Telling Performances: Essays on Gender, Narrative, and Performance by Brian Nelson , Anne Freadman and Philip Anderson (review)

Abstract

MLR, ioo.i, 2005 219 rather than welcoming community 'that knows no bounds', it becomes urgent rather to resist its allure?precisely in order that alterity may be affirmedat all. University of Warwick Leslie Hill Andre Malraux u: Malraux lecteur. Ed. by Christiane Moatti and Julien Dieudone . Paris and Caen: Lettres Modernes Minard. 2001. 246 pp. ?21.34. ISBN 2-256-91029-6. This volume provides both an authoritative scrutiny of a central issue in Malraux studies and a sense of current debates. 'C'est par la lecture que tout a commence', in the editors' words (p. 3): firstas juvenile autodidact in the Bondy library, then as precocious critic, aspirant publisher, and practising writer, and above all as an inveterate and eclectic reader through to L'Homme precaire et la litterature, Malraux consistently maintains the dialogues with his chosen texts. 'L'insatiable engrangement de savoir [. . .] ne finiraqu'avec sa vie' (p. 12). The featured contributions cover a well-chosen range of distinct and decisive influences or 'affiniteselectives' (p. 42), all carefully nuanced and all breaking new ground. Jacqueline Gojard traces the role of Max Jacob?a mentor forthe 'farfelu' ofthe early twenties, but then swiftlyrelegated. In a particularly valuable piece Marie-Sophie Doudet demonstrates how, above and beyond the familiar vivid illustrations of 'divertissement' and the 'cachot' in La Con? dition humaine, the presence of Pascal haunts Malraux's writing as a whole, as witness the shared imagery of theatre and gambling, and the common aim of challenging, rather than reassuring, the reader. Sylvie Howlett locates the obsession with Dostoyevsky in the novels but also in Antimemoires and Le Demon de I'absolu, where T. E. Lawrence is assimilated to Kirilov in The Devils. Other writers and texts?notably D. H. Lawrence with Lady Chatterley's Lover, Laclos with Les Liaisons dangereuses, Faulkner with Sanctuary, and Andree Viollis with Indochine S.O.S.?allow Malraux, through his 'prefaces allographes' (in Genette's phrase), to identifyand reflectshared visions and proclaim his modernity, as Jean-Claude Larrat convincingly shows. Less focused on Malraux the reader, Jean-Pierre Zarader confirms the philosophical correlation between his concept of the metamorphosis of the work of art and Walter Benjamin's rejection of Einfuhlung or identification with the historical past. Among the other items Walter Langlois's article minutely details events leading to the cre? ation of the 'Escadrille Espana' in 1936, and there are fresh insights into Malraux's unlikely friendship with Drieu La Rochelle, as when Jacques Lecarme suggests that in 1941 the pair 'semble [. . .] evoluer [. . .] dans un western digne de John Ford' (p. 128). There are also some less than flatteringjudgements from Leautaud's Journal litteraire and Sartre's Carnets de la drole de guerre. If the main achievement of the volume, then, is to consolidate and refine on established areas, it also has room for dissent and controversy; and this extends to recent concerns, as in the critical comptes rendus of Emile Biasini's tendentious account of Malraux at the Ministry of Cultural Affairs (Sur Malraux qui aimait les chats (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1999)), and of Olivier Todd's ambitious, but markedly unsympathetic, biography (Paris: Gallimard, 2001). In all senses the dialogues are ongoing. Queen's University Belfast Chris Shorley Telling Performances: Essays on Gender, Narrative, and Performance. Ed. by Brian Nelson, Anne Freadman, and Philip Anderson. London: Associated Presses. 2001. 270 pp. ISBN 0-87413-707-1. This collection of essays, a tribute to the work of the late Marie Maclean with the declared intention of being 'panegyric' rather than 'cathartic' (p. 9), is a welcome con- 220 Reviews tribution to the study of narrative. The diverse meanings of the expression 'telling performances'?the telling of performance, the performance of telling, the fact that some performances are particularly 'telling'?are investigated in various ways by the differentcontributors. The firstfive essays are the most strictly narratological, and move from a useful theoretical overview, where Gerald Prince takes stock of recent thinking on narrativity,to consideration ofthe vicissitudes ofplot in a number ofspeci? ficworks. In the works featured there is a diversity ofboth time (although the twentieth century predominates, there is a discussion of Emile Gaboriau's early detective novel Le Crime d...