Le sec et l'humide by Jonathan Littell
2009; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 83; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/wlt.2009.0243
ISSN1945-8134
Autores Tópico(s)Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies
Resumosays thatone such assumption is the "tautological idea thatsince India isa huge baggy monster, thenovels that accommodate it have to be baggy monsters as well." Another assump tion is thatbecause "thepostcolonial, often diasporic, Indian is a hybrid entity, the language of the postco lonial too must be hybrid, with a scattering of untranslated Indian words and phrases and odd sentence constructions." Chaudhuri says, "In a culture of signification, the issue of what a 'real' masterpiece is, or whether such a thingcan even exist, is an irrelevance; what matters is the marketing and consumption, after each successful publicity campaign and the awarding of each prize, of the signiher, the idea of themaster piece, the idea of the Indian novel in English." Amit Chaudhuri should have added an essay to substantiate his comments above. Readers need to know what happens behind the curtains. RamlalAgarwal Jalna, Maharashtra, India Nora Glickman. Bilingual Anthology: Theatre /Antologi'a Biling?e: Teatro. Jorge Dubatti, intro. Buenos Aires. Edi ciones Tu Llave. 2008. 388 pages, ill. US$23. isbn978-950-706-107-3 BilingualAnthology:Theatre/ Antologia Biling?e: Teatro presents, in English and Spanish on facing pages, the work of the Argentine-U.S. play wright and short-story writer Nora Glickman. The translations and the editing of thevolume are the work of the playwright herself. The volume contains fourplays: A CertainRaquel I Una talRaquel, the one-act A Day inNew York /Un dia enNueva York, LiturgiesI Liturgias, and thewinner of the JeromeTheater Award, Sub urbanNews INoticias de Suburbio.All of theseplays were originally staged between 1993 and 1998, but over the years theyhave evolved as the author revised in response to feed back received during production. Commentary on Glickman's work is representedby a vague but enthu siastic introductory essay by Jorge Dubatti and, following each play, brief excerpts fromvarious typesof critical discussion. Bilingual Anthol ogywas already in press when the multiauthored criticalvolume Claves en el teatrode Nora Glickman (2007) was published in Buenos Aires by Nueva Generaci?n, and for this reason thenew anthology does not draw upon this abundant source of commentary on Glickman's theater. It includes, as well, posters and cast photos from productions, a bibli ography of published versions of theplays, and a chronology of their performances,whether full stagings or readings. The two earliest plays, Suburban News and A Day inNew York, are similar in their subject matter and in the author's bemused, semicomi cal approach to it.Each details the tumultuous, bicultural existence of a Latina woman living in theNew York area. The heroine of Subur banNews interactswith supportive female friends, while theprotagonist of A Day inNew York randomly encounters some of the colorful char acterswho populate thebig city. The other two plays also cen ter on female protagonists but are based on research and have a more somber tone. A Certain Raquel dra matizes the lifeof a historical figure, Raquel Liberman, a Polish-Jewish immigrant to Argentina who was trapped into prostitution by the Zwi Migdal association of Jewish white slavers and denounced her exploiters. Liturgies,set inNew Mex ico, is a creative elaboration of the much-debated hypothesis that the state's longtime Latino residents are descended fromcrypto-Jews.In Lit urgies, a seventeenth-century victim of the Inquisition haunts a current day Latina woman, transforming her identityand throwinghermarriage into crisis. Though the treatmentof the theme is highly imaginative, as preparation for writing itGlickman traveled toNew Mexico and partici pated in seminars on crypto-Judaism inwhat is now the U.S. Southwest. Although the volume's proof reading is farfromflawless,Bilingual Anthologyserves itsfunctionofkeep ingNora Glickman's plays available and isa livelyand variegated collec tion with particular relevance toboth women's and Jewish studies. Naomi Lindstrom UniversityofTexas atAustin JonathanLitteil.Le sec et l'humide. Paris. Gallimard. 2008. 140 pages. 15.50. isbn978-2-07-011945-5 JonathanLittellburst onto theFrench literary scene with a 900-page novel set during theHolocaust, Les bien veillantes, which became a best-sell er and earned him the prestigious HMarchs April 2009 i77 > Z w D H < w H hJ D O iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniii Goncourt Prize in 2006. His new book, neither a novel nor a conven tional essay, is a curious literary offshoot resulting from the lengthy background research he carried out forLes bienveillantes.In he sec etVhu mide (The dry and thewet), Littell considers thecase of a Belgian fascist politician, Leon Degrelle, who joined and came to command the Waffen SS "Wallonie" legion that fought alongside German troops on the Eastern Front.Degrelle survived the war and unapologetically recounted inhismemoirs why and how he had chosen to fight forNazi Germany. Littell,who had originally intended to subtitle his book "Anatomy of Fascist Speech," provides a detailed stylisticanalysis (sometimes lineby line) of Degrelle's predictably self aggrandizing account of his partici pation in thebattles of theRussian campaign: "Ce n'est pas en fait de la politique de Degrelle qu'il sera question ici,mais de son langage" (What is considered in thisbook is in factnotDegrelle's politics, but his language). Littell derives his categories of "dry" and "wet" from Male Fanta sies (1987), Klaus Theweleit's study ofwhat might be called themental structuresof the fascist sense of self (Theweleit contributed an afterword to he sec et Vhumide).These catego ries are applied toDegrelle's meta phor-laden text,yielding the care fully constructed self-image of the fascistsoldier encased ina dry,hard, impenetrable shell, as he manfully struggles against the wet, slimy,and somehow feminizedmuddy terrain inwhich his enemy feels at home. Even Degrelle's lengthydescriptions of the innumerable cadavers thatare strewn about the landscape reflect thisdichotomy: thedesiccated, bone dry rigidity of his dead comrades as opposed to the smells and dull 11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 colors of a muddy swamp, which, true to form,he associates with the shapeless corpses of "Asiatic" Rus sians. Littell uses several pictures, some from wartime propaganda, to illustratethe ways in which Degrelle sought to represent himself and his activities,both during and after the war. Whether Le sec et Vhumidefinds a lastingplace in thevast historiog raphy of fascism remains tobe seen. What makes thisbook interestingis not somuch itsinvestigation into the delusions of a pathetic remnant of the most murderous regime in his tory, but rather the window itopens into one author's creative writing activity. Littell now lives in Spain, where Degrelle calmly and unrepen tantly lived out the rest of his life (hedied in 1994 at theage of eighty eight). While Degrelle seems toshare few common traits with Maximilien Aue, themain character of Littell's impressive novel, Les bienveillantes, there is something chillingly familiar about theplacidly detailed retelling (from a safe, comfortable vantage point) of how a shrewd opportunist managed to survive?and at times thrive?during a period of uninter rupted mass slaughter. EdwardOusselin WesternWashingtonUniversity Harold ?. Segel. The Columbia Liter ary History of Eastern Europe since 1945. New York. Columbia University Press. 2008. 424 pages. $75. isbn978-0 231-13306-7 Harold B. Segel's Literary History of Eastern Europe since 1945 is a fasci nating book. Despite its remarkable scope, itisawork of a single scholar, who is professor emeritus of Slavic literatures at Columbia University. The book is divided into eleven chapters that follow literatures of 111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 fifteen Eastern European countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, theCzech Repub lic,East Germany, Hungary, Lithu ania, Macedonia, Poland, Roma nia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine. Segel focuses on topics that he regards "characteristic and impor tant within a chronological struc ture beginning in the post-World War II period and continuing to the present." Organized thematically,which allows Segel to discuss an author in more than one context, some of the most interesting chapters are "The Reform Imperative in Eastern Europe: From Solidarity toPostmod ernism," "The House of Card Col lapses: The Literary Fallout of the Yugoslav Crisis of the 1990s," and "Writers Behind Bars: Eastern Euro pean Prison Literature, 1945-1990." Correctly contending, for instance, that Eastern European postmodern ism is an "expression of the grow ing demand for liberalization and democratization" of the society and culture, as well as that the imprison ment ofwriters was practiced in all of Eastern Europe?and not only in the former SSSR, what is gen erally understood in theAmerican 11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 78 i World Literature Today ...
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