Many of you know Zola, Molière, Balzac or Hugo. You may also know of Flaubert, Maupassant, Céline or Beaudelaire. They were great and extremely influential French writers. I say “were” of course, because they are all dead now, and have been for a long time. Their bodies are a part of the past, but these people live on as culture and that’s how things should be. There are also one or two well-known post war French authors, notably Sartre.

Since then though, it’s been...radio silence, or almost. Planet French-Literature has turned into a White Dwarf, and may end up as a Black Hole if it’s not careful. How many of you can name four living French writers. Or even three? Or...Even worse, I asked six of my French friends to name four modern writers that they appreciate, and only one was able to do so!

The sad fact is that modern French authors are not selling much outside of France, to say the least, and even here their share of book sales is falling fast. The publishing market is in disarray, authors have been discarded and the number of books issued is declining. Authors are being asked to submit shorter and shorter works in order to attract the French market with cheaper books. Competition for the major literary prizes is cut-throat and every bit as sleazy as a nasty political campaign. That’s normal, because the winning books see their sales guaranteed, whereas the others fall into written oblivion. Whatever the tactics used though, people are losing interest in books...except in one area...

Sales of works translated from English-speaking authors have exploded, and they now make up 40% of the total. Other foreign authors also sell reasonably well. This means that books by French authors represent around half of all those sold. HALF!!! Reviews of foreign books are wonderful. They are praised for their new and innovative approach, and French works are seen as being more and more constipated and passeist. Yep, it has to be said that French literature is in a sorry state at the moment.

There are several reasons for this.

The first, as anyone who has studied the history of world literature will know, is that the dominant culture at any given time, and by dominant I mean “who dominates militarily, economically and culturally”, “imposes”, naturally and mechanically, it’s ideas. (The same goes for languages incidentally, but that’s another subject...).

The dominant culture of the last hundred years has been Anglo-Saxon. This means that French writers naturally have less influence now than they did before. As do Greek writers or Egyptian writers and many more. This will inevitably change one day, but that’s the current state of play.

This, then, is something that French Literature can’t do anything about. But, and this is my point, it’s not because French literature doesn’t dominate as is did that the French have to help it’s demise. The French are shooting themselves in the literary foot, and it’s time they changed what is an archaic literary system.

World literature has evolved over the last fifty years, but French authors, or at least those published, haven’t taken this into account. The age of sweeping moral and social and philosophical lessons and “serious” writing is (and all I can say personally is “thank god”!!) mercifully behind us. Gone are those pompous and heavy 300-page marathons, or those fictional and simplistic representations of the current state of society. All this is now considered as being boring, distant and condescending.
No, what sells now are works by PEOPLE!! Do you remember them?

We no longer need prophets and leaders, we need to read people who have experienced what we’ve been through, and we need to read our “own” language, and not some dispassionate litany. The message is the same today, but the messenger is someone we can identify with. We don’t need “Art” with a capital A, we just need to be able to identify. Of course we all want to read about our spiritual, philosophical, life-living and social-animal selves, but modern French literature is still giving us the message in a no-fun way.

Most French critics of the French literary scene, and there are many of them, call this the “Nombrilist” syndrome. (Looking at your own nombril. Self-centered. Taking oneself too seriously). It’s killing Modern French literature, and debate is strong here about what to do about it. Not too soon.

The debate is centred around an issue that the French call “La forme sur le fond” which means “style over content”. French writing, unfortunately, is still centered around “correct” (read “old-fashioned”) use of the French language. France has “l’Académie Francaise”, the French Academy. It’s a government-sponsored body that protects the French language against, oh horror of horrors, Anglicisms and other foreign impurities.

It’s as if French were a state language. Only “approved” dictionaries are published (two of them) and the words contained in them have been authorized by the Academy. Grammatical and other debates are decided by the Academy. I sometimes have the impression that French is a language with barbed-wire and machine guns all around it to protect it from “pollution’ (whereas English, for instance, is more like a “Linux” language. Ie: anyone can contribute to it).

You can’twritesentenceslikethis, or spel wurds inkorrektlee, or use, punctuation, in, different, ways, for example. There’s no FUN!!
This
Is
Seen
As
Being
Frivolous
And
Irreverent,

And anyone who tries it is shot down in flames, with his book fluttering down in a rain of sorry pages around him.

American and English and other universities on the other hand want the opposite from literature students and budding writers. The name of the game in those countries is to challenge the status-quo, find new ways of writing, and have fun doing it. We Anglo-Saxons also appreciate our classical writers, of course, but we would rather die than attempt (as if it were possible anyway) to imitate them. Many modern Anglo-Saxon writers write in ways that would have been unthinkable fifty years ago. The reasoning is that the world has changed, and thus literary reflection concerning it should mirror what’s happening.

This is not the case in France. Classical writers are venerated, taught and used as references in French universities, and the “Academy” hovers, like a dark and brooding angel, over everything to make sure that no-one breaks the rules. It’s stifling and oppressing. French universities do study other literatures, notably Anglo-saxon, but they are not allowed to write in the same way.

The result is that university professors are under pressure to toe the line. And so are publishers.

Any change to the system is seen as heresy. Young and original writers have to wait in line behind the intellectuals and politically-correct literary and philosophical heavyweights, who jealously protect their “territory” and almost sacrosanct right to be published . The problem is further complicated by the latest fashion, which is books by politicians.

The fact that they are no more than political platforms and/or a means to criticize their opponents is already bad enough, but on top of that, the writing style is banal because they are written by anonymous “ghost” writers. The French don’t mind reading (badly translated because the style is untranslatable) Anglo-Saxons, but home-grown modern authors are stuck in a sort of linguistic stranglehold. There are good modern writers here, of course, but the chances of their work seeing the light of day are minimal.

So, while Rome burns, the elite section of the French literary world still sees itself as superior to the Anglo-Saxon heathens.

You know, I’d burn all my modern French books if I could. But I can’t. Because I don’t have any...

Michael C

(picture - www.oyez.org The Oyez Project)