Cette rubrique rassemble des notes de lecture par divers rédacteurs.

“Dis-moi ce que tu lis, et je te dirai qui tu es.”__by K.R. Berri

Not as presumptuous as it may sound to certain non-Francophile ears, although some cases are more complex than others, to be sure.  At the beginning of the year, I discovered through an email exchange with two old friends – one in San José, California who had bravely picked up Moby Dick (I hadn’t corresponded with her for nearly twenty years), and one in Rome who was charmed by re-reading Pride and Prejudice - that sharing notes and thoughts about what we were currently reading was a great way to “catch up” and find out in literary detail a bit more about what was going on in our lives.
At that time I had recently been swept away into the first volume of War and Peace. I’m embarrassed to say that, although I hold a Ph.D. degree in Comparative Literature from a major American university, I had never read it.  I announced to friends, not completely in jest, that War and Peace should be requisite reading for the completion of any and all higher degree work in literary studies, especially the brilliant new English translation by Richard Peavear and Larissa Volokhonsky. This novel that reflects the soul and spirit of old Russia is unlike anything else I had ever read, and Tolstoy’s style is a revelation, so insightful and economical (the antithesis of Henry James, for instance) in describing human nature through the description of a smile (feigned or not) or the look in someone’s eyes. (As a life-long fan of Romance languages, I took a semester of Russian as a lark after doing my qualifying exams, but this book makes me want to learn Russian well enough to be able to read Tolstoy – at least passages – in his original language. For those who don’t read English, the beauty of the new translation should be more than enough motivation to learn that language.)
So what else was I reading at the time?  I had nearly finished re-reading Zola’s L’Assommoir – that monument to the misery caused by alcohol - which I had given a cursory once over in graduate school. Zola is one of my favorite writers, but with a nine year normative time to completion of the doctorate at Berkeley, and thousands of pages to be read with a sometimes cursory but always critical eye, I couldn’t spend more time with it, especially since it was outside my period of specialization. (Does this sound familiar to anyone?)  But now I was so caught up in poor Gervaise’s unjust descent into decrepitude that I suspended the battle of Austerlitz. On the lighter side, I also discovered Stephanie Plum late in the game (mine, not hers) and the sometimes raucously funny investigative chick lit “lite” of Janet Evanovich. When I burst out laughing and called a friend soon after to read him the passage where Lula bares her bethonged backside to her gal pals in the office, displaying a full view of darkest midnight, I knew I was hooked. So in tandem with Tolstoy (not exactly a bicycle built for two), I read Twelve Sharp and then Motor Mouth.  With all due respect, and because I was stressed out with care-giving for my 96-year-old mother and in pain from an infection and minor abscess on my right foot, I once again airily suspended the Russian master for several hours (about all it took) and deferred to his all-American soul sister.
But now I’m back to Moscow and about half way to the end.  Another friend who read Russian literature avidly in college has raved to me about the classic Russian film based on War and Peace whose length rivals this prototype of the modern historical novel that sprang full formed, like Athena, from Tolstoy’s pen onto the paper. And I’ve marked a short sequence of chapters I would like for my friend Jack (the person I called to share my laughter over Lula with) to read.  He’s my former partner and knows just about all my foibles, including my tendency to narrativize in extremis even a simple anecdote or piece of news, if I am so moved. I love language for its infinite variety and its potential for ambiguity and playfulness. My all-time favorite Chinese fortune cookie announced to all the world that “You have a charming way with words. 10 15 26 39 41, 13),” thank you very much. I want Jack to read these twelve pages because I have the sinking feeling that, educated in the ways of the world and literate as he is, he will never read War and Peace in its entirety, and because this excerpt could stand on its own and be read almost as a short story, even without knowing exactly who the major characters are. The brief sequence begins in chapter XIII of volume II, where Natasha climbs into the bed of the old countess, her mother, to talk about love and marriage, and continues through the girlish excitement and loving preparations for Natasha’s first grand ball in Petersburg where she dances with Prince Andrei for the first time. At the ball we meet Mme Peronsky, a friend and relation of the countess, “a skinny and yellow lady-in-waiting of he old court,” who cannot bear Prince Andrei (who often cannot bear himself). But the two young people fall in love as they dance together: “...as soon as he put his arm around her slender, mobile, quivering waist, and she began to move so close to him and smile so close to him, the wine of her loveliness went to his head: he felt himself revived and rejuvenated when, catching his breath and leaving her, he stopped and began to look at the dancers.” It’s fabulous, right?, with its echo of parataxis and affective use of repetition “so close to him,” stylistically and emotionally forceful. And if we read on through chapter XVII (Who could stop now?), we read the articulation of Natasha’s smile that expresses her pure happiness and Andrei’s inner monologue that begins, “If she goes to her cousin first, and then to another lady, she’ll be my wife.”
I won’t tell you any more, but you really ought to read the book. Do you know who I am? Do I think I do? Kind of complicated questions, admittedly, but I’ve always gone in for that sort. I think I’ll always be searching and modifying my answers, but that’s the beauty of how reading has to power to enrich our lives and connect us to each other.  Oh, and I’m waiting to start Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto and can’t bear to finish Antonia Fraser’s wonderful, intimate, and vindicating biography of Marie Antoinette, because I know how it ends and have always felt she was never given the fair shake she deserved. As my most radical feminist friend put it after we saw the Sofia Coppola film and both found it a tremendous conceptual achievement, the queen was “hung out to dry” as a scapegoat.  Voilà, mes lectures mises à nues. A suivre.