After Foreigners Take Four Top Book Awards

Is French Literature Burning? - New York Times: Jonathan Littell, an American writer whose novel “The Kindly Ones” won two major French literary prizes." (See photo at linked target page.)

By ALAN RIDING
Published: November 18, 2006
PARIS, Nov. 17

— French authors can hardly be faulted for not being productive: over the past two months, they have published no fewer than 475 new novels. Yet despite all this creative energy, probably the most striking feature of this fall’s literary season is that of six coveted book prizes, four went to novels written in French by non-French authors.

The New York-born writer Jonathan Littell took both the Goncourt and the Académie Française prizes for “Les Bienveillantes,” or “The Kindly Ones,” which has already sold some 280,000 copies. The Femina prize went to “Lignes de Fille,” or “Fault Lines,” by the Canadian-born novelist Nancy Huston, while “Mémoires du Porc-épic,” or “Memoirs of a Porcupine,” won the Renaudot prize for the French-Congolese author Alain Mabanckou.

French readers, critics and literary-prize jurors are now paying special heed to these so-called Francophone foreign writers. And one conclusion is that outside voices — and there are many more than this year’s prize-winners — are offering something absent in homegrown French fiction.

“It is not a coincidence,” said Mr. Semprun, a Spanish-born Francophone novelist who is also a member of the Goncourt jury. “These writers are more open to the world, more universal, less navel-gazing than some French writers.”

DISGRACE, J. M. Coetzee

A short pre-review here. Nothing serious. I'm on p 47 of this novel (it's already Chapter 6) and suddenly the way Coetzee narrates his tale of a post-age-50s lust for simple sex and one attractive student . . . well what is left out in terms of the exposed profs inner turmoil is too much like adventure pop lit which hops from scene to scene without getting into a character's consciousness. I may go to the shelf with Nabakov's Lolita and re-read that novel instead.

Canadian poet Dennis Lee didn't turn me on with a secondhand collection I ordered from Alberta: Riffs. That surprised me. So I continue to 'give the guy a chance'. I found the childrens book he did the poems for: The Ice Cream Store, illustrated by David McPhail. For me, and most children I can imagine, the poems and pictures jump around too much, from this to that. Too many of them for a solid kids lit title.

There are 3 types of poems with illustrations in The Ice Cream Store that I do like, some I think could grow on anyone who repeats the words aloud a few times. The poems that seem to be 'D. L. does Mother Goose', in other words, completely derivative poems; poems that use the sounds of towns, countries and cities (or make words up) to evoke sharp, soft or watery sound-images; and third, poems that are acts of complete innovative creation, poems unlike any other kids poems.

The notes and credits for Riffs (Brick Books, 1993) do not mention The Ice Cream Store (HarperCollins Alligor Press imprint, 1991) although the latter won some prestige in its genre. The Ice Cream Store could have been 3 or 4 award-winning titles in the hands of a good editor and through more work on themes and illustration on the part of the McPhail - Lee team. Surely it wasn't a potboiler for both of them? But without a theme, the best parts are easily forgotten.

That brings me back to Coetzee. The best parts so far were in the beginning. On p 47 it speeds up too much with no depth. Will the book redeem itself if I read on into the night?