Revue critique de fixxion française contemporaine, Jun 15, 2021
Les contenus de la Revue critique de fixxion française contemporaine sont mis à disposition selon... more Les contenus de la Revue critique de fixxion française contemporaine sont mis à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Attribution -Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale -Pas de Modification 4.0 International.
Symposium: A Quarterly Journal In Modern Literatures, Oct 2, 2021
Abstract In Mon ancêtre Poisson (2019), Christine Montalbetti looks through her family tree in or... more Abstract In Mon ancêtre Poisson (2019), Christine Montalbetti looks through her family tree in order to find the oldest ancestor whom she can identify, one Jules Poisson (1833–1919), her great-great-grandfather. The book is quite unlike any other that she has written to this point, and it bears the traces of a variety of techniques. A great deal of documentary, archival research certainly went into it, but so did a lot of speculation. Hard fact and objective, even scientific data rub elbows with very personal considerations. Flatly declarative narration gives way to an impassioned intergenerational conversation, and vice versa. Montalbetti’s project is not merely biographical in character. It is a novel, after all, and if its main protagonist often occupies the center of the narrative stage, the book is not solely and uniquely about him. For if Montalbetti is manifestly concerned with understanding who her great-great-grandfather was in his life, she is also concerned with what that very understanding might mean in her own life. In other terms, this is a book about him, but it is also a book about her—and about the vexed notion of contact between one person and another, across a gap measuring several generations.
Symposium: A Quarterly Journal In Modern Literatures, Apr 3, 2018
ABSTRACT As creatures of space, we think about space in a variety of ways, some of them fairly st... more ABSTRACT As creatures of space, we think about space in a variety of ways, some of them fairly straightforward, others more than passingly vexed. It is legitimate to say that as much as we inhabit space, space inhabits us, significantly shaping the way we imagine ourselves and the way we come to be in the world. The French writers Georges Perec and Edmond Jabès reflected long and hard on the notion of space in an effort to adapt it to their own particular purposes. While both conceive space as one of the fundamental categories of their writerly projects, they stake out positions on that issue that are very different indeed and that define two opposing poles on a horizon of possibility. Reading Perec and Jabès, we are inevitably led to rethink our own position with regard to literature and the spaces that it limns and to ask ourselves where we stand.
A taste for lands far from Metropolitan France marks Jean Rolin’s writing. He indulges that taste... more A taste for lands far from Metropolitan France marks Jean Rolin’s writing. He indulges that taste in Savannah (2015), an account of a trip he took to that American city in remembrance of a previous trip in the company of his friend, the photographer Kate Barry. An elegiac tone echoes throughout the book, for between those two trips, Kate Barry died. As Rolin charts his new itinerary, the films that Kate took during their first trip provide Rolin with a map that he follows very closely in this second trip. Or as closely as he can, for it shortly becomes apparent to him that many things have changed between then and now. The rule of the game insofar as place is concerned is a fairly simple one: if the remembered place has disappeared, one will choose to visit the place that seems to be the closest to it, both spatially and affectively. Thus, throughout Rolin’s account of his new visit, he notes a series of displacements, clinamens of a sort which serve to remind us that change is inev...
Revue critique de fixxion française contemporaine, Jun 15, 2021
Les contenus de la Revue critique de fixxion française contemporaine sont mis à disposition selon... more Les contenus de la Revue critique de fixxion française contemporaine sont mis à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Attribution -Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale -Pas de Modification 4.0 International.
Symposium: A Quarterly Journal In Modern Literatures, Oct 2, 2021
Abstract In Mon ancêtre Poisson (2019), Christine Montalbetti looks through her family tree in or... more Abstract In Mon ancêtre Poisson (2019), Christine Montalbetti looks through her family tree in order to find the oldest ancestor whom she can identify, one Jules Poisson (1833–1919), her great-great-grandfather. The book is quite unlike any other that she has written to this point, and it bears the traces of a variety of techniques. A great deal of documentary, archival research certainly went into it, but so did a lot of speculation. Hard fact and objective, even scientific data rub elbows with very personal considerations. Flatly declarative narration gives way to an impassioned intergenerational conversation, and vice versa. Montalbetti’s project is not merely biographical in character. It is a novel, after all, and if its main protagonist often occupies the center of the narrative stage, the book is not solely and uniquely about him. For if Montalbetti is manifestly concerned with understanding who her great-great-grandfather was in his life, she is also concerned with what that very understanding might mean in her own life. In other terms, this is a book about him, but it is also a book about her—and about the vexed notion of contact between one person and another, across a gap measuring several generations.
Symposium: A Quarterly Journal In Modern Literatures, Apr 3, 2018
ABSTRACT As creatures of space, we think about space in a variety of ways, some of them fairly st... more ABSTRACT As creatures of space, we think about space in a variety of ways, some of them fairly straightforward, others more than passingly vexed. It is legitimate to say that as much as we inhabit space, space inhabits us, significantly shaping the way we imagine ourselves and the way we come to be in the world. The French writers Georges Perec and Edmond Jabès reflected long and hard on the notion of space in an effort to adapt it to their own particular purposes. While both conceive space as one of the fundamental categories of their writerly projects, they stake out positions on that issue that are very different indeed and that define two opposing poles on a horizon of possibility. Reading Perec and Jabès, we are inevitably led to rethink our own position with regard to literature and the spaces that it limns and to ask ourselves where we stand.
A taste for lands far from Metropolitan France marks Jean Rolin’s writing. He indulges that taste... more A taste for lands far from Metropolitan France marks Jean Rolin’s writing. He indulges that taste in Savannah (2015), an account of a trip he took to that American city in remembrance of a previous trip in the company of his friend, the photographer Kate Barry. An elegiac tone echoes throughout the book, for between those two trips, Kate Barry died. As Rolin charts his new itinerary, the films that Kate took during their first trip provide Rolin with a map that he follows very closely in this second trip. Or as closely as he can, for it shortly becomes apparent to him that many things have changed between then and now. The rule of the game insofar as place is concerned is a fairly simple one: if the remembered place has disappeared, one will choose to visit the place that seems to be the closest to it, both spatially and affectively. Thus, throughout Rolin’s account of his new visit, he notes a series of displacements, clinamens of a sort which serve to remind us that change is inev...
Uploads
Papers by Warren Motte