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fionnualalirsdottir's review against another edition
On the second page of this novel, in a scene set during the Spring of 1980, the author's first person voice suddenly interrupts the omniscient narrator to wonder about a tiny detail of the scenario the narrator is in the process of setting up. The author's voice is speaking to the reader from thirty-five years after the event the narrator is describing, and since the event really happened—a famous literary figure, knocked down while crossing the street—accuracy in the setting should be important. But the detail he focuses on seems quite trivial: he wonders if the chain of shops called Vieux Camper (Old Camper) were present in Paris's Latin Quarter in 1980, which is something he could easily have looked up on Wikipedia. In any case, I didn't immediately see how that chain of shops could be relevant to the scene that was playing out...
I wondered about that for a few pages until more interesting intrusions by the author and more curious details absorbed my attention. Indeed, details caught my eye constantly in the narrative so that I soon felt like a detective looking for clues, which was apt enough as this novel quickly becomes a detective story, a policier as they say in French, but a very different policier to the usual one in that the accident that launches the fictional investigation into the whereabouts of the mysterious 'seventh function of language' really did happen on a street in Paris in 1980.
Yes, Laurent Binet has set up his investigative tent on the shifting sands between reality and fiction, and the reader needs to have a compass handy, or at least consult Safari, because more than half the characters are real figures in the literary/philosophical/political world of the 1980s, and not just in Paris university circles but in those of Bologna and Cornell too. We may be familiar with their names but we find ourselves needing to check Wiki facts against Binet 'facts' just to keep ourselves orientated:
—Ah! So Roland Barthes didn't die for a full month after being knocked down while crossing the street. I didn't know that!
And how convenient for the plot that Louis Althusser's wife was killed in 1980 too!
—Also convenient is the fact that 1980 was when Giscard d'Estaing and Francois Mitterrand were confronting each other for the second time in the French Presidential campaign, the more eloquent Giscard almost certain to win. And what a surprise when, in 1981, he eventually didn't. Around the same time as that election, Bjorn Borg confronted Ivan Lendl in Roland-Garros to another unexected outcome. Binet picked his moment in time well.
—And hey, what do you know, Roland Barthes and his colleague Michel Foucault, then in their late fifties and early sixties, used to frequent the same bathhouses. Was that where Binet was going with his 'Vieux Camper' reference, I wonder.
—Where did I hear of the American academic Morris Zapp? Aha! He's a David Lodge character from precisely the eighties!
—And how interesting that Philippe Sollers and the super sharp Julia Kristeva were a couple in real life as well as in this novel. That's another thing I didn't know. But all the same, surely Sollers never had an encounter with a pruning shears! Although, come to think of it, his prose might have benefitted from pruning given the long 'turns' he has in this book!
—Ah hah! Jacques Derrida, that master of the power of language, really did visit Cornell in the eighties, but, hold on, HE didn't die until 2004!
M Binet, vous n'êtes pas dieu, quand même!
Laurent Binet travels around the world like some Deus ex Machina, arranging and rearranging history to suit his purposes. When it comes to his fictional characters, we accept that he can do that. For them, Laurent Binet IS god. He can jump in and save them spectacularly if it suits him even at the risk of causing his readers to raise an eyebrow—a blue Renault Fuego turns up incredibly often just at crucial moments.
But being God, Binet kills as well as saves, which is ok too, except when one of those he kills is a real-life person who didn't obligingly die in 1980 as Barthes and Althusser's wife had done. La vie n'est pas un roman, we whisper in Binet's direction but he has chosen not to heed any reminders about life not being as convenient as fiction.
So yes, Laurent Binet takes liberties, and not only with life and death issues but with the private details of real people's lives. I'm guessing that among the real-life characters who were still living in 2015 when this book appeared, there were a few bruised egos, Philippe Sollers' and Julia Kristeva's, not the least.
Umberto Eco (whose 'Name of the Rose' appeared in 1980 coincidentally) was probably less upset when he read about himself in this book. I imagine him muttering, l'uomo è la misura di tutte le cose, and he wouldn't be wrong as regards how the plot of this book plays out, in any case.
There's a character who, though born in the early pages for the benefit of the plot, refuses to die when the plot ends. His name is Simon, and Simon proves himself to be more than the measure of all the various thug elements which the author contrives to place in his path, and with increasingly violent outcomes as the story progresses. Simon should be dead by the end, but like James Bond, he rises again, and again—and always gets the girl too (it's not for nothing that he was lecturing on the semiotics of James Bond films when the narrator introduced him into the story on page 38).
But if Simon survives the book, it's because the author has shared something quite powerful with his main character, a tool that Q never made available to Bond: the power of language. Simon knows how to decode the world, and he knows how to make use of his findings. As hero of his own story, he takes charge of the ending in spite of the author sending in enemy factions at the last minute. Simon remains the 'living' proof that the one who controls language controls power.
…………………………
Of course this book inevitably had me thinking about politics today and the role of language in controlling power. While Binet created a hopeful scenario near the end of the story by imagining how a young Hawaiian student in Colombia University in 1980 might have gained his famous rhetorical skills, politicians no longer need such skills today. We see leaders getting elected by endlessly repeating the same catch phrases made up of three or four simple words: Get Brexit Done, Make America Great Again.
And now that I think of it, three and four make seven...
I wondered about that for a few pages until more interesting intrusions by the author and more curious details absorbed my attention. Indeed, details caught my eye constantly in the narrative so that I soon felt like a detective looking for clues, which was apt enough as this novel quickly becomes a detective story, a policier as they say in French, but a very different policier to the usual one in that the accident that launches the fictional investigation into the whereabouts of the mysterious 'seventh function of language' really did happen on a street in Paris in 1980.
Yes, Laurent Binet has set up his investigative tent on the shifting sands between reality and fiction, and the reader needs to have a compass handy, or at least consult Safari, because more than half the characters are real figures in the literary/philosophical/political world of the 1980s, and not just in Paris university circles but in those of Bologna and Cornell too. We may be familiar with their names but we find ourselves needing to check Wiki facts against Binet 'facts' just to keep ourselves orientated:
—Ah! So Roland Barthes didn't die for a full month after being knocked down while crossing the street. I didn't know that!
And how convenient for the plot that Louis Althusser's wife was killed in 1980 too!
—Also convenient is the fact that 1980 was when Giscard d'Estaing and Francois Mitterrand were confronting each other for the second time in the French Presidential campaign, the more eloquent Giscard almost certain to win. And what a surprise when, in 1981, he eventually didn't. Around the same time as that election, Bjorn Borg confronted Ivan Lendl in Roland-Garros to another unexected outcome. Binet picked his moment in time well.
—And hey, what do you know, Roland Barthes and his colleague Michel Foucault, then in their late fifties and early sixties, used to frequent the same bathhouses. Was that where Binet was going with his 'Vieux Camper' reference, I wonder.
—Where did I hear of the American academic Morris Zapp? Aha! He's a David Lodge character from precisely the eighties!
—And how interesting that Philippe Sollers and the super sharp Julia Kristeva were a couple in real life as well as in this novel. That's another thing I didn't know. But all the same, surely Sollers never had an encounter with a pruning shears! Although, come to think of it, his prose might have benefitted from pruning given the long 'turns' he has in this book!
—Ah hah! Jacques Derrida, that master of the power of language, really did visit Cornell in the eighties, but, hold on, HE didn't die until 2004!
M Binet, vous n'êtes pas dieu, quand même!
Laurent Binet travels around the world like some Deus ex Machina, arranging and rearranging history to suit his purposes. When it comes to his fictional characters, we accept that he can do that. For them, Laurent Binet IS god. He can jump in and save them spectacularly if it suits him even at the risk of causing his readers to raise an eyebrow—a blue Renault Fuego turns up incredibly often just at crucial moments.
But being God, Binet kills as well as saves, which is ok too, except when one of those he kills is a real-life person who didn't obligingly die in 1980 as Barthes and Althusser's wife had done. La vie n'est pas un roman, we whisper in Binet's direction but he has chosen not to heed any reminders about life not being as convenient as fiction.
So yes, Laurent Binet takes liberties, and not only with life and death issues but with the private details of real people's lives. I'm guessing that among the real-life characters who were still living in 2015 when this book appeared, there were a few bruised egos, Philippe Sollers' and Julia Kristeva's, not the least.
Umberto Eco (whose 'Name of the Rose' appeared in 1980 coincidentally) was probably less upset when he read about himself in this book. I imagine him muttering, l'uomo è la misura di tutte le cose, and he wouldn't be wrong as regards how the plot of this book plays out, in any case.
There's a character who, though born in the early pages for the benefit of the plot, refuses to die when the plot ends. His name is Simon, and Simon proves himself to be more than the measure of all the various thug elements which the author contrives to place in his path, and with increasingly violent outcomes as the story progresses. Simon should be dead by the end, but like James Bond, he rises again, and again—and always gets the girl too (it's not for nothing that he was lecturing on the semiotics of James Bond films when the narrator introduced him into the story on page 38).
But if Simon survives the book, it's because the author has shared something quite powerful with his main character, a tool that Q never made available to Bond: the power of language. Simon knows how to decode the world, and he knows how to make use of his findings. As hero of his own story, he takes charge of the ending in spite of the author sending in enemy factions at the last minute. Simon remains the 'living' proof that the one who controls language controls power.
…………………………
Of course this book inevitably had me thinking about politics today and the role of language in controlling power. While Binet created a hopeful scenario near the end of the story by imagining how a young Hawaiian student in Colombia University in 1980 might have gained his famous rhetorical skills, politicians no longer need such skills today. We see leaders getting elected by endlessly repeating the same catch phrases made up of three or four simple words: Get Brexit Done, Make America Great Again.
And now that I think of it, three and four make seven...
marc129's review against another edition
3.0
To be honest: I don't like the thriller genre and I’m rather skeptical towards postmodernism as a philosophical movement. The fact that I have given this book a positive rating (3 stars is quite good for me), indicates that this is a valuable book, and I really enjoyed reading it. Let's start with the praise.
Binet offers an unquestionably brilliant evocation of French postmodernism of the 1970s and early 1980s, particularly the "gang" of Foucault, Barthes, Derrida, Sollers, Kristeva and others; my knowledge of these figures is not really indepth, but I have the impression that Binet really brought them to life, with their own personality and their specific philosophical approach. At the same time, he has clearly done his own thing with it: he has made them the main characters in a political-philosophical thriller. I cannot put it in another way, but this book could just as well have been written by Umberto Eco, and that is meant as a compliment. By the way, Eco also plays a small but very distinct role in this book.
Binet has given the French philosophy scene pretty hilarious proportions, with regularly incredibly funny, cleverly drawn scenes, which at the same time uncover facets of the structuralist and deconstructionist approach of the philosophers involved, with their great and especially their small sides. I also found it brilliant how top politicians Giscard and Mitterrand and their environment have been portrayed, just in the crucial phase of the 1981 presidential election; both gentlemen play a major role in the plot.
By way of contrast, the entire thriller plot is carried by an improbable ‘investigators duo’, the blunt police commissioner Jacques Bayard (who meets all the clichés of his profession) and the young and eager linguist Simon Herzog; they serve as a kind of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, and it is just wonderful how the evolving dynamic between them both supports the story and takes us along.
Time to focus on the lesser sides of the novel.
Occasionally this thriller derailes in burlesque and grotesque scenes, often towards the absurdist; and occasionally there are incredibly banal scenes (especially the sex scene in the Archiginnasio of Bologna is of such a lousy level, in contrast to the sparkling intellectual fireworks all around, that I would like to think that Binet did this on purpose too). Binet also threw a lot together, a little too much for my taste. In the second chapter for instance, which takes place in Bologna, he focuses very much on Italian intellectual anarchism with its hollow left-wing phraseology and violence. To complicate matters even more, he also presents the Bulgarian connection, the crude bomb attack at the Bologna station in August 1980, and a few obscure Japanese rescuers.
As I mentioned earlier, I’m not a fan of postmodernism; beware, I absolutely acknowledge the merits of the aforementioned gentlemen-academics: they have pointed to the systemic underlay in our culture and especially to the importance of the linguistic and textual, and for that we should be grateful to them; but in doing so they made the mistake of being extremely reductionist and of sometimes declaring their systems, languages and texts to be the only reality; quod non, of course. No wonder their fame only lasted the blink of an eye.
With all this, the question naturally arises of what Binet thought of them. And that is the great thing about this novel: you don't really know. Or better: he constantly misleads you. One moment he seems to offer a kind of tribute, to put in the spotlight what a valuable, new view of reality they have offered. But the next moment, while sticking out his tongue, he makes fun of the hollow phraseology that they often produced and of the crude hardness of the inexorable struggle between stubborn, egocentric academics.
And then there is that so-called seventh function of the language, around which the story orbits. I am not going to betray here what it is all about, but it is a really nice find of Binet to make this aspect the supporting element of the novel. Only, in doing so, he exposes precisely the great weakness of the French school: the intellectual fireworks of structuralists, linguists, semiotics, post-structuralists, etc., have stuck in the long run. They have proceeded in such an analytical way, with the aim of exposing the systems and mechanisms contained in our language and culture, that they detracted the view on the manipulative aspects of both day-to-day reality and the lofty world of culture and politics. It came as no surprise that their crusade against Western metaphysics ultimately led to the triumph of rhetoric, as Binet illustrates brilliantly. Perhaps Mitterrand was the winner of the 1981 presidential election, but in the longer run the deconstruction of Western culture led to lousy phenomena such as Trump and Johnson who perversely make fun of the system. I don't think Binet, who published this novel in 2015, already had those two in mind, but both are the perfect illustration of the underlying message of this book.
Finally, a small warning: this may be an entertaining, well-structured and even sometimes spectacular story, it requires quite some prior knowledge of modern philosophy, the international situation in 1980 and the French political scene of that time. Only with these arms, you can really enjoy this book and have real reading pleasure. Very well done, Mr. Binet.
Binet offers an unquestionably brilliant evocation of French postmodernism of the 1970s and early 1980s, particularly the "gang" of Foucault, Barthes, Derrida, Sollers, Kristeva and others; my knowledge of these figures is not really indepth, but I have the impression that Binet really brought them to life, with their own personality and their specific philosophical approach. At the same time, he has clearly done his own thing with it: he has made them the main characters in a political-philosophical thriller. I cannot put it in another way, but this book could just as well have been written by Umberto Eco, and that is meant as a compliment. By the way, Eco also plays a small but very distinct role in this book.
Binet has given the French philosophy scene pretty hilarious proportions, with regularly incredibly funny, cleverly drawn scenes, which at the same time uncover facets of the structuralist and deconstructionist approach of the philosophers involved, with their great and especially their small sides. I also found it brilliant how top politicians Giscard and Mitterrand and their environment have been portrayed, just in the crucial phase of the 1981 presidential election; both gentlemen play a major role in the plot.
By way of contrast, the entire thriller plot is carried by an improbable ‘investigators duo’, the blunt police commissioner Jacques Bayard (who meets all the clichés of his profession) and the young and eager linguist Simon Herzog; they serve as a kind of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, and it is just wonderful how the evolving dynamic between them both supports the story and takes us along.
Time to focus on the lesser sides of the novel.
Occasionally this thriller derailes in burlesque and grotesque scenes, often towards the absurdist; and occasionally there are incredibly banal scenes (especially the sex scene in the Archiginnasio of Bologna is of such a lousy level, in contrast to the sparkling intellectual fireworks all around, that I would like to think that Binet did this on purpose too). Binet also threw a lot together, a little too much for my taste. In the second chapter for instance, which takes place in Bologna, he focuses very much on Italian intellectual anarchism with its hollow left-wing phraseology and violence. To complicate matters even more, he also presents the Bulgarian connection, the crude bomb attack at the Bologna station in August 1980, and a few obscure Japanese rescuers.
As I mentioned earlier, I’m not a fan of postmodernism; beware, I absolutely acknowledge the merits of the aforementioned gentlemen-academics: they have pointed to the systemic underlay in our culture and especially to the importance of the linguistic and textual, and for that we should be grateful to them; but in doing so they made the mistake of being extremely reductionist and of sometimes declaring their systems, languages and texts to be the only reality; quod non, of course. No wonder their fame only lasted the blink of an eye.
With all this, the question naturally arises of what Binet thought of them. And that is the great thing about this novel: you don't really know. Or better: he constantly misleads you. One moment he seems to offer a kind of tribute, to put in the spotlight what a valuable, new view of reality they have offered. But the next moment, while sticking out his tongue, he makes fun of the hollow phraseology that they often produced and of the crude hardness of the inexorable struggle between stubborn, egocentric academics.
And then there is that so-called seventh function of the language, around which the story orbits. I am not going to betray here what it is all about, but it is a really nice find of Binet to make this aspect the supporting element of the novel. Only, in doing so, he exposes precisely the great weakness of the French school: the intellectual fireworks of structuralists, linguists, semiotics, post-structuralists, etc., have stuck in the long run. They have proceeded in such an analytical way, with the aim of exposing the systems and mechanisms contained in our language and culture, that they detracted the view on the manipulative aspects of both day-to-day reality and the lofty world of culture and politics. It came as no surprise that their crusade against Western metaphysics ultimately led to the triumph of rhetoric, as Binet illustrates brilliantly. Perhaps Mitterrand was the winner of the 1981 presidential election, but in the longer run the deconstruction of Western culture led to lousy phenomena such as Trump and Johnson who perversely make fun of the system. I don't think Binet, who published this novel in 2015, already had those two in mind, but both are the perfect illustration of the underlying message of this book.
Finally, a small warning: this may be an entertaining, well-structured and even sometimes spectacular story, it requires quite some prior knowledge of modern philosophy, the international situation in 1980 and the French political scene of that time. Only with these arms, you can really enjoy this book and have real reading pleasure. Very well done, Mr. Binet.
k8pow's review
challenging
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.75
nookandcrannyseattle's review against another edition
challenging
dark
funny
informative
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Unhinged 😂😂 I love it.
aramirezreyes's review
adventurous
funny
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
anushb's review against another edition
3.0
Some really funny parts. A lot of philosophy went over my head. An extra star for making me remember my strong dislike of Foucault.
iancarpenter's review
1.0
Abandoned. I don't see how anyone not versed in semiotics and the various theorists' dismantling of each other's ideas would enjoy this book. I spent way too many years immersed in and loving that field and still the humour of Foucault saying "forget Barthes" (because Jean Baudrillard wrote "Forget Foucault") is just way too "clever" for me. But the writing and translation are great - definitely going to check out Binet's HHhH.
moncoinlecture's review against another edition
4.0
Quand on trippe linguistique, ce roman est parfaitement jouissif! Sinon... ça risque d'être un peu ardu par moments. Une enquête avec l'élite intellectuelle française des années 80, qui démarre lors de la mort de Roland Barthes... et si ce n'était pas un accident? Érudit, prenant... bref j'ai vraiment aimé.
lindzlovesreading's review against another edition
5.0
I am the mark for this book. Very European, very esoteric, and at times very surreal. At university I went through a large Stucturlism and Barthes faze, and when I mean faze I mean I tried unsuccessfully to write my Honours thesis in a structurlist format and I read Mythologies. As soon as humanly possible I was all over this book. Since I had read HHHH I kind of knew what I was getting into, and because of HHHH I had no idea what I was getting into. It starts with the surprising death of Roland Barthes and then through each encounter and plot twist we almost enter different parallels and matrixes. Where it is all fiction and all reality. And more important all novelistic - after all it is language that is the basis of society and culture. And the book revels in this.
It is weird and wonderful, so I am not particularly fussed if this novel achieved any of it's goals. I adored the writing, I adored the mixure and mockery of the ideas. Espcially the idea of using very much alive human beings as characters in your novel, the baggage and morality this carries. This was a completely bazzerk novel, where the rules do no apply at all, and I loved it for it.
It is weird and wonderful, so I am not particularly fussed if this novel achieved any of it's goals. I adored the writing, I adored the mixure and mockery of the ideas. Espcially the idea of using very much alive human beings as characters in your novel, the baggage and morality this carries. This was a completely bazzerk novel, where the rules do no apply at all, and I loved it for it.