One of the things I like about L'étranger (www.letranger.co.uk) is the interesting "loose ends" within it. On the one hand Meursault at one point cuts out an advert he finds amusing from a newspaper and sticks it into a scrapbook he uses so that he can read them again; later on in the book he is bemused by a woman who meticulously checks off what she is going to listen to on the radio that week...not really such a huge difference-clearly the same species of being! Later on of course she appears at the trial, representing that type of person although she plays no part in the precedings.
Thérèse Desqueyroux feels a little bit like that with lots of aspects of the novel not really tied up; much of the time we are not sure whom the omniscient narrator is addressing. Do we ever really find out why Thérèse decided to poison her husband-she enquires whether ferns and the prussic acid they contain are poisonous before she marries so there is a tantalising trail of intent running through the novel.
There are contradictions which also make the reader wonder why Thérèse is so dissatisfied; in Bernard she has got the best of the bunch as far as blokes go. She indulges in business and political conversation alongside the men and obviously gives as good as she gets. It's no use really speculating what she could have done with her life if she hadn't followed the course she did as the point of the novel was to get inside the skin of a woman not achieving her potential at a time when the female suffrage was still nearly twenty years away...
An extremely interesting novel to read and so much to think about, not least the narrative structure. After the opening sequence and one or two travel details further in we don't get back to the present day in the novel's terms until two thirds of the way through the book.
Going back to Meursault someone with whom we seek to compare our own moral compass, do we like or respect him..I don't know- and does it matter what we think? It's a bit like that with Thérèse through whose motivation most of the plot is driven-she seems rather unpleasant; from the word goes she gives up trying to empathise with Bernard with whom she was really keen to get married; she is very unpleasant towards her friend Anne-it goes on. All in all though, especially with a good film version of the book coming out, worth studying, again maybe studying the region also.
More on the alevelfrench.com content here http://www.alevelfrench.com/home/mod/book/view.php?id=962&chapterid=434
Tuesday 22 January 2013
Sporting novels in French
In the French context, sport is a more open concept than in the UK I guess. At www.alevelfrench.com/home we are only covering one title currently which covers climbing, "La neige en deuil", a short very characterful novel by Henri Troyat where two brothers living in the Alps undertake a very different kind of mountaineering expedition as the focal point of the story.
The novel pits the brothers against the worst conditions nature could throw at them as well as opposing good and evil. Set against a period when it was becoming more and more difficult for a younger person to consider the peasant lifestyle as acceptable we look at the period with nostalgia as before long the hippy generation would be looking to emulate the "idyllic" circumstances of the mountain hamlet. Self-sufficiency in abundance.
With the younger brother wanting to get out and start a new life down in the town, the older brother formerly a top mountain guide who has flashbacks to a fatal accident in which he was involved holds a torch for the old ways. This clash, central to the novel is beautifully written especially as it is also brings in a foretaste of globalisation in the shape of the aeroplane crash which catapults the modern world into the brothers' environment. And this in an age when the whole village huddles around a radio to listen to the news.
It is hard to believe that a novel with such pedigree is not more widely read. It would certainly be very interesting to study alongside a geographical study of the Alps, surely a worthy area to investigate. To find out more about the alevelfrench.com resources on this novel go to http://www.alevelfrench.com/home/mod/book/view.php?id=962&chapterid=341
The other novel of this kind which relates to climbing is Premier de Cordée by Frison-Roche which also traces a mountain expedition. Written in Vichy France it involves a guide escorting an American climber up the mountain. It was intended to pit a traditional eternal French life style with the metronomic, time is money approach of the American.
The other novel which I've not read recently but need to revisit is 325 000 francs by Roger Vailland, a communist writer. It traces the efforts of a racing cyclist to earn enough money racing to pay the deposit on a café. This is an interest ambition for the period when it was written as it equates to the kind of reward levels of professional footballers of the day.
The novel pits the brothers against the worst conditions nature could throw at them as well as opposing good and evil. Set against a period when it was becoming more and more difficult for a younger person to consider the peasant lifestyle as acceptable we look at the period with nostalgia as before long the hippy generation would be looking to emulate the "idyllic" circumstances of the mountain hamlet. Self-sufficiency in abundance.
With the younger brother wanting to get out and start a new life down in the town, the older brother formerly a top mountain guide who has flashbacks to a fatal accident in which he was involved holds a torch for the old ways. This clash, central to the novel is beautifully written especially as it is also brings in a foretaste of globalisation in the shape of the aeroplane crash which catapults the modern world into the brothers' environment. And this in an age when the whole village huddles around a radio to listen to the news.
It is hard to believe that a novel with such pedigree is not more widely read. It would certainly be very interesting to study alongside a geographical study of the Alps, surely a worthy area to investigate. To find out more about the alevelfrench.com resources on this novel go to http://www.alevelfrench.com/home/mod/book/view.php?id=962&chapterid=341
The other novel of this kind which relates to climbing is Premier de Cordée by Frison-Roche which also traces a mountain expedition. Written in Vichy France it involves a guide escorting an American climber up the mountain. It was intended to pit a traditional eternal French life style with the metronomic, time is money approach of the American.
The other novel which I've not read recently but need to revisit is 325 000 francs by Roger Vailland, a communist writer. It traces the efforts of a racing cyclist to earn enough money racing to pay the deposit on a café. This is an interest ambition for the period when it was written as it equates to the kind of reward levels of professional footballers of the day.
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