The 'Roman Noir' in Post-War French Culture: Dark Fictions by Claire Gorrara (review)

Abstract

MLRy ioo.i, 2005 221 it is threatened with destruction, figured as an irreducible residue which emerges at the point where it is most contested. If this notion of a fragile yet indestructible humanity that survives the death of the human being finds resonances in the images of spectrality and of ash scattered through the work of thinkers such as Blanchot, Derrida, and Agemben, Crowley also, crucially, unpicks the irreducible differences between their ideas and those of Antelme. The study goes on to explore how Antelme rethinks community and solidarity in the face of their apparent impossibility within and beyond the Nazi camps: community and solidarity survive, but only through solitary resistance to a regime which sought to destroy the possibility of solidarity. This model of solidarity is shown not only to anticipate Antelme's own later political interventions, usefully detailed here, but also to connect Antelme to later thinkers: not only Blanchot and Mascolo, but also Derrida and Nancy. This leads to a discussion of L'Espece humaine as a theorization and enactment of testimony. Crowley focuses on Antelme's imagery and style (a frequently ignored aspect of L'Espece humaine) to draw out a model of testimony as fragile, emergent only via the figure of the (future) reader, and always threatened by its own potential impossibility. Crowley's challenging and detailed study shows vitally that if Antelme is ultimately and necessarily writing within the limits of his own period, none the less he makes an urgent, ethical, and highly politicized challenge to the reader which may never be realized, yet which remains all the more pressing at the beginning ofthe twenty-firstcentury. University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne Kathryn Robson The 'Roman Noir' in Post-War French Culture: Dark Fictions. By Claire Gorrara. (Oxford Studies in Modern European Culture) Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 2003. vi + i36pp. ?30. ISBN 0-19-924609-2. In line with the brief of the Oxford Studies in Modern European Culture series? the presentation, for a student readership, of a selection of texts seen as elucidating specific developments in European culture?this exploration of French noir fiction includes readings of half a dozen texts (including one film), one from each decade since the 1940s, and each considered as symptomatic ofthe social and cultural context of its creation. Thus in addition to a narrative of developments in crime writing, this study also maps major (socio-)historical landmarks ofthe past sixty years in France, sketching briefoutlines ofcollaboration and resistance, decolonization, consumerism, 1968, immigration, and women's rights. Most ofthe six works featured?Leo Malet's 120, rue de la Gare, Henri-Georges Clouzot's filmof Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac 's Les Diaboliques, Jean-Patrick Manchette's Le Petit Bleu de la cote ouest, Didier Daeninckx's Meurtres pour memoire, Daniel Pennac's La Fee carabine, and Maud Tabachnik's Un ete pourri?are canonical within the genre. While one could always quibble about choices where the range is so restricted, a number of other prominent figures are mentioned frequently (Maurice Dantec, Thierry Jonquet, etc). In each chapter, discussion of the representative text forthe decade in question is framed by introductory sections on social context and contemporary cultural trends, and by a concluding consideration of the text's impact on and place in subsequent develop? ments. This structural emphasis on context at the expense of the texts' own literary qualities is generally best suited to critical study of popular fiction,where literary ambitions are modest. The excellent discussion of Manchette, by no coincidence the most cerebral ofthe authors treated here, and whose literary gifts go beyond the reflection of a particular social context, could have been taken furtherwere it not forthe brevity imposed by the format. Another area of tantalizing possibilities is the discussion of film noir, where important questions are raised as to the nature of the genre. How? ever, for those who would wish for more detailed treatment of topics touched on in 222 Reviews this introductory study, helpful indicators to furtherreading abound. Reading crime fiction in terms of social history is an interpretative choice which inevitably sidelines narratological discussion of how suspense is created and maintained. Yet surely this, and not...