Abstract
Book Reviews since it focuses attention on a volume which contains some crucial Tournier texts but which has tended to be marginalized by many critics. Redfem's procedure is to offer a short commentary on each of the stories in turn, since he can perceive no principle of organization to the collection (13-14). This poses a problem, however. Is Le Coq de bruyère simply an anthology? Or is it a volume in its own right and having an internal organic unity, as is the case, for instance, with Tournier's later Le Medianoche amoureux, modelled on Boccaccio's Decameron and Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron, or with Flaubert's Trois contes, which Tournier regards as one of the summits of French literature? It is a pity that Redfern does not address this issue, since he clearly has a broad picture of the novelist 's oeuvre and is prepared to make general statements about it. For instance, he states that there are "very few happy couples in Tournier's work" (50), modifying this later to "certainly no happy couples in his work" (95). Now, while this is undoubtedly true, it is also equally true that Tournier's work is seamed through, haunted even, by the problem of the human couple and by the search for happiness. And, in this respect, the stories in Le Coq de bruyère are particularly important, because their marginal, even sometimes monstrous protagonists are all engaged in a struggle which may rarely succeed for them but which serves to illuminate—and enable—the reader. Redfern is especially good at pointing up both Tournier's humour, which "anchors us in the concrete" (83), and he foregrounds Tournier's fondness for language play, which is one of the most neglected aspects of his writing; and Redfern himself engages in some delightful punning and neologizing, as when he speaks of Tournier's "Peter Pantheism" (36), or describes one of the photographer Véronique's harangues as "a sermon on the montage" (64). Furthermore, although he recognizes that the novehst has a tendency to ventriloquism, putting abstract philosophical words into the mouths of his characters, he does not take the easy option of seeing this as lack of psychological realism, but, rather, highlights the existence of narrative gaps and lurches in order to argue that Tournier is above aU determined to communicate, to leave in his reader's mind a sense of the aftermath (in) which he wishes them to believe. One may not always agree with the emphasis of Redfern's readings of individual stories, but his book reminds us insistently, correctly—and with obvious pleasure—that Tournier is "primarily a celebratory writer" (119). Michael Worton University College London Elizabeth Grosz. Space, Time, and Perversion. New York: Routledge Publications, 1995. Pp. χ + 273. $17.95 paper. Pulling together (much reworked) articles published between 1988 and 1995, this collection takes us through the warp and weft of the changing theoretical predilections and (necessarily) contradictory thinking regarding corporeality and space written by one of today's most formidable feminist philosophers. The book has the feel of someone trained in rigorous text-based analysis who finds herself compelled to wrestle her ideas meticulously through the conceptual grids of others, along the way leaving a pattern of her own. What sets Grosz's textual rigor apart is her ability to traverse in detail a number of very difficult writers across disciplines, explicating, tracing out connections between, and building upon each writer's works in turn. Her readings are generous, preferring critical framings that favor and construct. Nonetheless, while within a text (and chapter) she may find much to VOL. XXXVI, NO. 4 105 L'Esprit Créateur trace with pleasure, when switching to another text or writer (and chapter), she sometimes takes up contradictory positions, reflecting perhaps four things: the different meanings and resonances of texts when placed alongside others (e.g., Deleuze and Guattari alongside Foucault versus Lyotard or Lingis); her own changing thinking and inclinations over time (psychoanalytic versus Irigarian or Deleuzian analyses); the different aims, format and audience towards which the writing was originally directed, as well as the different questions circulating amongst social theorists and societies-at...
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