Warren Motte. Fiction Now: The French Novel in the Twenty-First Century.

Whisman, Albert Samuel

Warren Motte. Fiction Now: The French Novel in the Twenty-First Century. Champaign, Illinois. Dalkey Archive. 2008. 237 pages. $29.95. ISBN 978-1-56478-503-9

Even from a first glance at the title of Warren Motte's text Fiction Now, many readers and critics may well pause before the elusive term now, for they may associate it with the difficulties inherent in attempting to pinpoint the current state of French fiction that remains in a continuous cycle of regeneration. Yet for those who spend too much time contemplating the impossibility in defining the now, the underlying, polyvalent characteristics of French fiction will remain out of reach and the true import of Motte's text will remain undiscovered.

However, those who have questioned French fiction's purpose and usefulness will continue, either out of curiosity--for Motte's title is, in fact, provocative--or out of an attempt to better comprehend the contemporary French literary scene. For these readers there awaits a plethora of information, meticulously arranged and explained in clear and straightforward language. Instead of reading now as current, I propose to read the term in the sense of urgency. Indeed, Motte's text is a successful demonstration of contemporary French fiction's veritable clarion call to, in the words of Ezra Pound in his 2935 collection of essays, "Make It New." Despite the fact that many of the writers featured in Motte's text differ in concerns and approaches, they all rise up to answer Pound's call since, according to Motte, "they share a crucial will to make French fiction new."

In an exhaustive and superbly detailed analysis of many of the major contemporary French fiction writers--much too long to be listed here--Motte proves that French fiction is more concerned with how fiction is instead of what it constitutes. Throughout Motte questions the status of the novel as medium, as a self-reflexive platform for rethinking the familiar and the unfamiliar. From the textual representation of hitherto absent characters such as factory workers and mental patients to the transformation of the loathed banlieue (suburbs) from a lieu de ban (a place of banishment) to a rejuvenated and privileged experience of the world through the lens of fiction, Motte establishes a dynamic through which contemporary French fiction remains viable as both a literary agent and a cultural form.

Thus Fiction Now, read as a form of critical urgency to question, rethink, and rejuvenate French fiction, bears witness not only to a desire to make fiction new but also to surpassing the superficial realm of the familiar (i.e., the dynamic of mere production and reception), to a more clearly articulated examination of the relationship between writer and reader. In this way, Motte establishes the novel as a dialogue on the many uses of French fiction, and he adeptly teaches us that the contemporary novel is alive and well. In the end, he invites us to move past accepted structures and limitations in order to fully embrace the moment of plenitude that is artistic creation.

Albert Samuel Whisman

University of Oklahoma