XCiTés: The Flamingo Book of Fresh French Writing Book

To anyone whose knowledge of 20th-century French literary culture is circumscribed by the grand figures of Marcel Proust, Andre Gide or Jean Paul Sartre, or by certain well-assimilated traditions of the avant-garde, this book will come as a shock: the diversity of Georgia de Chamberet's much-needed collection reflects that of modern French life, multicultural, iconoclastic, energetically variegated, shot through with attitudes of resistance and rebellion. The witty angst of Marie Desplechin and Agnes Desarthe, the virtuoso misanthropy of Michel Houellebecq, the brutal vivacity of Virginie Despentes, the mythically inflected landscapes of Abdourahman Waberi--these, among others, demonstrate the range and vitality on current French writing. The last three pieces are, however, odd choices. An admittedly excellent extract from a film script by Mathieu Kassovitz, director of La Haine; DJ Tov's somewhat breathlessly written account of French rap and club culture, which nevertheless serves as useful background to several of the other texts; and the rather lame interview with footballer Marcel Desailly which rounds off the collection--all of which indicate an attempt to smuggle in the new writing via the Trojan Horse of popular culture. Given this perhaps over-insistence on current gallic "cool"--the implied conjunction of sex, football, and clubbing, the attitudes of rebellion and cynicism, the seeming insistence on a rupture with past literary traditions (though de Chamberet's introduction is more even-handed)--the fact remains that the most interesting selections here are those which seem to inherit and develop the radical linguistic invention of writers such as Georges Bataille, Antonin Artaud, or Pierre Guyotat, or which resonate with the thought of, say, Helene Cixous or Gilles Deleuze. The pieces by Lorette Nobecourt and Mehdi Belhaj Kacem are quite simply extraordinary: visceral and highly inventive. Kacem's "Anteform" is probably the best account of drugged-up clubbing yet written, deliriously interfacing music, chemicals, and language in an LSD-filtered philosophy of the body. One can only hope that this collection succeeds in persuading publishers to translate more contemporary French writing--on the evidence herein, it puts much modern British fiction to shame. --Burhan TufailRead More