Warren Motte – författare

Small Worlds examines the minimalist trend in French writing, from the early 1980s to the present. Warren Motte first considers the practice of minimalism in other media, such as the plastic arts and music, and then proposes a theoretical model of minimalist literature. Subsequent chapters are devoted to the work of a variety of contemporary French writers and a diversity of literary genres. In his discussion of minimalism, Motte considers smallness and simplicity, a reduction of means (and the resulting amplification of effect), immediacy, directness, clarity, repetition, symmetry, and playfulness. He argues that economy of expression offers writers a way of renovating traditional literary forms and allows them to represent human experience more directly. Motte provides close readings of novels by distinguished contemporary French writers, including Edmond Jabès, Annie Ernaux, Hervé Guibert, Marie Redonnet, Jean Echenoz, Olivier Targowla, and Emmanuèle Bernheim, demonstrating that however diverse their work may otherwise be, they have all exploited the principle of formal economy in their writing.

A remarkable collection of writings by members of the group known as the Oulipo (Ouvroir de litterature potentiale), this anthology includes, among others, Italo Calvino, Harry Mathews, Georges Perec, Jacques Roubaud, and Raymond Queneau. Founded in Paris in 1960, the Oulipo views imaginative writing as an exercise dominated by the method of "constraints." While a major contribution to literary theory, and also great fun, Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature is perhaps most distinguished as an indispensable guide to writers.

Mirror Gazing is a book about reading and looking, about what people seek when they read, and about what stares back at them from the printed page. It is an archival project, based on a wealth of material collected daily by celebrated critic Warren F. Motte over thirty-five years and squirreled away for some eventual winter. It is also a love letter, a confession, a tale of deep obsession, and a cry for help addressed to anyone who takes literature seriously.“At heart, this is not just a book about mirror scenes, interesting as they are— and they are interesting. It’s also a look at passion, at collection, at personal taxonomies and the game of creating order from disorder (do we ever win that game?). It’s about how we read and why we read. And it’s about the Delphic maxim, “Know thyself.” Motte explores how characters look for (or suddenly catch) themselves in mirrors, as well as how (or whether) the act of writing is a reflection, distorted or true, of writers themselves.”— Julie Larios, Numero Cinq“I believe (and I’m choosing my words carefully) that this is the most extraordinary book about reading I have ever read” – Jacques Jouet“Wonderfully luminous, entertaining, thought-provoking, and wide-ranging…an essential book” – Gerald Prince“Motte has collected around ten thousand mirror scenes from roughly 1,500 books. This, in and of itself, is noteworthy, but the book is not simply a reprinting of quotes from various books. It is a deeply considered analysis of what it actually means to look into a mirror. For the serious reader, this book will serve as a trip through your reading past. I was reminded—somewhat nostalgically—of much of the literature that has defined the early part of my adult life. From Nabokov to Salinger to Rilke to Calvino, the book makes its way into just about every corner of American and European literature.” – Nancy Smith, YourImpossibleVoice

French Fiction Today focuses on the French novel in the twenty-first century, examining a series of works that are exemplary of broader currents in the genre. Each of these texts wagers insistently upon our willingness to speculate about literature and its uses, in an age when the value of literature is no longer taken as axiomatic. Each of these texts may be thought of as a critical novel, a form that calls upon us to engage with it in a critical manner, promising that meaning will arise in the articulation of writing and reading. Each of these authors participates in a debate about what the novel is as a cultural form in our present—and about what it may become, in a future that begins right now.

Readers of the contemporary novel in France are witnessing the most astonishing reinvigoration of narrative prose since the New Novel of the 1950s. In the last few years, bold, innovative, and richly compelling novels have been written by a variety of young writers. These texts question traditional strategies of character, plot, theme, and message; and they demand new strategies of reading, too. Choosing ten novels published during the 1990s as examples of that trend, Warren Motte traces the resurgence of the novel in France. He argues that each of the novels under consideration here, quite apart from what other stories it tells, presents a?fable?of the novel that deals with the genre's possibilities, limitations, and future as a cultural form.

Readers of the contemporary novel in France are witnessing the most astonishing reinvigoration of narrative prose since the New Novel of the 1950s. In the last few years, bold, innovative, and richly compelling novels have been written by a variety of young writers. These texts question traditional strategies of character, plot, theme, and message; and they demand new strategies of reading, too. Choosing ten novels published during the 1990s as examples of that trend, Warren Motte traces the resurgence of the novel in France. He argues that each of the novels under consideration here, quite apart from what other stories it tells, presents a?fable?of the novel that deals with the genre's possibilities, limitations, and future as a cultural form.

Fiction Now reports on the current states of the novel in France, taking a series of soundings within the compass of innovative French writing since 2001. Chapters focus closely upon Jean Echenoz, Marie Redonnet, Christian Gailly, Lydie Salvayre, G?rard Gavarry, H?l?ne Lenoir, Patrick Lapeyre, and Christine Montalbetti. Each of the authors invoked exemplified in his or her work a different set of strategies, concerns, and approaches: one of them transposes the Book of Judith to the Parisian suburbs; another imagines the most taciturn of cowboys in the American West; still another goes well beyond death, into the afterlife of a concert pianist. Despite their diversity of theme and technique, these writers share a will to make French fiction new, and demonstrate compellingly that the novel as it is practiced in France today is an extremely vigorous, deeply enthralling, and richly plural cultural form.

Editions P.O.L is perhaps the most innovative and important French publisher today, welcoming richly challenging and experimental literature into its fold to appear side by side with books belonging squarely in the mainstream. This issue of TheReview of Contemporary Fiction pays tribute to this remarkable publisher with essays, images, and excerpts from previously untranslated works, and an interview with founder and director Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens.