french literature recommendations?

Perhaps I owe France another chance? The title of this article, “French literature: elitist and pointless?” ended up being more interesting than the article itself, a review of two recently published and (apparently) much lauded French books, Suicide and The Explosion of the Radiator Hose. Unfortunately the title itself doesn’t fit the piece, and I’m sure some editor is to blame for that. The article’s real kicker was his reason for why contemporary French literature is once again returning to the realm of the relevant:

All of which begs the question of whether, in the 21st century, should we care what the French write and think? The answer to this question is yes— that we should read literature in French again and care about what it says. This is because a distinct resistance movement to theory has recently been gaining ground with French authors. The present crop of young writers  are rediscovering the pleasure of writing to be read rather than studied. Second, many of these writers do not belong to the elites of the Left Bank. Much of the new French literature is made up of voices from the edges of the big cities, or former colonies.

Really?

For much the same reasons—an emphasis on writing about life as it is lived instead of ideas—French writing in the new century is gaining ground. Authors are returning to the strengths of the French tradition: the clarity of its language, the uniqueness of its history and its quixotic mission to solve the problems of mankind. Added to all this is the hyper-complexity of contemporary life in a globalised world.

Being overly mired in theory isn’t what makes a piece of fiction elitist and pointless, but rather the affectations that come with writing a theoretical book and the ways they permeate and poison the characters and events in it. Smugness is like cancer, and it spreads through and out one’s person and into everything they do.

In the age of the Kindle and Amazon, haunting the bookstores of Paris remains one of the great pleasures of the city. The best bookshops still defiantly prize literature not for saleability but quality.  They are also unafraid to teach you stuff. Recently, my local bookstore in the Rue Daguerre had a window display on the Swiss poet Philippe Jaccottet, one of the greatest living poets writing in French but barely known outside the French-speaking world. Disgracefully, I have never read much of his work, so I bought a collection of his poems and came away from the bookshop both inspired and informed.

It is pollution.