A very well drawn, perfectly paced novel. I am reminded of Gidé's "Fruits of the Earth". (I am sure Drucker meant to refer to this.) Characters and event are believable, though I am still not sure why this is a criterion of quality for me, even when it comes to more outrageous or 'modernist' writing, eg, Gravity's Rainbow, Ulysses. (Who in the first can truly believe that a titanic adenoid might menace a city, and in the latter that Polyphemus is once more slain -albeit symbolically - in early twentieth century Dublin? ) Perhaps it is therefore only weight of an author's commitment to some kind of truth then, that I respond to. A truth that is, if parsed, synonymous with both love for subject, and a need to make this subject heard. Duncker's novel is thus an exploration of what happens when a writer finds an ideal reader. The event of when a writer finds a perfect listener. For, to read is one thing. To hear (and be bewitched by allure, another.) Thus rather than Barthes' famous pronouncement on death of the author, we instead get a kind of birthing: The unnamed post grad in the book embarks on a quixotic journey to meet the insane subject of his research and in so doing (to scrunch the book into Procrustean bed of tropes) he undergoes an internal change, he loves where once (we are led to believe) it seems he might not be disposed to do so. A type of living is birthed in him -only to collapse in the last few almost tragic pages. So too is this a book about books. It is a book about love for books that leads one to study them. It is a book that questions if an author truly can (as per Barthes above) be divorced from his text (and we may recall it is no accident that the French were to 'problematise' this relationship in the middle Twentieth Century, foundations being laid for its plumbing by Saint Beauve in the 19th.)Lastly the book is about love that breaches convention: the postgrad's love breaches personal norms, becoming love which guides and consoles. Curiosity becomes fixation becomes ideation becomes obsession. Almost a Proustian matrix, the stronger for being exclusive and outside Postgrad's normative way of being. A holiday romance with a beguiling, devotional twist.Technically, because this matters beyond mere story for me, Duncker's prose is controlled, her line well measured and precise, not once verging into melisma or excess. (I want to write a song and call it 'Prancing Kittens'.) Her narrator's voice is again, believable, sine qua non of successful reading experience. However, a minor gripe. If as a whole her fictional enterprise succeeds (so much so that I googled Paul Michel to see if he existed, knowing he never did,) some elements challenge her easy mimetic flow. (view spoiler)[eg: witness the 'agent of Minerva' shall we say, intimated and suggested early in the novel (as it should be to set up its symbolic heritage within the work) only for it not to be used (qua Socrates and Nordic-ly) as some kind of ironic comment on quest for knowledge being not the same as the gathering-to-self of wisdom, but instead to be used as actual agent of Michel's death. Bird meets voiture meets face. Truly bizarre. Duncker aims for the verisimilitude of the 'you couldn't make it up' kind (even though she did,) but for the extraordinary to work as this kind of epistemic and (visceral )shock, to have it appear as a kind of truly 'freak accident' it has to happen without reference, without intimation of fate, symbolic or otherwise. Though Duncker doesn't exactly telegraph her sucker punch she does lessen its impact. The "owl v. man" a slight mistep in the events. Rather Michel had died careening down a ravine (yes, how lame, I know) or something, than the slightly clumsy (though oddly humourous?) demise Duncker writes for him. (hide spoiler)]
The captivating title ladles servings of disappointment and hope in uneven swathes. A philosophical fiction, a novel of academia, a book on the creative mind, story of a writer. Any one of these would prove necessary for me to read immediately. It was a book of all of these but first it was a, novel. Its parts sprung from the story, shoots and growth. At times a 2 star rating at times touching a spiraling 5. tI saw where it meant to arrive. Then, in advance I placed my money down on the table with a wry smile, on the numbered choice of the author's craft of teasing with the obvious and predictable then switching to a beguiling direction. The casino card dealer turned over his card. I placed my hand down hard between his and my chips. I gave the cocksure upward nod of the head, intimidating or revealing the need for further chiropractic work. tHe said, "You lost."t"Count your cards," I laughed.t"You do the counting."tI smiled looking down at my queen and ten. Offered him the same.tHe grinned glancing at his ace and king while shoveling my chips from me.t"What?"tDuncker had slipped the narrative off a third way, then…She never notifying me, no phone calls, collect or otherwise, e-mails, telegrams, no police at my door to tell me my egoism died in a reading accident.tFollowing the funeral service which only I attended, tear-struck, humbled, I continued an open reading of this novel of ideas, intricate, and fascinating relationships-our passive graduate student narrator and his undefined relationship with a cold demanding woman (who could care less about these qualities, for she studied and knew everything. She studied Schiller, loving the act of this study, his writing, thought, ideas, the Him of the writer and the She of the Reader,) the narrator's relationship with a fictional author, this author's relationship with Michael Foucault, not in the flesh but responding to each others published work with the next of their own. Finally, his girlfriend's(?) demeaning push for him to shed his passivity and free this author from an asylum in France, tThe relationships are provocative, rounded and articulated as though molded by the crafted hands of a sculptor. The weave of her prose invites one into the story, provides an opportunity to know these characters within, to live the pressure of obsession, the tingled compulsion of creativity, the bursting of boundaries, beauty of love, surprise. There was no reason to search for doors to leave for there were none. Shaded corners were provided for brief rests but returns were necessary, imminent. tIn the end there was a snap. I felt it along the neck and down the vertebrae of my spine. My chiropractor readjusted all that needed readjusting, telling me that even though I might never lose again, to stay away from casinos, and to be careful of what I read. At the end all the scraps, details, pieces, come together surprising, haunted, perfect. An architecture of finely drawn lines.tThis book, expressing the grace and palpability of the relationship between writer and reader, was her first novel. In the book she comments how authors writing a first novel make the mistake of trying to include everything. She is about to err herself, keeps seeming as though she will. But maybe she knows what she is doing. I would bet money on… RECOMMENDED FOR: tThose who love to read.tThose who seek seekingtThose who enjoy the multiplying of genres into something unique.4 Stars: Need to save one for her next book. It might even be better!
What do You think about Hallucinating Foucault (1998)?
I found this book last semester while working on a research project about Michel Foucault's heterotopia theory, the installation/sculptural art of Louise Bourgeois,and the union of Foucault and feminist theory as it relates to Bourgeois' work. Duncker does a wonderful job of summing up Foucault's philosophies, while maintaining control over the nameless main character's voice. She even manages to pull in the falling away from Sartre, who once said, "Nous sommes que nous ne sommes pas." We are what we are not. However, I think the narrator paradoxically exudes existentialism. Feverish prose, Freud and Nietzsche allusions, Foucauldian philosophy...who could ask for anything more?I finished this book last night, and am still impressed after getting sleep. There is a nice twist near the end that I would've never guessed, and I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a journey into a breathtaking work of poetic fiction.
—ej
Not awful. A short novel with far less philosophy in it than I expected. Numerous blurbs on front and back covers and first pages raised my expectations far too high. I knew it would be a love story; I did not expect it to be so trite, so "first love"-ish. Too many things, including people, glitter and glimmer. The young British researcher falls in love with the much older, very famous novelist. I don't want to write any spoilers -- but it's easy to see all the things coming.This probably would have been my favorite novel forever if I'd read it when I was 15 years old. I was a sappy teen. For that reason, I can't fathom why reviewers liked this so much (they are adults). As for Foucault, well, there is madness, yes. A little discipline and punish. But even the Foucault angle is too unbelievably convenient. "We met on the barricades. I attended his lectures and he spoke only to me. But we were never alone together." It's like an undergraduate's fantasy.If you're in the mood for a literary-flavored sappy love story, go for it.
—Mindy McAdams
amazon.com/author/sergiupobereznicA brilliant little debut novel.A graduate student at Cambridge (the anonymous narrator) is doing a dissertation on the fictitious writer Paul Michel and his relationship to the renown philosopher Foucault. In the course of the dissertation he travels to France in an attempt to try and locate Michel, who had suddenly stopped writing and disappeared (Michel had been institutionalized for insanity). Michel had had a lifelong obsession with Foucault. And now the doctoral student goes above and beyond mere academic interest to find out what happened to him.This novel has a mysterious, cryptic quality with psychological twists and turns. Even though there is a scholarly aspect to Duncker's writing, she doesn't burden the reader with overly bookish theory and erudition, but allows the story to speak for itself, while avoiding obvious clichés She is also clever and skillful at characterization; exacting, defined and to the point. The character driven plot is well constructed, but the initial set up, I felt, was a little too longwinded, (first 30 pages). On the other hand, the prose was excellent, which made the initial, slightly rambling journey, worthwhile.Much of the story is about the written word and the main theme is the relationship between reader and writer – something rarely thought about or discussed. Other themes are love, passion, sexuality, devotion, madness, obsession, loyalty, history and art.Even though Foucault is in the title, (suggesting philosophy may be on the horizon) there is nothing ostentatious or heavily academic about this novel. It is an easy read, unlike so much of the philosophical work out there. Duncker has created a page turner.My faith in high-quality, literary fiction has been restored.Sergiu Pobereznic (author)amazon.com/author/sergiupobereznic
—Sergiu Pobereznic
