The lemoine affair mobi

The problem with pastiche as with dream sequences in novels is that it works counter to the normal reading process. Normally reading means interpreting a string of signifiers in order to elicit a complex of referents that the reader then synthesises to arrive at a particular meaning.

We want them for what they mean. With pastiche, this projected meaning is irrelevant. It is like a film projector that casts white light, or nonsense, while we listen to the whirrs and clicks of the machinery.

The images that are produced are irrelevant, meaningless — rather as they are in the description of a dream in prose. A dream is a narrative whose meaning is to be found in interpretation of the images produced. In fact, pastiche is even more problematic, as a form, than parody, which at least has a satirical target.

You write parody in order to attack and belittle although, as with any kind of satire, you risk justifying and normalising that which you attack , but you pastiche in order to… what?

Prove it can be done? It captures and shrinks the narcissism, the name-dropping and the overexcited sentences of the target, but to what end? However, if pastiche is reductive, i. It is a strangely inefficient procedure. The Balzac, for instance, is merely tedious—a reduction of the novelist to pompous windbag—but its very tediousness makes it otiose.

In , Parisian society was amused by the court trial of self-proclaimed alchemist Henri Lemoine, whose purported fabrication of ring-sized diamonds duped the De Beers Diamond Syndicate out of nearly 2 million francs.

But it was an aspiring novelist named Marcel Proust who took up the matter, publishing a few short pieces on it in the Figaro that year. Proust being Proust, the novella that emerged— now making its English language debut— is something quite different from the potboiler or romance that the sensationalist facts of the case suggest.

But this is the real fun of The Lemoine Affair — not the story itself, but its style. She smiled, seeming pleased with herself, and led me to the kitchen. The clafoutis sat on the table, the plate hot from the oven. Caramelized slices of pear hid beneath the custard, and the top was sprinkled with shards of toasted almonds.

She scooped a portion into a bowl and placed it in front of me. Steam clouded the underside of my spoon. She started speaking almost immediately, as if we had known each other for years. The other day she had thought of me. Did I know it? The book was a sensation when it came out, Brigitte explained.

Sagan was only eighteen. Sagan described exactly what it was like to be that age. Her story was authentic, there was nothing artificial about it. She nodded. The novel takes place during the summer, as they vacation on the Mediterranean.