Deaths of the Author Monica Latham (bio) The Seventh Function of Language Author Laurent Binet Sam Taylor, trans. Farrar, Straus and Giroux us.macmillan.com/publishers/farrar-straus-giroux 368 Pages; Print, $27.00 February 25th 1980: as he crossed a street in Paris, on his way to work at the Collège de France after a lunch with presidential candidate François Mitterrand, Roland Barthes, the famous French literary critic and philosopher, was run over by a laundry van. The injuries suffered in this unfortunate, banal accident were what led to his death a month later at the hospital Pitié-Salpêtrière in Paris, at the age of 64. This is exactly what history and biographies tell us. Laurent Binet tells us a different story, though, in his new novel The Seventh Function of Language. He throws history and biography to the wind, bends the truth and turns Barthes’ unglamorous death into a riveting conspiracy thriller. The authentic facts that he draws on eventually grow into a ludicrous, labyrinthine, counterfactual story in which the van driver attempts to assassinate Barthes on this February day. But what is his motive? And who exactly is behind the plot to murder a harmless French semiologist? To find out, the reader will have to follow the meanderings of this intriguing semiotic detective novel. The death of the author of “The Death of the Author” is no longer the result of a simple road accident: it is surrounded by secrets, power games, twists, scheming, and political manipulations. In Binet’s novel, on that February day, Barthes carries with him a mysterious, unpublished document about the seventh function of language, which completes the other six functions defined by the linguist Roman Jakobson. The absolute power of this performative function is to offer whoever masters it the ability to convince anyone, in any situation, to do anything. It is a coveted tool for those who access power through words, from the most common orators, through world-class scholars to the highest politicians—all unscrupulously and ruthlessly ready to get their hands on it at all costs. Especially for the upcoming milestone 1981 French presidential campaign, it is the ultimate weapon that could win any candidate the Presidency. The investigation of Barthes’ murder is handled by middle-aged Police Captain Jacques Bayard who recruits young PhD student Simon Herzog to introduce him to semiotics and French Theory and show him the backstage of academia. The Jack Bauer/Sherlock Holmes-inspired characters (influence clearly signaled by their initials) carry out the investigation and cross paths with various suspects from the cream of the French intelligentsia (Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, Philippe Sollers, Bernard-Henry Lévy, Umberto Eco, Hélène Cixous, Jacques Lacan, etc.) or famous politicians (François Mitterrand, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, Jack Lang, etc.). Binet brings together several types of characters in his novel: those who have a historical referent, those who originally come from other fictional universes (for instance, Morris Zapp from Changing Places by David Lodge), and characters created specifically for the needs of his story, “supernumeraries” (Umberto Eco’s term), like Simon, who questions his ontological status as he feels “trapped in a fucking novel.” Binet imagines burlesque situations in which all his characters interact. He also infiltrates Barthes’ memories, explores his “comatose sleep” and his last thoughts before dying, and promises to tell us “what really happened.” Binet’s The Seventh Function of Language is a similar literary artefact to his highly acclaimed first novel HHhH—although, of course, the latter is different in content and tone—insofar as they both reflect the author’s main preoccupation with folding biographical facts and historical events into the narration. They are both the result of an intricate interplay between veracity and imagination. In both novels, questions concerning the proportion of reality and fiction, as well as balance between them are paramount. However, in The Seventh Function of Language Binet performs a more skillful acrobatic novelistic exercise which consists of walking a tightrope between officially recorded historical material and far-fetched, ludicrous situations. Indeed, the novel has a carefully researched base, deeply anchored...