon the strategies we bring to texts, testing them, retaining some, rejecting others”(26). The leading strategy retained in Mirror Gazing is subjective, exploratory, and projective, though as he moves through nearly one thousand examples Motte does set forth summary classifications (implicit, explicit, virtual, metaphorical, etc.). A good third of the passages glossed are from French sources, with Chevillard, Ernaux, Laurrent, Roubaud, and Toussaint figuring most prominently; Anglo-American and Scandinavian genre fiction (Le Carré, Rendell, Leonard; Høeg, Larsson, Sjöwall and Wahlöö) as well as Spanish-language works (Borges, Cortázar, García-Márquez, Pérez-Reverte) are widely referenced too. As we move from one excerpt to the next, we bear witness to the amateur’s passion for the diversity, uniqueness, and unruliness of his object; each scene takes on a rich yet painfully fleeting life of its own, affording only a glimpse of the surrounding work. Motte invites his readers, if not to follow his penchant, at least to allow that mirror gazing in fiction can usefully frame questions of self-knowledge, perception, and selfrecognition , the...