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The Seventh Function of Language
From the prizewinning author of HHhH, “the most insolent novel of the year” (L’Express) comes a romp through the French intelligentsia of the twentieth century.
Paris, 1980. The literary critic Roland Barthes dies—struck by a laundry van—after lunch with the presidential candidate François Mitterand. The world of letters mourns a tragic accident. But what if it wasn’t an accident at all? What if Barthes was . . . murdered?
In The Seventh Function of Language, Laurent Binet spins a madcap secret history of the French intelligentsia, starring such luminaries as Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Julia Kristeva—as well as the hapless police detective Jacques Bayard, whose new case will plunge him into the depths of literary theory (starting with the French version of Roland Barthes for Dummies). Soon, Bayard finds himself in search of a lost manuscript by the linguist Roman Jakobson on the mysterious “seventh function of language.”
A brilliantly erudite comedy, The Seventh Function of Language takes us from the cafés of Saint-Germain to the corridors of Cornell University, and into the duels and orgies of the Logos Club, a secret philosophical society that dates to the Roman Empire. Binet has written both a send-up and a wildly exuberant celebration of the French intellectual tradition.
Paris, 1980. The literary critic Roland Barthes dies—struck by a laundry van—after lunch with the presidential candidate François Mitterand. The world of letters mourns a tragic accident. But what if it wasn’t an accident at all? What if Barthes was . . . murdered?
In The Seventh Function of Language, Laurent Binet spins a madcap secret history of the French intelligentsia, starring such luminaries as Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Julia Kristeva—as well as the hapless police detective Jacques Bayard, whose new case will plunge him into the depths of literary theory (starting with the French version of Roland Barthes for Dummies). Soon, Bayard finds himself in search of a lost manuscript by the linguist Roman Jakobson on the mysterious “seventh function of language.”
A brilliantly erudite comedy, The Seventh Function of Language takes us from the cafés of Saint-Germain to the corridors of Cornell University, and into the duels and orgies of the Logos Club, a secret philosophical society that dates to the Roman Empire. Binet has written both a send-up and a wildly exuberant celebration of the French intellectual tradition.
359 pages, Paperback
First published August 19, 2015
About the author
Laurent Binet
18 books878 followersSon of an historian, Binet was born in Paris, graduated from University of Paris in literature, and taught literature in Parisian suburb and eventually at University. He was awarded the 2010 Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman for his first novel, HHhH.
Laurent Binet est né à Paris. Il a effectué son service militaire en Slovaquie et a partagé son temps entre Paris et Prague pendant plusieurs années. Agrégé de lettres, il est professeur de français en Seine-Saint-Denis depuis dix ans et chargé de cours à l'Université. HHhH est son premier roman.
Laurent Binet est né à Paris. Il a effectué son service militaire en Slovaquie et a partagé son temps entre Paris et Prague pendant plusieurs années. Agrégé de lettres, il est professeur de français en Seine-Saint-Denis depuis dix ans et chargé de cours à l'Université. HHhH est son premier roman.
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July 17, 2020
He’s Not the Messiah; He’s a Naughty Boy
Monty Python’s Flying Circus, the surrealist English television and film troupe, famous for among other things the hysterically funny Life of Brian, was the new wave of British comedy in the 1970’s. The focus of Monty Python’s humor was not so much human behaviour as it was the very meaning of meaning to human beings - its relativity, its conventionality, and its inherent absurdity.
Roland Barthes, the motivator of the action in The 7th Function of Language, was the French equivalent of Monty Python during the 1970’s. With considerably more seriousness, and considerably less screen time, Barthes nevertheless had the same function in life as Monty Python: ripping the guts out of language and its implicit pretensions to power. He loved his mother (dead), Mao Zedong (a French intellectual conceit), and young men (many). He was, still is, largely incomprehensible to those outside his intellectual cult. Very similar to the devotees of Monty Python therefore.
Many found, still find, Monty Python offensive. But because Barthes, an established name in French literature and linguistic philosophy, was the antithesis of a comedian, many found, still find, him merely vacuous. As the Belgian critic and sinologist, Simon Leys, put it, "Barthes has contrived—amazingly—to bestow an entirely new dignity upon the age-old activity, so long unjustly disparaged, of saying nothing at great length." As, of course, did Monty Python. Saying nothing, that is, can be very entertaining. The Belgians have a chip on their national shoulder about France, and an entirely different sense of humour. The important thing to keep in mind is that Barthes is no less a joke than Monty Python. Who said the French aren't more droll than the English? The issue is whether the joke is sick or not.
The death of an abstruse and somewhat annoying French academic like Roland Barthes presents no obviously compelling theme for a novel. Except, of course, that what any novel is about is meaning, and what meaning might mean in specific circumstances. Obvious really, once stated, but still a challenging literary venture. Especially when there are very few laughs at all to be had in French philosophy. But sarcasm is a form of comedy as well. And is there anything funnier than the meaning of a life which denies meaning?
Both Monty Python and Barthes use death to great advantage as the ultimate denial of meaning. Laurent Binet turns this philosophical/comedic trope on its head by using Barthes death in 1980 (struck down by a laundry van at a Parisian crosswalk) as an event, a ‘sign’ in semiotic terms, of infinite interpretability. As it is in many mystery novels, death is the motivation of a search for meaning. The apparent triviality of the circumstances of this death in comparison with the ostensible importance of the life whose end it meant is what drives the protagonist’s, Police Superintendent Bayard’s, search for its meaning... if any exists.
So, an intellectual mystery in the mode of Umberto Eco. Nothing is what it seems because it can seem to be so many, often contradictory, things. “Man is an interpreting machine and, with a little imagination, he sees signs everywhere,” says the narrator. And Bayard is warned about his quest by an academic colleague of Barthes, “Don’t forget that one interpretation never exhausts the sign, and that polysemy is a bottomless well where we can hear an infinite number of echoes: a word’s meaning never runs dry. And the same’s true even for a letter, you see.”
If you’ve ever been into Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Bernard-Henri Levy or other giants of modern French comedy - sorry, philosophy - or if you want an explanation of how Francois Mitterrand (or perhaps even Trump) became president , then this is your cuppa. Alternately, there is always Philip K Dick... with alternate pages from Agatha Christie.
Bjorn Borg as the Messiah, Wimbledon 1980
https://btcloud.bt.com/web/app/share/...
Monty Python’s Flying Circus, the surrealist English television and film troupe, famous for among other things the hysterically funny Life of Brian, was the new wave of British comedy in the 1970’s. The focus of Monty Python’s humor was not so much human behaviour as it was the very meaning of meaning to human beings - its relativity, its conventionality, and its inherent absurdity.
Roland Barthes, the motivator of the action in The 7th Function of Language, was the French equivalent of Monty Python during the 1970’s. With considerably more seriousness, and considerably less screen time, Barthes nevertheless had the same function in life as Monty Python: ripping the guts out of language and its implicit pretensions to power. He loved his mother (dead), Mao Zedong (a French intellectual conceit), and young men (many). He was, still is, largely incomprehensible to those outside his intellectual cult. Very similar to the devotees of Monty Python therefore.
Many found, still find, Monty Python offensive. But because Barthes, an established name in French literature and linguistic philosophy, was the antithesis of a comedian, many found, still find, him merely vacuous. As the Belgian critic and sinologist, Simon Leys, put it, "Barthes has contrived—amazingly—to bestow an entirely new dignity upon the age-old activity, so long unjustly disparaged, of saying nothing at great length." As, of course, did Monty Python. Saying nothing, that is, can be very entertaining. The Belgians have a chip on their national shoulder about France, and an entirely different sense of humour. The important thing to keep in mind is that Barthes is no less a joke than Monty Python. Who said the French aren't more droll than the English? The issue is whether the joke is sick or not.
The death of an abstruse and somewhat annoying French academic like Roland Barthes presents no obviously compelling theme for a novel. Except, of course, that what any novel is about is meaning, and what meaning might mean in specific circumstances. Obvious really, once stated, but still a challenging literary venture. Especially when there are very few laughs at all to be had in French philosophy. But sarcasm is a form of comedy as well. And is there anything funnier than the meaning of a life which denies meaning?
Both Monty Python and Barthes use death to great advantage as the ultimate denial of meaning. Laurent Binet turns this philosophical/comedic trope on its head by using Barthes death in 1980 (struck down by a laundry van at a Parisian crosswalk) as an event, a ‘sign’ in semiotic terms, of infinite interpretability. As it is in many mystery novels, death is the motivation of a search for meaning. The apparent triviality of the circumstances of this death in comparison with the ostensible importance of the life whose end it meant is what drives the protagonist’s, Police Superintendent Bayard’s, search for its meaning... if any exists.
So, an intellectual mystery in the mode of Umberto Eco. Nothing is what it seems because it can seem to be so many, often contradictory, things. “Man is an interpreting machine and, with a little imagination, he sees signs everywhere,” says the narrator. And Bayard is warned about his quest by an academic colleague of Barthes, “Don’t forget that one interpretation never exhausts the sign, and that polysemy is a bottomless well where we can hear an infinite number of echoes: a word’s meaning never runs dry. And the same’s true even for a letter, you see.”
If you’ve ever been into Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Bernard-Henri Levy or other giants of modern French comedy - sorry, philosophy - or if you want an explanation of how Francois Mitterrand (or perhaps even Trump) became president , then this is your cuppa. Alternately, there is always Philip K Dick... with alternate pages from Agatha Christie.
Bjorn Borg as the Messiah, Wimbledon 1980
https://btcloud.bt.com/web/app/share/...
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August 14, 2024On 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...
September 2, 2021
We all spend important moments of our lives trying to argue our truth into consequence against an opponent, as if language has a magical persuading power.
Roland Barthes was struck by a laundry van while crossing a road and died of his injuries a few weeks later. Laurent Binet creates a pastiched conspiracy theory of the event. In his novel Barthes' death is murder and part of a plot to get hold of a transcript of the formula of the 7th function of language which is essentially its power to hypnotise. The novel is populated by real people doing unreal things and real events given new explanations (fake news). At its heart is a kind of illuminati debating society where members go head to head and the loser sacrifices a finger. It also has as a backdrop the French presidential election campaign between Mitterand and Giscard and includes their televised debate (I learned the right in France use almost verbatim the same arguments to attack the left as here in Britain.) It's evident Binet had tremendous fun writing this book and at times his mischief making joie de vivre is contagious. It's a kind of mishmash of what's thrilling and what's tiresome about post modernist fiction. At times its focus on the squabbling of French intellectuals and its pastiching of the Da Vinci Code made me wish I was reading Pavese or Bassani instead.
It's a quintessentially French book. In fact, it would be difficult to imagine a book more French, which is an achievement in itself. Which led me to a revelation. There isn't one French author I would put in my favourite thirty. I admire Proust and Flaubert but I don't love them. It shocked me to discover this. France is my third country. French my third language. One of my best friends is French. The only cities I know better than Paris are Florence and London. That then got me to thinking about female French writers. Has France produced even one first rate female novelist? I'm not sure who's considered the best. Colette? George Sands? If they were British they wouldn't even make it into the top twenty. (It is amazing how many first rate female novelists Britain has produced. One is tempted to say about 75% of all first rate female novelists worldwide.) So this novel made me realise I don't have a very passionate connection with French literature. That said I did love his HHhH.
Roland Barthes was struck by a laundry van while crossing a road and died of his injuries a few weeks later. Laurent Binet creates a pastiched conspiracy theory of the event. In his novel Barthes' death is murder and part of a plot to get hold of a transcript of the formula of the 7th function of language which is essentially its power to hypnotise. The novel is populated by real people doing unreal things and real events given new explanations (fake news). At its heart is a kind of illuminati debating society where members go head to head and the loser sacrifices a finger. It also has as a backdrop the French presidential election campaign between Mitterand and Giscard and includes their televised debate (I learned the right in France use almost verbatim the same arguments to attack the left as here in Britain.) It's evident Binet had tremendous fun writing this book and at times his mischief making joie de vivre is contagious. It's a kind of mishmash of what's thrilling and what's tiresome about post modernist fiction. At times its focus on the squabbling of French intellectuals and its pastiching of the Da Vinci Code made me wish I was reading Pavese or Bassani instead.
It's a quintessentially French book. In fact, it would be difficult to imagine a book more French, which is an achievement in itself. Which led me to a revelation. There isn't one French author I would put in my favourite thirty. I admire Proust and Flaubert but I don't love them. It shocked me to discover this. France is my third country. French my third language. One of my best friends is French. The only cities I know better than Paris are Florence and London. That then got me to thinking about female French writers. Has France produced even one first rate female novelist? I'm not sure who's considered the best. Colette? George Sands? If they were British they wouldn't even make it into the top twenty. (It is amazing how many first rate female novelists Britain has produced. One is tempted to say about 75% of all first rate female novelists worldwide.) So this novel made me realise I don't have a very passionate connection with French literature. That said I did love his HHhH.
November 17, 2023
11.17.23: second reading
I likely enjoyed the encounter more the second time, which is unexpected, nearly off-putting. It is a fantasy of real (for the most part) ideas in the historical period of 1980. There’s a vertigo in looking back and weighing the time to our own, while simultaneously understanding the lifecycle our own personal thoughts and concepts have undergone. Yes, I’m ascribing the biological to matters of cognition and the attendant architecture.
What would you do if you ruled the world?” The gigolo replied that he would abolish all laws. Barthes said: “Even grammar?
This is a League of Extraordinary Gentleman for the French Theory set. Each page tumbles with allusions and citations, a whodunit which explores the esoteric and the political. I was smitten from the opening page and matters progressed from there. Despite some meta crabwalking I was fervently on-board, routinely laughing and marveling, enjoying the goat rodeo of the mind, my own achy wanderlust being stimulated, perhaps not enough to tackle Writing and Difference but certainly ready to watch a Cixous lecture on YouTube while I fathom the subterranean and the elliptical . So much of the so called French Theory's appeal was a sexy subversion, a resistance almost militant to the prevailing structures which oppressed and demanded conformity. There's a taste of insurrection in the air. Allah knows that 1980 saw Reagan and Thatcher grab the reins and somehow this was a response to the hegemony.
Or maybe it wasn't.
I've always respected Barthes but the affinity stopped there. Derrida and Eco reign in my theory-verse and Foucault (along with Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou) constitutes a necessary antagonism. All three feature here and pleasantly for me, Deleuze watches futbol on TV. Others don't fare so well: Bernard-Levy, Sollers and Kristeva.
The novel has the heft and feel of an Eco novel, one which smirks at its own pretensions. Perhaps Borges did this better in The Aleph?
I likely enjoyed the encounter more the second time, which is unexpected, nearly off-putting. It is a fantasy of real (for the most part) ideas in the historical period of 1980. There’s a vertigo in looking back and weighing the time to our own, while simultaneously understanding the lifecycle our own personal thoughts and concepts have undergone. Yes, I’m ascribing the biological to matters of cognition and the attendant architecture.
What would you do if you ruled the world?” The gigolo replied that he would abolish all laws. Barthes said: “Even grammar?
This is a League of Extraordinary Gentleman for the French Theory set. Each page tumbles with allusions and citations, a whodunit which explores the esoteric and the political. I was smitten from the opening page and matters progressed from there. Despite some meta crabwalking I was fervently on-board, routinely laughing and marveling, enjoying the goat rodeo of the mind, my own achy wanderlust being stimulated, perhaps not enough to tackle Writing and Difference but certainly ready to watch a Cixous lecture on YouTube while I fathom the subterranean and the elliptical . So much of the so called French Theory's appeal was a sexy subversion, a resistance almost militant to the prevailing structures which oppressed and demanded conformity. There's a taste of insurrection in the air. Allah knows that 1980 saw Reagan and Thatcher grab the reins and somehow this was a response to the hegemony.
Or maybe it wasn't.
I've always respected Barthes but the affinity stopped there. Derrida and Eco reign in my theory-verse and Foucault (along with Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou) constitutes a necessary antagonism. All three feature here and pleasantly for me, Deleuze watches futbol on TV. Others don't fare so well: Bernard-Levy, Sollers and Kristeva.
The novel has the heft and feel of an Eco novel, one which smirks at its own pretensions. Perhaps Borges did this better in The Aleph?
November 19, 2019
Okay, I have to give Binet 5 stars for writing a book full to the brim with ideas, in which every sentence contains at least one thought, and that manages to be all kinds of contradictory things at once: High-brow and low-brow, noir murder mystery and comedy, social analysis and satire, pulp and linguistic textbook, Sherlock Holmes and Austin Powers, and so much more. Yes, the book does have some flaws, but it is so fun, intelligent and daring that I want to applaud Binet for his wild imagination and "deal with it"-attitude. I had to put the text down repeatedly in order to stomach all the bits and pieces Binet offers, and still I am sure that I missed numerous hints and jokes.
At the core, Binet wrote a detective novel set in the circles of the French intelligentsia in the early 1980's. Jacques Bayard, a police officer straight out of a hardboiled crime novel, tries to find out who murdered linguist Roland Barthes. As he needs to investigate in scholarly circles, he teams up with young linguistics researcher Simon Herzog. Soon, they realize that the murder of Barthes has to do with the fact that several linguists and politicians of the highest ranks have an interest in acquiring a technique called "the seventh function of language": The famous theoretical model by Russian linguist Roman Jakobson contains six functions of language, but in his novel, Binet states that there's actually a seventh, performative function, which has the power to manipulate the receiver's actions - and Barthes was murdered because he knew how the seventh function of language worked.
To solve this murder mystery, Herzog and (increasingly) Bayard apply semiotics to the case: They read communications, events, people and their surroundings as signs, as hints and riddles that need to be analyzed, deconstructed and solved - everybody who loves language will love this approach. And as this is a French text through-and-through, Binet sets the stage for intellectual and political powerhouses of the time (in France, intellectual and political circles are traditionally close-knit, which has to do with the French system of higher education), both celebrating and mocking them: Foucault, Derrida, BHL, Kristeva, Sollers, Giscard d'Estaing, Mitterand and many others make appearances. Plus there are numerous metafictional elements (this is Binet, after all) - we are dealing with an author who thinks about his novel in the novel, and characters who communicate with the author through the novel. And then there are tons and tons of wild narrative ideas: A secret debating society in which the loser of a rhetorical duel faces amputation! Famous scholars going nuts in a backstreet sauna! A worldwide political conspiracy in the field of semiotics! And much, much more.
Does all of this amount to, well, too much at once? Yes and no. Because I feel like this is part of the whole point: Binet tells us that we are surrounded by meaning, that language is a key to the world and multi-level code, a game more complex than three-dimensional chess, and - most importantly - a joy. How can you not love a book that proves this point on every single page?
At the core, Binet wrote a detective novel set in the circles of the French intelligentsia in the early 1980's. Jacques Bayard, a police officer straight out of a hardboiled crime novel, tries to find out who murdered linguist Roland Barthes. As he needs to investigate in scholarly circles, he teams up with young linguistics researcher Simon Herzog. Soon, they realize that the murder of Barthes has to do with the fact that several linguists and politicians of the highest ranks have an interest in acquiring a technique called "the seventh function of language": The famous theoretical model by Russian linguist Roman Jakobson contains six functions of language, but in his novel, Binet states that there's actually a seventh, performative function, which has the power to manipulate the receiver's actions - and Barthes was murdered because he knew how the seventh function of language worked.
To solve this murder mystery, Herzog and (increasingly) Bayard apply semiotics to the case: They read communications, events, people and their surroundings as signs, as hints and riddles that need to be analyzed, deconstructed and solved - everybody who loves language will love this approach. And as this is a French text through-and-through, Binet sets the stage for intellectual and political powerhouses of the time (in France, intellectual and political circles are traditionally close-knit, which has to do with the French system of higher education), both celebrating and mocking them: Foucault, Derrida, BHL, Kristeva, Sollers, Giscard d'Estaing, Mitterand and many others make appearances. Plus there are numerous metafictional elements (this is Binet, after all) - we are dealing with an author who thinks about his novel in the novel, and characters who communicate with the author through the novel. And then there are tons and tons of wild narrative ideas: A secret debating society in which the loser of a rhetorical duel faces amputation! Famous scholars going nuts in a backstreet sauna! A worldwide political conspiracy in the field of semiotics! And much, much more.
Does all of this amount to, well, too much at once? Yes and no. Because I feel like this is part of the whole point: Binet tells us that we are surrounded by meaning, that language is a key to the world and multi-level code, a game more complex than three-dimensional chess, and - most importantly - a joy. How can you not love a book that proves this point on every single page?
September 5, 2015
French intelligentsia hate this book. It is a good sign.
Roland Barthes is dead. Murder? Perhaps. Who killed barthes who had discovered the 7th language function, able to give the power. It is an improbable thriller, Tintin at the structuralists. We meet Foucault in the gay backrooms, Sollers, Kristeva Chomsky, Searle, Eco, Jacobson...from Bologna to Cornell.
But especially, it is funny, hilarious, incredibly funny for a french book. Generally, during "rentrée littéraire", books are sinister, autofiction me and my navel, my navel and me… (Angot and incest, Carrère and God.) For the first time a book intelligent and savagely funny.
Brilliant.
Roland Barthes is dead. Murder? Perhaps. Who killed barthes who had discovered the 7th language function, able to give the power. It is an improbable thriller, Tintin at the structuralists. We meet Foucault in the gay backrooms, Sollers, Kristeva Chomsky, Searle, Eco, Jacobson...from Bologna to Cornell.
But especially, it is funny, hilarious, incredibly funny for a french book. Generally, during "rentrée littéraire", books are sinister, autofiction me and my navel, my navel and me… (Angot and incest, Carrère and God.) For the first time a book intelligent and savagely funny.
Brilliant.
Read
June 16, 2018Roland Barthes, who wrote Death of the Author, is in turn killed by this author. Other acts of violence or mere indignities happen to “real” people. Antonioni, the film director has a finger chopped off. Umberto Eco gets pissed on by a hippie. Phillipe Sollers . . . well: The sophist with the doctor’s beak wedges Sollers’s balls between the two blades of the shears, firmly grips the handles, and presses them together. Snip. Camille Paglia - A young, short-haired woman, who looks a bit like a cross between Cruella in 101 Dalmatians and Vanessa Redgrave - engages, instead, in a feigned, symbolic act of castration before engaging in an unfeigned act of fellatio, which may or may not be symbolic, I don’t know. Does an author need to get waivers from living people he abuses?
There is an investigator, Bayard, assigned when the ‘case’ is still an accident, maybe. Binet is at his best when he does minimalist, tracking Bayard: He passes by a statue of Montaigne without seeing it . . . Bayard commandeers a young semiology professor, Simon Herzog, to help in the investigation. Herzog can look at someone and in a minute give an accurate biography. Kind of like the spooks in Marias’ great trilogy Your Face Tomorrow, but with humor, even farce. Binet is at his worst when he writes this sex scene: He tips her back and lays her on the dissecting table. She takes off her skirt, spreads her legs, and tells him: “Fuck me like a machine.” And while her breasts spill out, Simon begins to flow into her assemblage. His tongue-machine slides . . . I’ll stop there.
This is not a whodunit. Nobody cares who killed Barthes, least of all the author. There are dialogues and lectures about semiology, the science of signs. Man is an interpreting machine. And there is a paper, one that Barthes carried, but not found on his body. This supposedly details how to use The Seventh Function of Language (for good or evil).
Here are the first Six Functions:
Which brings us to the Seventh, which is the performative. The prime example Binet uses is: "Let there be light.” And there was light.
All that’s fine, if scholarly. But what if that paper Barthes was carrying was not just performative but also magical and the speaker could force the listener to obey?
Exciting, except Binet and his investigator lose interest there, too.
While the scholars debate – and chop off, uh, things - politicians go at it too. The time is 1980-81. And there is an ongoing dialogue between Mitterand and Giscard. Mitterand tries to put on a grimace of disgust, but in fact this doesn’t alter his usual expression. The fascinating part is seeing the same methodology at work.
There is an “I” in the novel, but your guess is as good as mine. Maybe it’s the author; maybe not. But as in his brilliant debut novel, HHhH, Binet toys with the very nature of “novel”. This one opens with: Life is not a novel. Camille Paglia offers: "I’ve never been able to have affairs, only novels.” There is this wisdom: Always act as if God did not exist because if God did exist, he is at best a bad novelist who merits neither respect or obedience. And Simon Herzog, faced with death, wonders if he can be offed early if he is the central character; then existentially wonders if he is the central character.
Simon takes his head in his hands and utters a groan.
“I think I’m trapped in a fucking novel.”
“What?”
“I think I’m trapped in a fucking novel.”
. . . .
“Sounds cool, man. Enjoy the trip.”
I loved this . . . and I hated this. The jacket cover says this “recalls Flaubert’s Parrot and The Name of the Rose—with more than a dash of The Da Vinci Code." It’s that dash that causes me to pause.
----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----
I have my own example of performative. I travel the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and anyone who travels the Pennsylvania Turnpike knows that it is always under construction. Temporary Inconvenience; Permanent Improvement, they lie. There are signs alerting drivers to the upcoming construction, signs telling trucks which lane to travel, signs designating reduced speeds. And there are signs telling when the construction is over and things are back to normal. The sign does not say CONSTRUCTION OVER or THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE. Instead it says END ROAD WORK. An odd way to express an easily observable fact. So I read it as performative, telling me to stop my damn road work. Which I did, immediately. But then, with this book swimming in my head, I decided to adopt the message. Hell, I need a cause. So someday you may turn on CNN or even the BBC and see some public protest. There’s a group over there with signs: IMPEACH TRUMP. Others implore: MAKE PEACE, NOT WAR. Even STOP PREMATURE CHRISTMAS DECORATING. I’ll be there, one man, one movement:
There is an investigator, Bayard, assigned when the ‘case’ is still an accident, maybe. Binet is at his best when he does minimalist, tracking Bayard: He passes by a statue of Montaigne without seeing it . . . Bayard commandeers a young semiology professor, Simon Herzog, to help in the investigation. Herzog can look at someone and in a minute give an accurate biography. Kind of like the spooks in Marias’ great trilogy Your Face Tomorrow, but with humor, even farce. Binet is at his worst when he writes this sex scene: He tips her back and lays her on the dissecting table. She takes off her skirt, spreads her legs, and tells him: “Fuck me like a machine.” And while her breasts spill out, Simon begins to flow into her assemblage. His tongue-machine slides . . . I’ll stop there.
This is not a whodunit. Nobody cares who killed Barthes, least of all the author. There are dialogues and lectures about semiology, the science of signs. Man is an interpreting machine. And there is a paper, one that Barthes carried, but not found on his body. This supposedly details how to use The Seventh Function of Language (for good or evil).
Here are the first Six Functions:
Which brings us to the Seventh, which is the performative. The prime example Binet uses is: "Let there be light.” And there was light.
All that’s fine, if scholarly. But what if that paper Barthes was carrying was not just performative but also magical and the speaker could force the listener to obey?
Exciting, except Binet and his investigator lose interest there, too.
While the scholars debate – and chop off, uh, things - politicians go at it too. The time is 1980-81. And there is an ongoing dialogue between Mitterand and Giscard. Mitterand tries to put on a grimace of disgust, but in fact this doesn’t alter his usual expression. The fascinating part is seeing the same methodology at work.
There is an “I” in the novel, but your guess is as good as mine. Maybe it’s the author; maybe not. But as in his brilliant debut novel, HHhH, Binet toys with the very nature of “novel”. This one opens with: Life is not a novel. Camille Paglia offers: "I’ve never been able to have affairs, only novels.” There is this wisdom: Always act as if God did not exist because if God did exist, he is at best a bad novelist who merits neither respect or obedience. And Simon Herzog, faced with death, wonders if he can be offed early if he is the central character; then existentially wonders if he is the central character.
Simon takes his head in his hands and utters a groan.
“I think I’m trapped in a fucking novel.”
“What?”
“I think I’m trapped in a fucking novel.”
. . . .
“Sounds cool, man. Enjoy the trip.”
I loved this . . . and I hated this. The jacket cover says this “recalls Flaubert’s Parrot and The Name of the Rose—with more than a dash of The Da Vinci Code." It’s that dash that causes me to pause.
----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----
I have my own example of performative. I travel the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and anyone who travels the Pennsylvania Turnpike knows that it is always under construction. Temporary Inconvenience; Permanent Improvement, they lie. There are signs alerting drivers to the upcoming construction, signs telling trucks which lane to travel, signs designating reduced speeds. And there are signs telling when the construction is over and things are back to normal. The sign does not say CONSTRUCTION OVER or THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE. Instead it says END ROAD WORK. An odd way to express an easily observable fact. So I read it as performative, telling me to stop my damn road work. Which I did, immediately. But then, with this book swimming in my head, I decided to adopt the message. Hell, I need a cause. So someday you may turn on CNN or even the BBC and see some public protest. There’s a group over there with signs: IMPEACH TRUMP. Others implore: MAKE PEACE, NOT WAR. Even STOP PREMATURE CHRISTMAS DECORATING. I’ll be there, one man, one movement:
June 19, 2018
What it is? It is a mixture of a thriller with the tour de force of linguistics and literary theories. Binet picked up the year 1980, took real famous people and real events and has built a fictional plot around them. He also created two main fictional characters for the connection between his plot and the rest. The book effortlessly mixes real ideas in linguistics with the fictional actions by the characters (both the invented and and the real ones). The premise is intriguing: what if Roland Barthes has been murdered and robbed of an important text he possessed. (In reality, he died after the road accident). The text would help the owner to exercise an enormous power of rhetorics through the 7th function of language. A French detective and his chosen side-kick, young lecturer of semiology are there to investigate. The intellectuals, Barthes friends and colleagues, are the main suspects; the high level politicians are after this text as well obviously.
How? Binet’s language is concise. The book reads as a reportage, as if Binet is commenting on a football match. But it strangely suitable. He does a lot of weird and cruel things with his characters; but he never distorts or interpret their real theories. I appreciated this a lot as it was my main point of interest in the book. A part of the plot was inspired by Fight Club. The difference is that the fighting is rhetoric debates. But the consequences are really dire as well. Some episodes in the novel seemed too “laddish” for my liking with usual suspects of sexual prowess, drugs and mutilations of different sorts. But it was not too excessive, just enough for me to continue enjoying other things in the book.
Overall I did not care too much for the plot. It reminded me The Savage Detectives where Bolano did the trick better (imho). But I loved the linguistics parts and finding out about the French intellectuals and American scholars of that time. I did not know for example, that there was such a war between the continental and analytical schools of philosophy. I am glad I found out about it in such a playful form, otherwise it would be too depressing. It is not a pre-requisite, but i think some prior knowledge and/or some interest in linguistics and semiotics would amplify the reading experience.
A few words about the intellectual tradition. The French intellectuals used to be celebrities. They appeared in newspapers and TV programs. People knew their faces and listen to their opinions. I do not know about all the countries, but certainly in Russia and Turkey for example it was similar (only through unofficial channels due to the censorship). A Russian poet Yevtushenko famously said “A poet in Russia is much more than a poet”. I know also that in Spain many prominent writers maintain the column in the national newspapers. I do not know how it compares with the Kardashians or ex-factor. Unfortunately, this phenomena is almost absent in the English speaking word. I do not know the reasons for this, but it is a pity. Binet laughs at the French Intellectuals. He teases them, but he is proud of them (some english-speaking readers have only noticed the former, but not the latter); he admires their thought and defends them. He takes their ideas seriously. He definitely do not consider them “clowns” - the term used in some videos I’ve seen and reviewers I’ve read about these thinkers.
“The world changes because intellectuals and those in powers at war with each other. The powerful win almost every battle, and the intellectuals pay with their lives or their freedom for having stood up to the powerful, and they bite the dust. But not always. And when an intellectual triumphs over the powerful, even posthumously, then the world changes. A man earns the name of intellectual when he gives voice to the voiceless.”
It is a pity that currently the intellectual tradition seems to be moving to the right politically. But it is a subject of a separate conversation.
.......................................................
Real people in the book:
Barthes, Kristeva, Solliers, Foucault, Derrida, Eco, Searl, Jacobson, Chomsky; Francois Mitterrand; Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and the others;
Main real events:
The accident leading to Barthes death;
The terrorist attack in Bologna (Italy)
The election in France leading to Mitterrand’s presidency
The killing of Bulgarian decedent Markov with a poisoned umbrella
How? Binet’s language is concise. The book reads as a reportage, as if Binet is commenting on a football match. But it strangely suitable. He does a lot of weird and cruel things with his characters; but he never distorts or interpret their real theories. I appreciated this a lot as it was my main point of interest in the book. A part of the plot was inspired by Fight Club. The difference is that the fighting is rhetoric debates. But the consequences are really dire as well. Some episodes in the novel seemed too “laddish” for my liking with usual suspects of sexual prowess, drugs and mutilations of different sorts. But it was not too excessive, just enough for me to continue enjoying other things in the book.
Overall I did not care too much for the plot. It reminded me The Savage Detectives where Bolano did the trick better (imho). But I loved the linguistics parts and finding out about the French intellectuals and American scholars of that time. I did not know for example, that there was such a war between the continental and analytical schools of philosophy. I am glad I found out about it in such a playful form, otherwise it would be too depressing. It is not a pre-requisite, but i think some prior knowledge and/or some interest in linguistics and semiotics would amplify the reading experience.
A few words about the intellectual tradition. The French intellectuals used to be celebrities. They appeared in newspapers and TV programs. People knew their faces and listen to their opinions. I do not know about all the countries, but certainly in Russia and Turkey for example it was similar (only through unofficial channels due to the censorship). A Russian poet Yevtushenko famously said “A poet in Russia is much more than a poet”. I know also that in Spain many prominent writers maintain the column in the national newspapers. I do not know how it compares with the Kardashians or ex-factor. Unfortunately, this phenomena is almost absent in the English speaking word. I do not know the reasons for this, but it is a pity. Binet laughs at the French Intellectuals. He teases them, but he is proud of them (some english-speaking readers have only noticed the former, but not the latter); he admires their thought and defends them. He takes their ideas seriously. He definitely do not consider them “clowns” - the term used in some videos I’ve seen and reviewers I’ve read about these thinkers.
“The world changes because intellectuals and those in powers at war with each other. The powerful win almost every battle, and the intellectuals pay with their lives or their freedom for having stood up to the powerful, and they bite the dust. But not always. And when an intellectual triumphs over the powerful, even posthumously, then the world changes. A man earns the name of intellectual when he gives voice to the voiceless.”
It is a pity that currently the intellectual tradition seems to be moving to the right politically. But it is a subject of a separate conversation.
.......................................................
Real people in the book:
Barthes, Kristeva, Solliers, Foucault, Derrida, Eco, Searl, Jacobson, Chomsky; Francois Mitterrand; Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and the others;
Main real events:
The accident leading to Barthes death;
The terrorist attack in Bologna (Italy)
The election in France leading to Mitterrand’s presidency
The killing of Bulgarian decedent Markov with a poisoned umbrella
April 20, 2018
In Bologna, he had sex with Bianca in a seventeenth-century amphitheatre and narrowly escaped death in the bombed train station. Here, he has almost been stabbed in a library at night by a linguistics philosopher and has witnesses a decidedly mythological doggy-style sex scene on a photocopier. He met Giscard in the Elysee palace, bumped into Foucault in a gay sauna, took part in a car chase which ended with an attempt on his life, saw a man kill another man with a poisonous umbrella, discovered a secret society where people had their fingers cut off if they lost a debate, and crossed the Atlantic in pursuit of a mysterious document.
...
‘I think I’m trapped in a novel’
Book 8/13 from the Man Booker International list. One that is very clever and which is certainly accretive to the overall long list, but not one I would add to my personal shortlist.
The 7th Function of Language opens:
Life is not a novel. Or at least you would like to believe so. Roland Barthes walks up Rue de Bièvre. The greatest literary critic of the twentieth century has every reason to feel anxious and upset. His mother, with whom he had a highly Proustian relationship, is dead. And his course on “The Preparation of the Novel” at the Collège de France is such a conspicuous failure it can no longer be ignored: all year, he has talked to his students about Japanese haikus, photography, the signifier and the signified, Pascalian diversions, café waiters, dressing gowns, and lecture-hall seating—about everything but the novel. And this has been going on for three years. He knows, without a doubt, that the course is simply a delaying tactic designed to push back the moment when he must start a truly literary work, one worthy of the hypersensitive writer lying dormant within him.
which for me has very interesting echoes of Kate Briggs treatise on translation, This Little Art, which was centered around her experience with translating Barthes lecture notes. my review
The 7th Function of Language takes as its main focus the science of semiology, begun by de Saussure:
It’s no accident that Umberto Eco, the wise man of Bologna, one of the last great semiologists, referred so often to the key, decisive inventions in the history of humanity: the wheel, the spoon, the book . . . perfect tools, he said, unimprovable in their effectiveness. And indeed, everything suggests that in reality semiology is one of the most important inventions in the history of humanity and one of the most powerful tools ever forged by man. But as with fire or the atom, people don’t know what the point of it is to begin with, or how to use it.
The nod to Eco (who indeed appears as a character in the book) quite deliberate as this is a scientific cod-thriller very much in the tradition of some of his novels - indeed the overall flavour is Eco meets Houellebecq, with Bolano thrown into the mix (or Eco meets Fight Club as Binet himself claims).
The scene that opens the novel continues:
There is more to [Barthes] than his mother and boys and his phantom novel. There is the libido sciendi, the lust for learning, and, awoken by it, the flattering prospect of revolutionizing human knowledge and, perhaps, changing the world. Does Barthes feel like Einstein, thinking about his theory as he crosses Rue des Écoles? What is certain is that he’s not really looking where he’s going. He is less than a hundred feet from his office when he is hit by a van. His body makes the familiar, sickening, dull thudding sound of flesh meeting metal, and it rolls over the pavement like a rag doll. Passersby flinch. This afternoon—February 25, 1980—they cannot know what has just happened in front of their eyes. For the very good reason that, until today, no one understands anything about it.
and in the novel's alternative history, Barthes death is no accident, and the imperative to solve the case goes up to the President himself, Giscard d'Estaing, preparing for his 1981 Presidential re-election battles against his former ally Jacques Chirac and the perennial loser, standard bearer of the left, Francois Mitterand, this time perhaps with a serious chance to win. Indeed it soon emerges that Barthes had just dined with Mitterand.
The case is assigned to Jacques Bayard - named after Jack Bauer of the TV series 24- a cynical detective, essentially a right-wing Jim Royle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roy...) who has never heard of Barthes, and who is very unimpressed by his first encounter with the Collège de France:
Courses open to all, but of interest only to work-shy lefties, retired people, lunatics or pipe-smoking teachers; improbable subjects that he’s never heard of before .. No degrees, no exams. People like Barthes and Foucault paid to spout a load of woolly nonsense. Bayard is already sure of one thing: no one comes here to learn how to do a job. Episteme, my arse.
He soon meets a young semiologist, Simon Herzog, who uses his talents of interpreting signs rather a la Sherlock Holmes (from whom the character's name is taken), explaining semiology to Bayard by this example:
Your manner of dressing signals your profession: you wear a suit, which indicates an executive job, but your clothes are cheap, which implies a modest salary and/or an absence of interest in your appearance; so you belong to a profession in which presentation doesn’t matter, or not very much. Your shoes are badly scuffed, and you came here in a car, which signifies that you are not deskbound - you are out and about in your job. An executive who leaves his office is very likely to be assigned some kind of inspection work
and when Bayard remarks that this isn't too impressive he goes further to deduce, with Holmesian explanations as to why: You fought in Algeria; you have been married twice; you are separated from your second wife; you have a daughter under twenty, with whom you have a difficult relationship; you voted for Giscard in both rounds of the last presidential election, and you'll do the same again next year; you lost a colleague in the line of duty.
Bayard immediately requisitions him as his expert (and annoying) sidekick for the investigation.
And the story that follows is a romp across Paris and to Bologna and the US, pursued by umbrella-wielding Bulgarian assassins (the Markov murder was in 1978) driving a Citreon DS (*) and mysterious Japanese agents, and with a supporting cast real-life characters, a roll-call of the French intellectuals of the time - Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Paul Sartre, Bernard-Henry Levy, Philippe Sollers, Julia Kristeva, Gilles Deleuze, Louis Althusser and Tzvetan Todorov amongst others - as well as a politicians from d'Estaing and Mitterand downwards and famous tennis players of the era (the latter usually mostly as metaphors - rhetoric is McEnroe but semiotics is Borg).
(a nod to Barthes Mythologies and his description of the Citreon DS and other cars of the time as almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object. - one of many similar allusion in the book, the vast majority of which I suspect passed me by)
The mystery device that animates the plot is a mysterious "seventh function of language", in addition to the 6 enumerated by Roman Jakobson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_J...), which Barthes had discovered and as one character, in on the secret, tries to explain before his untimely demise at the point of an umbrella:
There exists a function that eludes the various inalienable factors of verbal communication ... and which, in a way, encompassed all of them. This function, we shall call,...
This 7th function gives one the ultimate power of persuasion - handy indeed for a politician anticipating a TV debate with his presidential opponent.
The good news is that the novel doesn't require an intimate familiarity with academic theories of language and communication. The corresponding bad news is that there is a lot of exposition (e.g. the list of Jakobson's standard 6 functions takes 3 pages). When Bayard, early on, listens to a Foucault lecture he thinks, rather as does the reader: The tone which is simultaneously didactic and projected. At another point as Herzog tries to explain something, Jacques Bayard has no desire to learn more but for the sake of the investigation he has to understand at least the broad outlines.; the reader feels the same way! And by page 36 we are relieved to be told by the narrator I’ll spare you the now obligatory copy-and-paste of the Wikipedia page, only for the information dumps to reappear soon after. By page 142 it is difficult not to sympathise when the detective, listening to another explanation from Herzog, feels an overriding desire to slap him.
As one can see this is a novel very aware of its existence as a novel and its own faults. The polit is farcical, the sex crude, the humour is juvenile as is much of the language, the characters one-dimensional clichés, the semiotics highly didactic. But this is all done knowingly, the failings proudly on display. That approach risks either amusing or further antagonising the reader, and my feelings alternated between the two.
Indeed who the joke is on - the pretentious intellectuals, or the reader who doesn't get the allusions in the humour - is itself a question the book acknowledges, putting into Bayard's thoughts:
This makes him laugh a little, but he hates what he instinctively perceives as a principle of verbal intimidation. Of course, he knows that this kind of book is not aimed at him, that it’s a book for intellectuals, for those smart-arsed parasites to have a good snigger amongst themselves. Mocking themselves: the last laugh.
The book can't also help read rather differently to most British readers, in a country where Barthes, Foucault, Derrida et al may be known for their works but are not personalities (nor indeed are their English equivalents) meaning that the fun apparently had at their expense is rather lost. Again as the book acknowledges, this time in Sollers voice: Why do those pathetic Americans obstinately refuse to take any notice of him, this giant among giants, who will be read and reread in 2043?” . Indeed I personally found the political figures much more recognisable and hence far more interesting - so I can see how this would resonant more with those interesting in the philosophers and literary professors.
The translation by Sam Taylor: difficult to comment as the English is pretty simple, at times crude, but I strongly suspect this is faithful to the original.
Overall - a stimulating but also frustrating read - 2.5 stars.
Interview with the author:
http://www.partisanmagazine.com/blog/...
...
‘I think I’m trapped in a novel’
Book 8/13 from the Man Booker International list. One that is very clever and which is certainly accretive to the overall long list, but not one I would add to my personal shortlist.
The 7th Function of Language opens:
Life is not a novel. Or at least you would like to believe so. Roland Barthes walks up Rue de Bièvre. The greatest literary critic of the twentieth century has every reason to feel anxious and upset. His mother, with whom he had a highly Proustian relationship, is dead. And his course on “The Preparation of the Novel” at the Collège de France is such a conspicuous failure it can no longer be ignored: all year, he has talked to his students about Japanese haikus, photography, the signifier and the signified, Pascalian diversions, café waiters, dressing gowns, and lecture-hall seating—about everything but the novel. And this has been going on for three years. He knows, without a doubt, that the course is simply a delaying tactic designed to push back the moment when he must start a truly literary work, one worthy of the hypersensitive writer lying dormant within him.
which for me has very interesting echoes of Kate Briggs treatise on translation, This Little Art, which was centered around her experience with translating Barthes lecture notes. my review
The 7th Function of Language takes as its main focus the science of semiology, begun by de Saussure:
It’s no accident that Umberto Eco, the wise man of Bologna, one of the last great semiologists, referred so often to the key, decisive inventions in the history of humanity: the wheel, the spoon, the book . . . perfect tools, he said, unimprovable in their effectiveness. And indeed, everything suggests that in reality semiology is one of the most important inventions in the history of humanity and one of the most powerful tools ever forged by man. But as with fire or the atom, people don’t know what the point of it is to begin with, or how to use it.
The nod to Eco (who indeed appears as a character in the book) quite deliberate as this is a scientific cod-thriller very much in the tradition of some of his novels - indeed the overall flavour is Eco meets Houellebecq, with Bolano thrown into the mix (or Eco meets Fight Club as Binet himself claims).
The scene that opens the novel continues:
There is more to [Barthes] than his mother and boys and his phantom novel. There is the libido sciendi, the lust for learning, and, awoken by it, the flattering prospect of revolutionizing human knowledge and, perhaps, changing the world. Does Barthes feel like Einstein, thinking about his theory as he crosses Rue des Écoles? What is certain is that he’s not really looking where he’s going. He is less than a hundred feet from his office when he is hit by a van. His body makes the familiar, sickening, dull thudding sound of flesh meeting metal, and it rolls over the pavement like a rag doll. Passersby flinch. This afternoon—February 25, 1980—they cannot know what has just happened in front of their eyes. For the very good reason that, until today, no one understands anything about it.
and in the novel's alternative history, Barthes death is no accident, and the imperative to solve the case goes up to the President himself, Giscard d'Estaing, preparing for his 1981 Presidential re-election battles against his former ally Jacques Chirac and the perennial loser, standard bearer of the left, Francois Mitterand, this time perhaps with a serious chance to win. Indeed it soon emerges that Barthes had just dined with Mitterand.
The case is assigned to Jacques Bayard - named after Jack Bauer of the TV series 24- a cynical detective, essentially a right-wing Jim Royle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roy...) who has never heard of Barthes, and who is very unimpressed by his first encounter with the Collège de France:
Courses open to all, but of interest only to work-shy lefties, retired people, lunatics or pipe-smoking teachers; improbable subjects that he’s never heard of before .. No degrees, no exams. People like Barthes and Foucault paid to spout a load of woolly nonsense. Bayard is already sure of one thing: no one comes here to learn how to do a job. Episteme, my arse.
He soon meets a young semiologist, Simon Herzog, who uses his talents of interpreting signs rather a la Sherlock Holmes (from whom the character's name is taken), explaining semiology to Bayard by this example:
Your manner of dressing signals your profession: you wear a suit, which indicates an executive job, but your clothes are cheap, which implies a modest salary and/or an absence of interest in your appearance; so you belong to a profession in which presentation doesn’t matter, or not very much. Your shoes are badly scuffed, and you came here in a car, which signifies that you are not deskbound - you are out and about in your job. An executive who leaves his office is very likely to be assigned some kind of inspection work
and when Bayard remarks that this isn't too impressive he goes further to deduce, with Holmesian explanations as to why: You fought in Algeria; you have been married twice; you are separated from your second wife; you have a daughter under twenty, with whom you have a difficult relationship; you voted for Giscard in both rounds of the last presidential election, and you'll do the same again next year; you lost a colleague in the line of duty.
Bayard immediately requisitions him as his expert (and annoying) sidekick for the investigation.
And the story that follows is a romp across Paris and to Bologna and the US, pursued by umbrella-wielding Bulgarian assassins (the Markov murder was in 1978) driving a Citreon DS (*) and mysterious Japanese agents, and with a supporting cast real-life characters, a roll-call of the French intellectuals of the time - Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Paul Sartre, Bernard-Henry Levy, Philippe Sollers, Julia Kristeva, Gilles Deleuze, Louis Althusser and Tzvetan Todorov amongst others - as well as a politicians from d'Estaing and Mitterand downwards and famous tennis players of the era (the latter usually mostly as metaphors - rhetoric is McEnroe but semiotics is Borg).
(a nod to Barthes Mythologies and his description of the Citreon DS and other cars of the time as almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object. - one of many similar allusion in the book, the vast majority of which I suspect passed me by)
The mystery device that animates the plot is a mysterious "seventh function of language", in addition to the 6 enumerated by Roman Jakobson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_J...), which Barthes had discovered and as one character, in on the secret, tries to explain before his untimely demise at the point of an umbrella:
There exists a function that eludes the various inalienable factors of verbal communication ... and which, in a way, encompassed all of them. This function, we shall call,...
This 7th function gives one the ultimate power of persuasion - handy indeed for a politician anticipating a TV debate with his presidential opponent.
The good news is that the novel doesn't require an intimate familiarity with academic theories of language and communication. The corresponding bad news is that there is a lot of exposition (e.g. the list of Jakobson's standard 6 functions takes 3 pages). When Bayard, early on, listens to a Foucault lecture he thinks, rather as does the reader: The tone which is simultaneously didactic and projected. At another point as Herzog tries to explain something, Jacques Bayard has no desire to learn more but for the sake of the investigation he has to understand at least the broad outlines.; the reader feels the same way! And by page 36 we are relieved to be told by the narrator I’ll spare you the now obligatory copy-and-paste of the Wikipedia page, only for the information dumps to reappear soon after. By page 142 it is difficult not to sympathise when the detective, listening to another explanation from Herzog, feels an overriding desire to slap him.
As one can see this is a novel very aware of its existence as a novel and its own faults. The polit is farcical, the sex crude, the humour is juvenile as is much of the language, the characters one-dimensional clichés, the semiotics highly didactic. But this is all done knowingly, the failings proudly on display. That approach risks either amusing or further antagonising the reader, and my feelings alternated between the two.
Indeed who the joke is on - the pretentious intellectuals, or the reader who doesn't get the allusions in the humour - is itself a question the book acknowledges, putting into Bayard's thoughts:
This makes him laugh a little, but he hates what he instinctively perceives as a principle of verbal intimidation. Of course, he knows that this kind of book is not aimed at him, that it’s a book for intellectuals, for those smart-arsed parasites to have a good snigger amongst themselves. Mocking themselves: the last laugh.
The book can't also help read rather differently to most British readers, in a country where Barthes, Foucault, Derrida et al may be known for their works but are not personalities (nor indeed are their English equivalents) meaning that the fun apparently had at their expense is rather lost. Again as the book acknowledges, this time in Sollers voice: Why do those pathetic Americans obstinately refuse to take any notice of him, this giant among giants, who will be read and reread in 2043?” . Indeed I personally found the political figures much more recognisable and hence far more interesting - so I can see how this would resonant more with those interesting in the philosophers and literary professors.
The translation by Sam Taylor: difficult to comment as the English is pretty simple, at times crude, but I strongly suspect this is faithful to the original.
Overall - a stimulating but also frustrating read - 2.5 stars.
Interview with the author:
http://www.partisanmagazine.com/blog/...
November 27, 2019
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.
April 9, 2019
Τον Binet τον έμαθε ο κόσμος από το ΗΗhH, ένα ιστορικό μυθιστόρημα που μαζί είναι και το προσωπικό ημερολογίο του συγγραφέα: οι σκέψεις πάνω στη συγγραφή του βιβλίου και στην προσήλωση στην ιστορική ακριβεία που αργά ή γρήγορα ένας ιστοριογράφος θα κάμψει στο βωμό μια συνεκτικής και πιασάρικης ιστορίας. Στην Έβδομη λειτουργία της γλώσσας γράφει ένα μυθιστόρημα, δίχως όμως να αφήνει τον αναγνώστη να ξεχνάει πως και ένα προιόν μυθοπλασίας έχει από πίσω του έναν άνθρωπο που κοπιάζει για να το γράψει.
Ο Binet αγαπάει το χιούμορ, όπως και αγαπάει την γνώση σε πολυποίκιλές της εκφάνσης. Δεν ξέρω πόσα άλλα γνωστικά αντικείμενα κατέχει, πάντως ο τρόπος που χειρίζεται την γαλλική διανόηση, την πολιτική, την φιλοσοφία και άλλα θέματα μέσα στην ιστορία του, με κάνει να νιώθω ένας αγροίκος. Η ιστορία από μόνη της είναι μια ευφάνταστη, παρδαλή αστυνομική ιστορία. Και ίσως το βιβλίο να απευθυνόταν σε ένα ευρύτερο κοινό, αν ο Binet δάμαζε στοιχεία που αναπόφευκτα δίνουν στην αφήγησή του τον δικό της χαρακτήρα.
Δεν ξέρω ποιός αναγνώστης θα απολαύσει καθ' ολοκληρία το βιβλίο. Είναι απαιτητικό και κάπως χαωτικό, αν κάποιος το προσεγγίσει σαν ένα βιβλίο περιπέτειας που θέλει να το παίξει έξυπνο. Ούτε το ανάποδο (ένα διανοουμενίστικο, αστείο βιβλίο που χρησιμοποιεί το crime genre) ξέρω αν θα λειτουργήσει πολύ καλά. Είναι πολύ πιθανό να τσακίσει τα νεύρα κάποιων. Εγώ, πάντως, πέρασα υπέροχα και θεωρώ τον Binet αδερφή ψυχή. Γράφει αυτά που θέλει και δε νοιάζεται για τις συμβάσεις.
Ο Binet αγαπάει το χιούμορ, όπως και αγαπάει την γνώση σε πολυποίκιλές της εκφάνσης. Δεν ξέρω πόσα άλλα γνωστικά αντικείμενα κατέχει, πάντως ο τρόπος που χειρίζεται την γαλλική διανόηση, την πολιτική, την φιλοσοφία και άλλα θέματα μέσα στην ιστορία του, με κάνει να νιώθω ένας αγροίκος. Η ιστορία από μόνη της είναι μια ευφάνταστη, παρδαλή αστυνομική ιστορία. Και ίσως το βιβλίο να απευθυνόταν σε ένα ευρύτερο κοινό, αν ο Binet δάμαζε στοιχεία που αναπόφευκτα δίνουν στην αφήγησή του τον δικό της χαρακτήρα.
Δεν ξέρω ποιός αναγνώστης θα απολαύσει καθ' ολοκληρία το βιβλίο. Είναι απαιτητικό και κάπως χαωτικό, αν κάποιος το προσεγγίσει σαν ένα βιβλίο περιπέτειας που θέλει να το παίξει έξυπνο. Ούτε το ανάποδο (ένα διανοουμενίστικο, αστείο βιβλίο που χρησιμοποιεί το crime genre) ξέρω αν θα λειτουργήσει πολύ καλά. Είναι πολύ πιθανό να τσακίσει τα νεύρα κάποιων. Εγώ, πάντως, πέρασα υπέροχα και θεωρώ τον Binet αδερφή ψυχή. Γράφει αυτά που θέλει και δε νοιάζεται για τις συμβάσεις.
April 4, 2018
Well, that was an unexpected delight!
I can't say I would ever have chosen to read this book, had it not been longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize (and been the only book from the said longlist stocked by my local bookshop). From the blurb I had imagined it would be rather pretentious and self congratulatory and whilst, there was occasionally an element of the latter, overall I found it jolly good fun. I loved the evolving relationship between Bayard and his sidekick Simon. I loved the concept of the underground fight-club-for-intellectuals Logos Club. I liked the juxtaposition of the philosophy and semiotics versus the occasionally adolescent, slapstick humour.
I can't imagine this winning the MBI Prize, but I'm glad it was longlisted and that I was thus prompted to read it, because I thought it was great.
I can't say I would ever have chosen to read this book, had it not been longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize (and been the only book from the said longlist stocked by my local bookshop). From the blurb I had imagined it would be rather pretentious and self congratulatory and whilst, there was occasionally an element of the latter, overall I found it jolly good fun. I loved the evolving relationship between Bayard and his sidekick Simon. I loved the concept of the underground fight-club-for-intellectuals Logos Club. I liked the juxtaposition of the philosophy and semiotics versus the occasionally adolescent, slapstick humour.
I can't imagine this winning the MBI Prize, but I'm glad it was longlisted and that I was thus prompted to read it, because I thought it was great.
Read
January 2, 2025What literary person can resist a satire of the French 1980s intelligentsia? Roland Barthes is struck by a vehicle, hospitalized, and dies--but not before setting in motion an investigation that points to mysteries, secret societies, a Holy Grail of a purloined document, and national conspiracies. The cast features no less than Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, Jean-Paul Sartre, François Mitterand, Umberto Eco (whom I wish got more stage time), et al. From Foucault fleeing a lecture hall and yelling that he cannot be contained by authority; to the constant banter of French intellectuals in smoky, boozy cafés; to militant students foisting activism tracts on passersby and calling everyone around them fascists--there is more than enough poignant satire to provide an evening or two of good-natured amusement. An archetypal police superintendent (right-wing no-nonsense figure with disdain for the generation of intellectuals he views as simply averse to hard work) and an amateur intellectual (knows enough to act as the superintendent’s Wikipedia [sic: anachronism]) pair up for the investigation that takes them from Paris to Bologna to Ithaca (NY) to Venice to Paris. The main themes of the novel and of the time it recounts are language and semiology. Binet was born in 1972, has a literature degree from the University of Paris, and teaches French, all of which contribute to the novel’s blending of 1980s nostalgia, erudite explication of French literary theory, and preoccupation with linguistics. The ostensible plot (a purportedly powerful document that must be rescued from the wrong hands) is rather blasé and has an equally anticlimactic ending. But the book isn’t exactly a potboiler written for the masses. Its full effect will only be realized by a particular set of readers (like me). After the first hundred pages or so, I feared Binet had already exhausted his best material, but at page 185 we get a wonderful allusion to Eco’s 1980 debut novel: “Eco listens with interest to the story of a lost manuscript for which people are being killed. He sees a man walk past holding a bouquet of roses. His mind wanders for second, and a vision of a poisoned monk flashes through it.” On page 217 a boy on a plane plays with a Rubik’s cube, though the fascinated superintendent doesn’t know that’s what it’s called. And on page 237: “In the hotel corridors Foucault has a panic attack because he saw The Shining just before he left France.” For anyone who has had to puzzle through, say, Derrida’s Of Grammatology or trudge through Sartre’s Being and Nothingness; for anyone who has been embroiled in arguments and debates in humanities classes that seems to circle around and around and end in a sort of neopragmatist truce--The Seventh Function of Language will prove a worthy fireside companion.
April 27, 2018
“Immaginiamo una funzione del linguaggio che permetta, in modo più estensivo, di convincere chiunque a fare una qualsiasi cosa in una situazione qualsiasi. Colui che avesse la conoscenza e il controllo di una tale funzione sarebbe virtualmente il padrone del mondo. La sua potenza non avrebbe alcun limite. Potrebbe farsi eleggere in tutte le elezioni, potrebbe sollevare le folle, provocare rivoluzioni, sedurre tutte le donne, vendere ogni sorta di prodotti immaginabili, costruire imperi, truffare la terra intera, ottenere tutto ciò che vuole in una qualsiasi circostanza”.
La settima funzione del linguaggio, ipotizzata da Jakobson e precisata da Austin, è quella performante, ovvero capace di produrre dalle parole realtà.
È l’arte della persuasione per eccellenza, praticata dai sofisti, perfezionata dalla retorica di tutti i tempi applicata ai campi più disparati.
Ma se ci fosse una tecnica, una semplice formula applicabile al discorso che possa elevarlo, per così dire, alla settima potenza? Roland Barthes potrebbe essere stato ucciso per questo? Il segreto circolerebbe di soppiatto da Parigi a Ithaca, da Bologna a Venezia...rincorso da filosofi e politici? E perché i duelli oratori del Logos Club sono segreti e frequentati da iniziati? Una strana coppia di investigatori ha il compito di scoprirlo.
Intorno a questo dilemma il talentuoso Binet costruisce un romanzo sul linguaggio (e dunque un po’ meta...) e il suo potere, sulla realtà e la sua imitazione (il romanzo) e riscrive, riproducendola nei suoi motteggi e dunque prendendola un po’ in giro, la storia intellettuale e sociale della Francia degli anni 80, passando per l’Italia.
Un divertissment che a volte sorprende per l’inventiva, spesso fa riflettere, a volte fa sorridere (e un poco anche inorridire).
Molto francese (bisogna un po’ ricordarsi di Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida, Althusser, Sollers e Kristeva e tutti gli altri); molto strutturalista (Eco è qui personaggio e maître à penser); molto erudito.
Ecco, nonostante lo stile agile e lo sguardo sornione, bisogna dire che nell’eccesso di trovate monsieur Binet a volte disorienta, nel tanto discorrere e dibattere un pochino annoia.
(3 stelle e mezzo)
La settima funzione del linguaggio, ipotizzata da Jakobson e precisata da Austin, è quella performante, ovvero capace di produrre dalle parole realtà.
È l’arte della persuasione per eccellenza, praticata dai sofisti, perfezionata dalla retorica di tutti i tempi applicata ai campi più disparati.
Ma se ci fosse una tecnica, una semplice formula applicabile al discorso che possa elevarlo, per così dire, alla settima potenza? Roland Barthes potrebbe essere stato ucciso per questo? Il segreto circolerebbe di soppiatto da Parigi a Ithaca, da Bologna a Venezia...rincorso da filosofi e politici? E perché i duelli oratori del Logos Club sono segreti e frequentati da iniziati? Una strana coppia di investigatori ha il compito di scoprirlo.
Intorno a questo dilemma il talentuoso Binet costruisce un romanzo sul linguaggio (e dunque un po’ meta...) e il suo potere, sulla realtà e la sua imitazione (il romanzo) e riscrive, riproducendola nei suoi motteggi e dunque prendendola un po’ in giro, la storia intellettuale e sociale della Francia degli anni 80, passando per l’Italia.
Un divertissment che a volte sorprende per l’inventiva, spesso fa riflettere, a volte fa sorridere (e un poco anche inorridire).
Molto francese (bisogna un po’ ricordarsi di Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida, Althusser, Sollers e Kristeva e tutti gli altri); molto strutturalista (Eco è qui personaggio e maître à penser); molto erudito.
Ecco, nonostante lo stile agile e lo sguardo sornione, bisogna dire che nell’eccesso di trovate monsieur Binet a volte disorienta, nel tanto discorrere e dibattere un pochino annoia.
(3 stelle e mezzo)
November 20, 2023
It is going to be extraordinarily difficult to write much about this book without divulging the plot, and I do want you to read it without any foreknowledge (not that such a thing is possible, because context is of course one of the issues here). So I will try to put the big spoilers at the end, hidden, and you can decide whether to read the last review paragraphs before or after the book.
You know those slot machine windows where there are a dozen lines zigzagging up and down through the simplest game line; the more you bet, the more lines you can pull in to get winning combinations? This book is like one of those machines, with themes zigzagging through all the levels of the action. The more people and terms you invest in looking up (unless you are already an expert in semiotics, linguistics, language philosophy, psychoanalysis, contemporary French history, etc etc) the more connections you will find among the levels of the novel. I advise looking everything up, because it will enrich your enjoyment enormously. It sounds daunting, but Binet is really a genius at clarifying the concepts of the various theoretical players so that you can follow the debates and see how they illuminate the academic and political duels of the plot. And see how funny it all is, as he sets up wonderful satirical conversations at dinners, university conferences, cafes, etc. He makes it so funny, and maintains the suspense so successfully, that it is a linguistic page-turner worth comparison with the best-seller by that other semiotician.
This is a work about power, language, and communication. Also Cold War politics, French and Italian politics, university politics across multiple countries, sex, the state, courage, friendship and betrayal, the novel, detective fiction, self-esteem, feminism, etc etc. It is also extraordinarily funny, witty and clever. Full of skewers. Very French.
As the cover states, it starts with a laundry van hitting Roland Barthes minutes after he has had lunch with Mitterand and his advisors. Was it an accident? From here we enter the multiple layers of power struggles that exemplify the debates over power that are at the core of the linguistics and philosophical/sociological debates that run throughout. D’Estaing and Mitterand are engaged in a battle for the Presidency. Soon there is an East-West power level as we eavesdrop on conversations in Moscow. On every page there are debates among the academics that are life-and-death battles. The bourgeois detective brought in to clarify the circumstances of the accident commandeers a liberal graduate student to interpret the seeming gobble-de-gook the academics spout. Eventually, law versus criminal. (And finally, Cervantes and the West vs the Ottomans at the Battle of Lepanto.) So, who has the most power in these dualities? How do you change the balance of power? With language, every time (except Lepanto, it seems, where there is a refusal to communicate).
So Bourdieu and Foucault are essential to the questions about power, and Roman Jakobson’s theories about the functions of language are essential to the plot. Binet explains it all, so an interested reader can keep up, with the feeling of being on the edge of getting lost the fun of the challenge. The ingenious aspect is that Binet makes his characters and situations embody aspects of Jacobson’s functions, and of linguistic theory in general. Midway through the novel, as Derrida the Continental man decimates Searle the heir to the British Austin in a confrontation at a conference in Ithica, we see exactly how slippery the ideas of ‘intention’, iterability, and context are. Who is using who to send messages in this tangled plot? Does the sender really understand their own intention? Does the person who is the message understand what he or she is doing? Does the intended receiver get the message, and does he or she interpret it the way the sender meant it? Consciously or unconsciously? Or is it received by multiple people who interpret it differently? Or, did someone intercept and alter the message?
But Binet widens the idea of communication beyond language. Simon, the graduate student, is also a whiz at interpreting visual and contextual clues that go beyond language. And both the detectives sometimes make intuitive or instinctual leaps that bypass language, if not communication.
I just want to say, there is plenty of sex, elaborate Venetian architecture, food, and humor, to make this theoretical superstructure slide down easily. The detective pair are delightful, as they move beyond their comfort zones, stretch and grow, and develop a complex friendship. Highly recommended. And now to two parting spoiler comments.
You know those slot machine windows where there are a dozen lines zigzagging up and down through the simplest game line; the more you bet, the more lines you can pull in to get winning combinations? This book is like one of those machines, with themes zigzagging through all the levels of the action. The more people and terms you invest in looking up (unless you are already an expert in semiotics, linguistics, language philosophy, psychoanalysis, contemporary French history, etc etc) the more connections you will find among the levels of the novel. I advise looking everything up, because it will enrich your enjoyment enormously. It sounds daunting, but Binet is really a genius at clarifying the concepts of the various theoretical players so that you can follow the debates and see how they illuminate the academic and political duels of the plot. And see how funny it all is, as he sets up wonderful satirical conversations at dinners, university conferences, cafes, etc. He makes it so funny, and maintains the suspense so successfully, that it is a linguistic page-turner worth comparison with the best-seller by that other semiotician.
This is a work about power, language, and communication. Also Cold War politics, French and Italian politics, university politics across multiple countries, sex, the state, courage, friendship and betrayal, the novel, detective fiction, self-esteem, feminism, etc etc. It is also extraordinarily funny, witty and clever. Full of skewers. Very French.
As the cover states, it starts with a laundry van hitting Roland Barthes minutes after he has had lunch with Mitterand and his advisors. Was it an accident? From here we enter the multiple layers of power struggles that exemplify the debates over power that are at the core of the linguistics and philosophical/sociological debates that run throughout. D’Estaing and Mitterand are engaged in a battle for the Presidency. Soon there is an East-West power level as we eavesdrop on conversations in Moscow. On every page there are debates among the academics that are life-and-death battles. The bourgeois detective brought in to clarify the circumstances of the accident commandeers a liberal graduate student to interpret the seeming gobble-de-gook the academics spout. Eventually, law versus criminal. (And finally, Cervantes and the West vs the Ottomans at the Battle of Lepanto.) So, who has the most power in these dualities? How do you change the balance of power? With language, every time (except Lepanto, it seems, where there is a refusal to communicate).
So Bourdieu and Foucault are essential to the questions about power, and Roman Jakobson’s theories about the functions of language are essential to the plot. Binet explains it all, so an interested reader can keep up, with the feeling of being on the edge of getting lost the fun of the challenge. The ingenious aspect is that Binet makes his characters and situations embody aspects of Jacobson’s functions, and of linguistic theory in general. Midway through the novel, as Derrida the Continental man decimates Searle the heir to the British Austin in a confrontation at a conference in Ithica, we see exactly how slippery the ideas of ‘intention’, iterability, and context are. Who is using who to send messages in this tangled plot? Does the sender really understand their own intention? Does the person who is the message understand what he or she is doing? Does the intended receiver get the message, and does he or she interpret it the way the sender meant it? Consciously or unconsciously? Or is it received by multiple people who interpret it differently? Or, did someone intercept and alter the message?
But Binet widens the idea of communication beyond language. Simon, the graduate student, is also a whiz at interpreting visual and contextual clues that go beyond language. And both the detectives sometimes make intuitive or instinctual leaps that bypass language, if not communication.
I just want to say, there is plenty of sex, elaborate Venetian architecture, food, and humor, to make this theoretical superstructure slide down easily. The detective pair are delightful, as they move beyond their comfort zones, stretch and grow, and develop a complex friendship. Highly recommended. And now to two parting spoiler comments.
June 20, 2020
Szpiegowski kryminał osadzony w środowisku francuskich semiologów i filozofów z początku lat 80-tych. Nie wiem, czy to brzmi zachęcająco. Ale wyszło coś rewelacyjnego.
Autor wyszedł od wydarzeń, które naprawdę miały miejsce: potrącenie na paryskiej ulicy znanego krytyka literackiego oraz śmierć żony komunizującego filozofa. Do tych wydarzeń dołożył mnóstwo krwistej fikcji, w którą wplótł prawdziwe i fikcyjne postaci. Forma powieści szpiegowskiej to tylko tylko czubek góry lodowej. Pod powierzchnią kryje się tyle smaczków, że z pewnością odkryłem tylko niewielką ich część.
Bohaterami tej powieści są teoretycy literatury, wyznawcy (lub wrogowie) postmodernizmu i dekonstrukcji a książka najczystszym przejawem teorii, które opisuje. To jest orgia zabawy językiem, znaczeniami oraz formą. Autor żongluje perspektywami i punktami widzenia, bez przerwy gubi tropy, bawi się w kotka i myszkę z czytelnikiem, ale także z bohaterami - w pewnym momencie nawet oni zaczynają mieć wątpliwości, czy przypadkiem nie są tylko postaciami z książki. Całość jest dowcipna, erudycyjna (ale w sensie raczej popularno-naukowym niż podręcznikowym), wciągająca do ostatniej strony.
Bez wątpienia trzeba tę książkę przeczytać drugi raz i na pewno to zrobię.
------------
Po drugim przeczytaniu: Nadal jestem zauroczony. Uwielbiam te wszystkie trudne słowa, wplecione w przezabawną postmodernistyczną intrygę. Uwielbiam dekonstruktywistyczną formę doprowadzoną do takiego absurdu, że w końcu nawet główny bohater zaczyna się gubić w swojej roli między rzeczywistością a literaturą. Fajne, fajne, fajne...
Autor wyszedł od wydarzeń, które naprawdę miały miejsce: potrącenie na paryskiej ulicy znanego krytyka literackiego oraz śmierć żony komunizującego filozofa. Do tych wydarzeń dołożył mnóstwo krwistej fikcji, w którą wplótł prawdziwe i fikcyjne postaci. Forma powieści szpiegowskiej to tylko tylko czubek góry lodowej. Pod powierzchnią kryje się tyle smaczków, że z pewnością odkryłem tylko niewielką ich część.
Bohaterami tej powieści są teoretycy literatury, wyznawcy (lub wrogowie) postmodernizmu i dekonstrukcji a książka najczystszym przejawem teorii, które opisuje. To jest orgia zabawy językiem, znaczeniami oraz formą. Autor żongluje perspektywami i punktami widzenia, bez przerwy gubi tropy, bawi się w kotka i myszkę z czytelnikiem, ale także z bohaterami - w pewnym momencie nawet oni zaczynają mieć wątpliwości, czy przypadkiem nie są tylko postaciami z książki. Całość jest dowcipna, erudycyjna (ale w sensie raczej popularno-naukowym niż podręcznikowym), wciągająca do ostatniej strony.
Bez wątpienia trzeba tę książkę przeczytać drugi raz i na pewno to zrobię.
------------
Po drugim przeczytaniu: Nadal jestem zauroczony. Uwielbiam te wszystkie trudne słowa, wplecione w przezabawną postmodernistyczną intrygę. Uwielbiam dekonstruktywistyczną formę doprowadzoną do takiego absurdu, że w końcu nawet główny bohater zaczyna się gubić w swojej roli między rzeczywistością a literaturą. Fajne, fajne, fajne...
April 6, 2021
What an entertaining book! Aside the generous liberties taken to story-tell with the cavalcade of personalities from that era 1980's there was a reasonably well explicated laying out of semiotics/linguistics/historical record of those who developed the fields of study. I just finished another book which also "Lost in the Cosmos" delved into the murky waters of the semiotics relationship to culture/history and so this was helpful - there's a new hook in my mouth and where this will lead - the magic current never ends for the curious reader. I'm a book swimmer!
Yada yada this, then that the story goes, the detective and accomplice weave through a juggernaut of real semioticians, linguists, historians, philosophers, politicians, all seekers and colliders of the times in search of the un-understood 7th function that endows its holder with superior powers of communication with which the possessor could do what any tyrant/dictator does TAKE OVER and do ____? There's murder/mayhem/frolic/frisson to the very last line and ultimately *you* like "Simon" wonder, am I existing inside this novel or am I outside looking in? Presto!
Yada yada this, then that the story goes, the detective and accomplice weave through a juggernaut of real semioticians, linguists, historians, philosophers, politicians, all seekers and colliders of the times in search of the un-understood 7th function that endows its holder with superior powers of communication with which the possessor could do what any tyrant/dictator does TAKE OVER and do ____? There's murder/mayhem/frolic/frisson to the very last line and ultimately *you* like "Simon" wonder, am I existing inside this novel or am I outside looking in? Presto!
February 1, 2023
3.5* rounded up.
A rollicking good time, especially in the first half. If a bit overly professorial on occasion (OK: on much more than one occasion), it is about a bunch of verbose professors and their wacky theories after all, so you do know what you're getting into, from the get-go—a campus novel involving what is arguably one of the biggest MacGuffins ever, my friends.
If you are as allergic to PoMo theory as I am, don't worry: no anaphalaxis will be provoked, just a mild rash, as the theory is all dealt with (with a few exceptions) with a light enough touch or with sufficient tongue in cheek that, while your pleasure cruise may seem to drag on a bit at times, it will expertly take you to where you need to be going—your next novel, of course, having solved none of your readerly or writerly or existential problems, but not wasting too too much of your time either: this may well be the professional/aspiring academic's idea of a beach read, but not so high-falutin for all that, and it kinda does a decent job at teaching you all you need to know about the Linguistic Turn to get most of the in-jokes.
As an added bonus, there's a lot of literal and metaphorical tennis involved, and perhaps more parochial French politicking than you knew you were signing up for.
If you like this kind of thing at all, I highly recommend the David Lodge campus trilogy of Changing Places , Small World, and Nice Work, the first two of which feature the delightfully shallow and successful academic, Morris Zapp, who of course is on hand to tickle your intertextuality bone here in Binet's novel as well!
A rollicking good time, especially in the first half. If a bit overly professorial on occasion (OK: on much more than one occasion), it is about a bunch of verbose professors and their wacky theories after all, so you do know what you're getting into, from the get-go—a campus novel involving what is arguably one of the biggest MacGuffins ever, my friends.
If you are as allergic to PoMo theory as I am, don't worry: no anaphalaxis will be provoked, just a mild rash, as the theory is all dealt with (with a few exceptions) with a light enough touch or with sufficient tongue in cheek that, while your pleasure cruise may seem to drag on a bit at times, it will expertly take you to where you need to be going—your next novel, of course, having solved none of your readerly or writerly or existential problems, but not wasting too too much of your time either: this may well be the professional/aspiring academic's idea of a beach read, but not so high-falutin for all that, and it kinda does a decent job at teaching you all you need to know about the Linguistic Turn to get most of the in-jokes.
As an added bonus, there's a lot of literal and metaphorical tennis involved, and perhaps more parochial French politicking than you knew you were signing up for.
If you like this kind of thing at all, I highly recommend the David Lodge campus trilogy of Changing Places , Small World, and Nice Work, the first two of which feature the delightfully shallow and successful academic, Morris Zapp, who of course is on hand to tickle your intertextuality bone here in Binet's novel as well!
half-read
February 18, 2018Read up to p.168. In complete reviewerly concord with Lee Klein as to the novel’s initial momentum and momentous moments—the whip-smart précis of theories from the pastiched theorists, the hilarious send-ups of the self-regarding demimondes, the clever take on the political lunacies of the period, the sparky self-awareness of the narrator, and the frothy fun of the comic dialogue. But when the novel moves to Bologna, and the conceit of Barthes’s “7th language”, i.e. a mind-control tool for world domination, with its attendant spy malarky, is the narrative focus, I crashed into a bollard of indifference, and failed to find a set of mental jumpleads to respark my interest. The flatness of the two protagonists, and the romping comic tone perhaps makes any real interest in the “intrigue” side of things harder to sustain. It happens.
June 3, 2018
Arthur Conan Doyle criou a base, Umberto Eco criou o modelo, Dan Brown aperfeiçoou a trama com uma fórmula, Laurent Binet usou a base e o modelo e abusou da fórmula por meio da sátira, e assim criou o thriller intelectual da década, em "A Sétima Função da Linguagem" (2015). Temos crime e mistério com direito a conspirações internacionais criadas a partir de académicos tornados celebridades com teorias de crítica literária transformadas em Santo Graal. Se gostarem de qualquer destes elementos, estarão em casa, já que Binet criou a obra por meio régua e esquadro, ou seja, tudo está no sítio certo, da estrutura às centenas, quase milhar, de referências.
[Ler com links e formatação no Vi: https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...]
Diria que é uma obra que apelará a quem investiga as Ciências da Comunicação, nomeadamente a Semiótica e áreas afins como Estudos Culturais e Literários (com os seus pós-estruturalismo e pós-modernismo) dado o contexto que contribui para a criação de infindáveis private jokes das áreas. Claramente que a obra também fala para quem está fora destes domínios, existe uma constante preocupação em generalizar os papéis dos académicos, estereotipando-os para funcionarem como académicos de qualquer área. Por outro lado, as teorias intrincadas dos domínios são sempre apresentadas de modo bastante simplificado por forma a garantir um conhecimento mínimo sobre o que está em jogo. O facto de se laborar por meio da fórmula de thriller e usar uma teoria filosófica como mote, acaba gerando per se uma obra de grande entretenimento, com a vantagem de se poder aprender enquanto nos divertimos. Contudo, a experiência de leitura destes dois públicos será bastante diferente.
Falei em centenas, e por isso não posso aqui listar todos os que nesta aventura intervêm, deixo, no entanto, alguns indicadores para compreendermos o mundo-história que se nos apresenta. Do lado dos académicos: Roman Jakobson, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Umberto Eco, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Tzvetan Todorov, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida, John Searle, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Noam Chomsky, Paul de Man, Richard Rorty, Camille Paglia, Judith Buttler e Jacques Lacan. Do lado dos políticos, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing e François Mitterrand, e em fundo Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Jacques Chirac e João Paulo II. Das artes temos Philippe Sollers, muito presente pela sua relação com Kristeva, e Michelangelo Antonioni e Monica Vitti. Por outro lado, são inúmeros os eventos reais chamados para constituir o palco da ação: desde a efetiva morte de Roland Barthes em 1980, motivada por um ridículo atropelamento, às eleições para a presidência da república francesa em 1981, ao assassinato da mulher de Althusser pelo próprio, ao atentado à bomba na estação de Bolonha que matou 75 pessoas em 1980, até à excelente querela entre Derrida e Searle, ou ainda aos distintos universos homossexuais de Barthes e Foucault.
Binet usa todo este manancial de personagens, espaços e eventos reais para criar uma trama de mistério, partindo do seu ovo de Colombo: “Quem matou Roland Barthes?” Nada melhor do que lançar o mistério sobre algo que aconteceu da forma mais banal possível, e a partir de aí dar largas à imaginação, arquitetar, montar e ligar as pontas reais com as imaginárias, criar sentidos, dos velhos fazer novos. No fundo é exatamente disso que fala a Semiótica, a ciência que estuda o modo como damos sentido ao mundo, ou o modo como a comunicação se torna eficaz. Barthes não criou a semiótica, mas foi, e continua a ser, uma das suas grandes referências académicas, juntamente com os fundadores Saussurre e Peirce, e o seu contemporâneo Umberto Eco. Gostei particularmente do trabalho realizado por Binet sobre a teorização das Funções da Linguagem da Jakobson que vai servir de suporte a toda a trama, desde os combates de discursos do Logos Club (segundo o próprio Binet, baseados no "Fight Club" de Palahniuk) à comunicação política das presidenciais francesas de 1981. E ainda no campo político, dizer que foi verdadeiramente premonitório o trabalho de Binet, ao colocar Kristeva como espécie de espiã búlgara, o que viria ser confirmado pela polícia da Bulgária em 2018.
A obra apresenta-se como um simples thriller satírico, que gera diversão, mas pode facilmente contribuir para abrir portas de interesse para quem está fora do domínio, ou renovar o interesse a quem entretanto as fechou. Binet contextualiza, embora não possa condensar anos de estudo num livro, mas as teorias essenciais e suas metodologias são aqui dissecadas e sempre de forma a garantir a compreensão mais alargada possível. Para muitos do público que trabalham na área, o riso é uma constante, só imaginar cada um destes intelectuais que passámos horas e horas a estudar nas bibliotecas das universidades, agindo como meros mortais, cometendo gaffes, dando-se ao ridículo, cria todo um mundo alternativo ao imaginário por nós fabricado. Por outro lado, é tudo isso que nos instiga a questionar intelectualmente as teorias e o modo como elas vão sendo profusamente aplicadas na construção do texto literário que temos na nossa frente, já que Binet nunca se coíbe de usar na forma muito daquilo que vai discutindo no conteúdo.
Ou seja, se senti ao longo de todo o livro uma leveza, ou superficialidade, na descrição das grandes teorizações, não foi por incapacidade do autor, mas porque a isso este objectivou. Talvez mais do que isso me tenha incomodado uma certa artificialidade discursiva, ou seja, compreender os truques próprios de cada género de romance — policial, histórico, aventura, coming of age — e a necessidade de ir embebendo nestes os diferentes personagens reais, os diferentes eventos ocorridos, criando novas leituras, novos imaginários. É tudo bastante estereotipado, sente-se um certo receio do autor de não ser compreendido, provavelmente pelo facto de estar a falar para dois tipos de público muito distintos, como mencionado acima. No entanto, se todas as peças parecem artificialmente montadas, como que seguido um manual de Lego criado pelo autor, o manual não deixa de impressionar, não só pelo lastro imensamente largo, mas também pela sua profundidade e complexidade.
Por fim, e agora numa leitura mais distanciada, foi uma surpresa a abordagem escolhida para este livro por Binet. Ao longo do último século fomo-nos habituando a ler e a ver histórias de aventuras que quando se focam na busca de objetos de grande poder, perdidos ou secretos, apresentam invariavelmente duas vertentes: místicos/religiosos — Santo Grall, Pergaminhos, Cidades de Ouro, etc.; e quando se viram para a ciência, seguem atrás do poder transformador das ciências naturais — fórmulas matemáticas, moléculas, radiações, realidades quânticas. Ora esta foi provavelmente a primeira obra, de grande destaque popular, a construir-se sob as teorizações das ciências humanas e sociais. Depois desta, já vimos Hollywood fazer o mesmo com “Arrival” em 2016, com toda a parafernália tecnológica a ser subjugada a uma simples teoria da linguagem, a Hipótese de Sapir-Whorf. Em certa medida, acalento a esperança de ser um indicador do reconhecimento da importância das diferentes ciências. Não existem ciências mais importantes que outras, não podemos compreender o mundo sem a multidisciplinaridade que sempre caracterizou a humildade científica.
Publicado no VI em: https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...
[Ler com links e formatação no Vi: https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...]
Diria que é uma obra que apelará a quem investiga as Ciências da Comunicação, nomeadamente a Semiótica e áreas afins como Estudos Culturais e Literários (com os seus pós-estruturalismo e pós-modernismo) dado o contexto que contribui para a criação de infindáveis private jokes das áreas. Claramente que a obra também fala para quem está fora destes domínios, existe uma constante preocupação em generalizar os papéis dos académicos, estereotipando-os para funcionarem como académicos de qualquer área. Por outro lado, as teorias intrincadas dos domínios são sempre apresentadas de modo bastante simplificado por forma a garantir um conhecimento mínimo sobre o que está em jogo. O facto de se laborar por meio da fórmula de thriller e usar uma teoria filosófica como mote, acaba gerando per se uma obra de grande entretenimento, com a vantagem de se poder aprender enquanto nos divertimos. Contudo, a experiência de leitura destes dois públicos será bastante diferente.
Falei em centenas, e por isso não posso aqui listar todos os que nesta aventura intervêm, deixo, no entanto, alguns indicadores para compreendermos o mundo-história que se nos apresenta. Do lado dos académicos: Roman Jakobson, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Umberto Eco, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Tzvetan Todorov, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida, John Searle, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Noam Chomsky, Paul de Man, Richard Rorty, Camille Paglia, Judith Buttler e Jacques Lacan. Do lado dos políticos, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing e François Mitterrand, e em fundo Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Jacques Chirac e João Paulo II. Das artes temos Philippe Sollers, muito presente pela sua relação com Kristeva, e Michelangelo Antonioni e Monica Vitti. Por outro lado, são inúmeros os eventos reais chamados para constituir o palco da ação: desde a efetiva morte de Roland Barthes em 1980, motivada por um ridículo atropelamento, às eleições para a presidência da república francesa em 1981, ao assassinato da mulher de Althusser pelo próprio, ao atentado à bomba na estação de Bolonha que matou 75 pessoas em 1980, até à excelente querela entre Derrida e Searle, ou ainda aos distintos universos homossexuais de Barthes e Foucault.
Binet usa todo este manancial de personagens, espaços e eventos reais para criar uma trama de mistério, partindo do seu ovo de Colombo: “Quem matou Roland Barthes?” Nada melhor do que lançar o mistério sobre algo que aconteceu da forma mais banal possível, e a partir de aí dar largas à imaginação, arquitetar, montar e ligar as pontas reais com as imaginárias, criar sentidos, dos velhos fazer novos. No fundo é exatamente disso que fala a Semiótica, a ciência que estuda o modo como damos sentido ao mundo, ou o modo como a comunicação se torna eficaz. Barthes não criou a semiótica, mas foi, e continua a ser, uma das suas grandes referências académicas, juntamente com os fundadores Saussurre e Peirce, e o seu contemporâneo Umberto Eco. Gostei particularmente do trabalho realizado por Binet sobre a teorização das Funções da Linguagem da Jakobson que vai servir de suporte a toda a trama, desde os combates de discursos do Logos Club (segundo o próprio Binet, baseados no "Fight Club" de Palahniuk) à comunicação política das presidenciais francesas de 1981. E ainda no campo político, dizer que foi verdadeiramente premonitório o trabalho de Binet, ao colocar Kristeva como espécie de espiã búlgara, o que viria ser confirmado pela polícia da Bulgária em 2018.
A obra apresenta-se como um simples thriller satírico, que gera diversão, mas pode facilmente contribuir para abrir portas de interesse para quem está fora do domínio, ou renovar o interesse a quem entretanto as fechou. Binet contextualiza, embora não possa condensar anos de estudo num livro, mas as teorias essenciais e suas metodologias são aqui dissecadas e sempre de forma a garantir a compreensão mais alargada possível. Para muitos do público que trabalham na área, o riso é uma constante, só imaginar cada um destes intelectuais que passámos horas e horas a estudar nas bibliotecas das universidades, agindo como meros mortais, cometendo gaffes, dando-se ao ridículo, cria todo um mundo alternativo ao imaginário por nós fabricado. Por outro lado, é tudo isso que nos instiga a questionar intelectualmente as teorias e o modo como elas vão sendo profusamente aplicadas na construção do texto literário que temos na nossa frente, já que Binet nunca se coíbe de usar na forma muito daquilo que vai discutindo no conteúdo.
Ou seja, se senti ao longo de todo o livro uma leveza, ou superficialidade, na descrição das grandes teorizações, não foi por incapacidade do autor, mas porque a isso este objectivou. Talvez mais do que isso me tenha incomodado uma certa artificialidade discursiva, ou seja, compreender os truques próprios de cada género de romance — policial, histórico, aventura, coming of age — e a necessidade de ir embebendo nestes os diferentes personagens reais, os diferentes eventos ocorridos, criando novas leituras, novos imaginários. É tudo bastante estereotipado, sente-se um certo receio do autor de não ser compreendido, provavelmente pelo facto de estar a falar para dois tipos de público muito distintos, como mencionado acima. No entanto, se todas as peças parecem artificialmente montadas, como que seguido um manual de Lego criado pelo autor, o manual não deixa de impressionar, não só pelo lastro imensamente largo, mas também pela sua profundidade e complexidade.
Por fim, e agora numa leitura mais distanciada, foi uma surpresa a abordagem escolhida para este livro por Binet. Ao longo do último século fomo-nos habituando a ler e a ver histórias de aventuras que quando se focam na busca de objetos de grande poder, perdidos ou secretos, apresentam invariavelmente duas vertentes: místicos/religiosos — Santo Grall, Pergaminhos, Cidades de Ouro, etc.; e quando se viram para a ciência, seguem atrás do poder transformador das ciências naturais — fórmulas matemáticas, moléculas, radiações, realidades quânticas. Ora esta foi provavelmente a primeira obra, de grande destaque popular, a construir-se sob as teorizações das ciências humanas e sociais. Depois desta, já vimos Hollywood fazer o mesmo com “Arrival” em 2016, com toda a parafernália tecnológica a ser subjugada a uma simples teoria da linguagem, a Hipótese de Sapir-Whorf. Em certa medida, acalento a esperança de ser um indicador do reconhecimento da importância das diferentes ciências. Não existem ciências mais importantes que outras, não podemos compreender o mundo sem a multidisciplinaridade que sempre caracterizou a humildade científica.
Publicado no VI em: https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...
July 9, 2017
Throwing in the towel at 79%. Starting to go cross-eyed and speed-reading sections. Yes, this is stuffed to the gills with allusions and repartee, and comes across as Literary Theory 101 for Dummies … but it is not a novel. Maybe it is supposed to be an anti-novel. No characterisation, just historic pastiche. And no plot either, just a seemingly endless riff on Barthes, etc. And determined to wallow in so muck-raking, back-stabbing, and general sordidness that the author’s vitriolic bile quickly eroded my readerly sympathy/empathy. Undeniably well-written and erudite, but meagre entertainment. Now Umberto Eco, who does appear in this as a character, certainly knows how to balance erudition with narrative, without any unnecessary eyebrow-raising or authorial tut-tutting at the poor reader. A reading ordeal only for the brave, or the demented.
July 1, 2026
CRITIQUE:
Functions of Language
The title of this novel extrapolates on the six functions of language posited by the linguist Roman Jacobson.
Within the framework of the novel, the seventh is a function ostensibly written about in a fictional document by Jacobson that Roland Barthes was believed to be carrying when he was hit and injured by a laundry van in Paris on February 25, 1980 (from which injuries he eventually died a month later).
The seventh function is supposed to be a magical, performative capacity of language. It implies that some language or utterances can declare or cause an event to occur (i.e., the utterance itself can be the action or event that occurs). In other words, "saying is doing." Late in the novel, we witness two examples of the seventh function:
Acts of Fiction
Within the framework of fiction (such as a novel), language itself can make (perceived) reality happen. In contrast, life itself can seem like fiction.
In this case, the author uses language to cause the characters to exist and act in accordance with the demands of the plot.
Ironically, this leads one of the characters to ask the questions:
These characters are, in fact, in a novel, at least from this reader's point of view.
Acts of Detection
One of the protagonists of the novel is a detective (Superintendent Jacques Bayard), who believes that Barthes' death was a murder.
As a result, Bayard teams up with Simon Herzog (a young post-graduate student in the culture and communications department of the University of Vincennes in Saint-Denis), in order to determine the perpetrator of (and the motive for) the crime.
The circumstances and context of the death lead readers to a group of French linguists, semioticians, structuralist and post-structuralist philosophers, socialists and left-wing politicians (almost all of whom attend a hilarious dinner party at one point (1)).
The quasi-criminal investigation is a quest for meaning. To the extent that the meaning might be contained in (or conveyed by) words and language, the investigation is arguably comparable to literary interpretation.
A contemporary party scene.
Acts of Interpretation
By way of counter-argument, in the first two sentences of the novel, Laurent Binet writes:
This lays the foundation for an argument that fiction differs from reality, and that we cannot interpret reality like semiologists, literary theorists and literary critics interpret fiction.
Acts of Entertainment (or Pleasures of the Text)
Unexpectedly, the novel ends up being a French variation on a campus novel. This makes it both comic and silly.
It isn't mentioned in the novel, but I wonder whether another function of language could be its capacity to entertain.
As this novel progresses, it becomes more and more farcical, until finally it resembles a novel by Percival Everett.
Or perhaps both (imaginary?) authors are simply drawing from the same spring.
FOOTNOTES:
(1)) I love party scenes in fiction (especially dinner parties).
Party scenes have featured in novels by William Gaddis, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo and Michael Chabon, four of my favourite authors.
Here, not only do the protagonists attend a dinner party, but they catch a plane together from France to New York, so that they can attend a conference on structuralism and post-structuralism at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
SOUNDTRACK:
Functions of Language
The title of this novel extrapolates on the six functions of language posited by the linguist Roman Jacobson.
Within the framework of the novel, the seventh is a function ostensibly written about in a fictional document by Jacobson that Roland Barthes was believed to be carrying when he was hit and injured by a laundry van in Paris on February 25, 1980 (from which injuries he eventually died a month later).
The seventh function is supposed to be a magical, performative capacity of language. It implies that some language or utterances can declare or cause an event to occur (i.e., the utterance itself can be the action or event that occurs). In other words, "saying is doing." Late in the novel, we witness two examples of the seventh function:
" 'Let there be light!' And there was light."
"I now pronounce you husband and wife."
Acts of Fiction
Within the framework of fiction (such as a novel), language itself can make (perceived) reality happen. In contrast, life itself can seem like fiction.
In this case, the author uses language to cause the characters to exist and act in accordance with the demands of the plot.
Ironically, this leads one of the characters to ask the questions:
"How do you know that you're not in a novel? How do you know that you're not living in a work of fiction? How do you know that you're real?"
These characters are, in fact, in a novel, at least from this reader's point of view.
Acts of Detection
One of the protagonists of the novel is a detective (Superintendent Jacques Bayard), who believes that Barthes' death was a murder.
As a result, Bayard teams up with Simon Herzog (a young post-graduate student in the culture and communications department of the University of Vincennes in Saint-Denis), in order to determine the perpetrator of (and the motive for) the crime.
The circumstances and context of the death lead readers to a group of French linguists, semioticians, structuralist and post-structuralist philosophers, socialists and left-wing politicians (almost all of whom attend a hilarious dinner party at one point (1)).
The quasi-criminal investigation is a quest for meaning. To the extent that the meaning might be contained in (or conveyed by) words and language, the investigation is arguably comparable to literary interpretation.
A contemporary party scene.
Acts of Interpretation
By way of counter-argument, in the first two sentences of the novel, Laurent Binet writes:
"Life is not a novel. Or at least you would like to believe so."
This lays the foundation for an argument that fiction differs from reality, and that we cannot interpret reality like semiologists, literary theorists and literary critics interpret fiction.
Acts of Entertainment (or Pleasures of the Text)
Unexpectedly, the novel ends up being a French variation on a campus novel. This makes it both comic and silly.
It isn't mentioned in the novel, but I wonder whether another function of language could be its capacity to entertain.
As this novel progresses, it becomes more and more farcical, until finally it resembles a novel by Percival Everett.
Or perhaps both (imaginary?) authors are simply drawing from the same spring.
FOOTNOTES:
(1)) I love party scenes in fiction (especially dinner parties).
Party scenes have featured in novels by William Gaddis, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo and Michael Chabon, four of my favourite authors.
Here, not only do the protagonists attend a dinner party, but they catch a plane together from France to New York, so that they can attend a conference on structuralism and post-structuralism at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
SOUNDTRACK:
August 9, 2025
My first Binet! This was a romp combining a spy thriller plot with secret societies with metaphysical reflections on the power of words over the sword. Not 100% successful but definitely propulsive and an interesting and surprisingly fun read.
What would I do if I was in a novel?
Featuring Umberto Eco, Michel Foucault, Derrida and the (would-be) President of the French Republic, The Seventh Function of Language is a wild book that is uneven at times. Strap-ons, illuminati like sects, train stations being bombed and people being killed by poisoned umbrellas, there is a lot going on.
Starting of with a literal car crash, Laurent Binet already very soon breaks the fourth wall: I wish Anthony Hopkins would reread this passage for us
Roland Barthes is a literary critic dies after a lunch with Francois Mitterand, the socialist presidential candidate. Umberto Eco comes back a lot in the first chapters already and the body identified by Michel Foucault, who later is sucked off in a gay sauna. There are 104 chapters which very often are very funny, with even the president of the republic getting involved.
And then there are two mysterious figures in a black DS, secrets agents from Bulgaria, the KGB and Japan, with some people even tortured to death. Overall, this gives me Kurt Vonnegut Jr. vibes in terms of absurdity, and Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco, with the whole Logos club, and underground debating cult, where the price of failure is paid in bodyparts. Train stations are being blown up, there are orgies (think of Eyes Wide Shut), rituals on a cemetery slab and the bitchiness and petty absurdity of academia. All this plays out against the political fight between Francois Mitterand and Valerie Giscard d’Estaing. Meanwhile our main character Simone starts getting clues that he is actually a main character in a novel. This novel is far from perfect, this nastiness at the end in Murano is insane, including castration and cutting off a hand is so over the top, but I love the rollocking energy and humour, while never backing down from intellectual meta topics.
Quotes and thoughts:
What we steal is worth twice as much as what we earn through hard work
Platitudes of obituaries
Compromise leads to compromised principles.
Obviously this is not a historical novel but a fantasy novel
Magic or incantatory version of language, when word is action, like I sentence you or proclaim you married
All use of words in as much as it is writing is a language of fear
As Spinoza said: Each negation is a definition
Essentially his speech says Fuck Derida
I think I am trapped in a fucking novel
Saying is doing
How to do stuff by talking
The accident is never an accident
The novel is a death
Paris, Bologna, Ithaca, Venice
You’re French people are so dialectical
Reenactment of the battle of Lepanto, where Cervantes is injured
There are some that went to search for unicorns and only found rhinoceroses
Simone thinks: This is not a Sherlock Holmes story
Art is the seed of god
Game of words to the extreme
What is reality for you?
A ranking of French intellectuals in the newspaper, can you imagine
You are governing so you are responsible
You looked like a hippie virgin
LOL, link to Obama later on
He is getting tired of symbols
What would I do if I was in a novel?
Featuring Umberto Eco, Michel Foucault, Derrida and the (would-be) President of the French Republic, The Seventh Function of Language is a wild book that is uneven at times. Strap-ons, illuminati like sects, train stations being bombed and people being killed by poisoned umbrellas, there is a lot going on.
Starting of with a literal car crash, Laurent Binet already very soon breaks the fourth wall: I wish Anthony Hopkins would reread this passage for us
Roland Barthes is a literary critic dies after a lunch with Francois Mitterand, the socialist presidential candidate. Umberto Eco comes back a lot in the first chapters already and the body identified by Michel Foucault, who later is sucked off in a gay sauna. There are 104 chapters which very often are very funny, with even the president of the republic getting involved.
And then there are two mysterious figures in a black DS, secrets agents from Bulgaria, the KGB and Japan, with some people even tortured to death. Overall, this gives me Kurt Vonnegut Jr. vibes in terms of absurdity, and Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco, with the whole Logos club, and underground debating cult, where the price of failure is paid in bodyparts. Train stations are being blown up, there are orgies (think of Eyes Wide Shut), rituals on a cemetery slab and the bitchiness and petty absurdity of academia. All this plays out against the political fight between Francois Mitterand and Valerie Giscard d’Estaing. Meanwhile our main character Simone starts getting clues that he is actually a main character in a novel. This novel is far from perfect, this nastiness at the end in Murano is insane, including castration and cutting off a hand is so over the top, but I love the rollocking energy and humour, while never backing down from intellectual meta topics.
Quotes and thoughts:
What we steal is worth twice as much as what we earn through hard work
Platitudes of obituaries
Compromise leads to compromised principles.
Obviously this is not a historical novel but a fantasy novel
Magic or incantatory version of language, when word is action, like I sentence you or proclaim you married
All use of words in as much as it is writing is a language of fear
As Spinoza said: Each negation is a definition
Essentially his speech says Fuck Derida
I think I am trapped in a fucking novel
Saying is doing
How to do stuff by talking
The accident is never an accident
The novel is a death
Paris, Bologna, Ithaca, Venice
You’re French people are so dialectical
Reenactment of the battle of Lepanto, where Cervantes is injured
There are some that went to search for unicorns and only found rhinoceroses
Simone thinks: This is not a Sherlock Holmes story
Art is the seed of god
Game of words to the extreme
What is reality for you?
A ranking of French intellectuals in the newspaper, can you imagine
You are governing so you are responsible
You looked like a hippie virgin
LOL, link to Obama later on
He is getting tired of symbols
August 16, 2020
Vince a mani basse il premio di libro più originale dell’anno appena trascorso (e magari anche di qualche altro anno precedente) questo pastiche ironico di giallo, storia gotica, spy story, testo di linguistica, testo di semiotica, testo di storia della cultura francese - e non solo - degli anni settanta/ottanta.
E mi rendo conto che, non sapendo assolutamente niente né di linguistica né di semiotica (cosa che mi accorgo essere grave, per una persona che vive di parole e della necessità di usarle per convincere), né del milieu in cui si svolge la storia, mi sono certamente persa una parte dell’ironia con cui lo scrittore descrive sia i membri dell’intellighenzia gravitante fra la Sorbona, i salotti culturali, i centri del potere, sia i rapporti fra loro.
Sapevo della morte in un incidente stradale di Barthes, non sapevo che Althusser avesse ucciso sua moglie. Sospettavo che BHL (mai citato per esteso) fosse un discreto bluff, ho trovato esilarante la sua descrizione come un petulante leccapiedi, pronto a balzare sul carro di chiunque, purché ben visibile. Non so se ci sia anche solo uno 0,1 per cento di verosimiglianza nell’attribuzione a Julia Kristeva di rapporti con i servizi bulgari, o nella rappresentazione di un inquietante ed oscuro club culturale (più che altro una setta segreta), i cui membri si sfidano difendendo una tesi che non hanno scelto, venendo giudicati da membri più alti di loro in grado, e rimettendoci fisicamente se non riescono a convincerli. Solo per dimostrare il potere della parola.
Ma nonostante tutto mi sono divertita, anche grazie alla simpatia dei due protagonisti - un poliziotto che, benché tutt’altro che stupido, è agli antipodi del concetto di intellighenzia, ed un giovane docente che, benché appartenente all’intellighenzia, è agli antipodi del concetto di spocchia.
C’è - è vero - un po’ troppo di tutto, forse i servizi bulgari sono un po’ troppo onnipresenti (ma lo sono anche due simpaticissimi, silenziosi ed anonimi giapponesi, che proteggono il giovane docente perché gli amici di Roland Barthes sono nostri amici ); forse lo smarrimento ed il ritrovamento di un prezioso documento è un po' troppo arzigogolato; forse le brigate rosse non c’entrano un granché, anzi - da come agiscono - i presunti brigatisti sembrano appartenere più all’area spontaneista che al truce militarismo delle BR. Forse sarebbero bastate cinquanta/cento pagine in meno.
Però questo libro realizza nel suo piccolo l’ideale (non a caso nato in Francia) della fantasia al potere, e questo va premiato.
P.S.: offrirò una cena luculliana al primo scrittore che, ambientando un libro o una parte di esso a Bologna, ci/si risparmierà l’uso dell’espressione il reticolo dei portici e, più in generale, l’ammirato stupore di fronte ai medesimi. Sarà perché vivo a Bologna da sempre, ma non riesco a considerare i portici così straordinari: tantomeno oscuri simboli di non si sa che.
E mi rendo conto che, non sapendo assolutamente niente né di linguistica né di semiotica (cosa che mi accorgo essere grave, per una persona che vive di parole e della necessità di usarle per convincere), né del milieu in cui si svolge la storia, mi sono certamente persa una parte dell’ironia con cui lo scrittore descrive sia i membri dell’intellighenzia gravitante fra la Sorbona, i salotti culturali, i centri del potere, sia i rapporti fra loro.
Sapevo della morte in un incidente stradale di Barthes, non sapevo che Althusser avesse ucciso sua moglie. Sospettavo che BHL (mai citato per esteso) fosse un discreto bluff, ho trovato esilarante la sua descrizione come un petulante leccapiedi, pronto a balzare sul carro di chiunque, purché ben visibile. Non so se ci sia anche solo uno 0,1 per cento di verosimiglianza nell’attribuzione a Julia Kristeva di rapporti con i servizi bulgari, o nella rappresentazione di un inquietante ed oscuro club culturale (più che altro una setta segreta), i cui membri si sfidano difendendo una tesi che non hanno scelto, venendo giudicati da membri più alti di loro in grado, e rimettendoci fisicamente se non riescono a convincerli. Solo per dimostrare il potere della parola.
Ma nonostante tutto mi sono divertita, anche grazie alla simpatia dei due protagonisti - un poliziotto che, benché tutt’altro che stupido, è agli antipodi del concetto di intellighenzia, ed un giovane docente che, benché appartenente all’intellighenzia, è agli antipodi del concetto di spocchia.
C’è - è vero - un po’ troppo di tutto, forse i servizi bulgari sono un po’ troppo onnipresenti (ma lo sono anche due simpaticissimi, silenziosi ed anonimi giapponesi, che proteggono il giovane docente perché gli amici di Roland Barthes sono nostri amici ); forse lo smarrimento ed il ritrovamento di un prezioso documento è un po' troppo arzigogolato; forse le brigate rosse non c’entrano un granché, anzi - da come agiscono - i presunti brigatisti sembrano appartenere più all’area spontaneista che al truce militarismo delle BR. Forse sarebbero bastate cinquanta/cento pagine in meno.
Però questo libro realizza nel suo piccolo l’ideale (non a caso nato in Francia) della fantasia al potere, e questo va premiato.
P.S.: offrirò una cena luculliana al primo scrittore che, ambientando un libro o una parte di esso a Bologna, ci/si risparmierà l’uso dell’espressione il reticolo dei portici e, più in generale, l’ammirato stupore di fronte ai medesimi. Sarà perché vivo a Bologna da sempre, ma non riesco a considerare i portici così straordinari: tantomeno oscuri simboli di non si sa che.
March 25, 2018
The book was 2018 MBI longlisted, and I read it with ManBookering group.
To me it was a slightly better-than-average detective thriller filled with sometimes excessive academic minutia.
Paris police chief Bayard and young professor Simon Herzog teamed up to investigate the seemingly accidental death of renowned literary critic Roland Barthes. Kind of a Sherlock Holmes tale infused with both intellectual (academic) and erotic stimulations.
Real historical events, like French election and Bologna massacre in 1980, and many real historical figures, like French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, Italian author Umberto Eco (The Name Of The Rose), and the victim Roland Barthes himself.
How were the real events and real people “trapped in the novel”? What linked them together? We the readers were given 368 pages to find out.
The best part of reading this book: I got introduced to semiology that I had known nothing about before. Laurent Binet did give a fair primer on this science of signs, with linguistic and non-linguistic applications smartly embedded in the plot of the book. I think I made the right call by googling semiology after reading the book.
The author (or the translator?) does have a sense of humor; cheesy at times, it did lessen the load of the book.
Now the worst part; the book was too smart for me. Too many over-my-head academic debates, and too many characters that made me dizzy—have to say reading audiobook was a bad idea, although the narrator has a very charming voice, and he seems to be fluent in three languages.
Time to add The Name of The rose. :)
To me it was a slightly better-than-average detective thriller filled with sometimes excessive academic minutia.
Paris police chief Bayard and young professor Simon Herzog teamed up to investigate the seemingly accidental death of renowned literary critic Roland Barthes. Kind of a Sherlock Holmes tale infused with both intellectual (academic) and erotic stimulations.
Real historical events, like French election and Bologna massacre in 1980, and many real historical figures, like French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, Italian author Umberto Eco (The Name Of The Rose), and the victim Roland Barthes himself.
How were the real events and real people “trapped in the novel”? What linked them together? We the readers were given 368 pages to find out.
The best part of reading this book: I got introduced to semiology that I had known nothing about before. Laurent Binet did give a fair primer on this science of signs, with linguistic and non-linguistic applications smartly embedded in the plot of the book. I think I made the right call by googling semiology after reading the book.
The author (or the translator?) does have a sense of humor; cheesy at times, it did lessen the load of the book.
Now the worst part; the book was too smart for me. Too many over-my-head academic debates, and too many characters that made me dizzy—have to say reading audiobook was a bad idea, although the narrator has a very charming voice, and he seems to be fluent in three languages.
Time to add The Name of The rose. :)
September 3, 2015
On croit un moment que l'on a en mains un roman brillant et hilarant. Mais très vite, l'enquête rocambolesque menée par un jeune prof de fac et un policier beauf s’essouffle. Les mêmes scènes se répètent, les mêmes grosses ficelles se répètent ( prêter des rôles de conspirateurs à des intellectuels célèbres - Umberto Eco, Sollers, BHL, etc...). Le suspens ne prend pas, on sort épuisé à la longue par des chapitres extrêmement verbeux, répétitifs et ennuyeux. La fin ( ou plutôt le dénouement) de ce qui voudrait passer pour une sorte de roman politico-philosophique, est futile et décevante. Il faut beaucoup de courage pour maintenir son attention et son intérêt jusqu'à la fin du roman.
July 21, 2018
'Un craquement. Simon s'immobilise. Des bruits de pas. Par réflexe, parce qu'il a l'impression que sa présence au milieu de la nuit dans une bibliothèque universitaire est forcément, sinon illégale, du moins, comme disent les Américains, inappropriée, il se cache derrière les Recherches sur la sexualité du << bureau de recherche surréalistes >>.
Il voit passer Searle à travers la correspondance de Tzara.
Il l'entend parler à quelqu'un dans le rayon adjacent. Simon retire délicatement le coffret relié des douze numéros en fac-similé de la Révolution surréaliste pour mieux voir et, par la fente, il reconnaît la silhouette gracile de Slimane.
Searle marmonne trop bas mais Simon entend distinctement Slimane lui dire : "T'as vingt-quatre heures. Ensuite je vends au plus offrant." Puis il remet son walkman et il retourne à l'ascenseur.
Mais Searle ne repart pas avec lui. Il feuillette distraitement quelques livres. Qui peut dire à quoi il pense ? Simon chasse de son esprit cette impression de déjà-vu.
En voulant replacer la Révolution surréaliste, Simon fait tomber un numéro du Grand Jeu. Searle dresse la tête, comme un chien d'arrêt. Simon décide de s'éclipser le plus discrètement possible, et il zigzague silencieusement dans les rayonnages tandis qu'il entend derrière lui le philosophe du langage ramasser le Grand Jeu. Il l'imagine flairant la revue. Il se hâte quand il entend des pas remonter sa piste. Il traverse le rayon Psychoanalysis et s'engage dans celui du Nouveau roman mais c'est une impasse. Il se retourne et sursaute en voyant Searle s'avancer vers lui, un coupe-papier dans une main, le Grand Jeu dans l'autre. Machinalement, il saisit un livre pour se défendre (Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein, il n'ira pas bien loin avec ça, se dit-il, le jette par terre et en saisit un autre : La Route des Flandres, c'est mieux)'
- La septième fonction du langage, pp. 326-327
-----------------------------------
L'argument de départ :
25 février 1980, au sortir d'un dîner chez François Mitterrand, Roland Barthes se fait renverser par une camionnette. Accident d'autant plus malheureux qu'on a subtilisé un document d'une importance capitale, que Barthes portait sur lui ce jour-là.
Le président Valéry Giscard d'Estaing met un homme terre-à-terre, conservateur et probe sur le coup : le commissaire Jacques Bayard. À lui de remonter la piste, de confondre les coupables, et de récupérer le précieux sésame.
-----------------------------------
Alors.
À mon avis, c'est une lecture très prenante, qui a de quoi satisfaire un bon nombre de lecteurs ici :)
Les qualités que je trouve à l'histoire :
=> C'est bien vu de faire d'accompagner Bayard de Simon Herzog. Le professeur de sémiologie doit s'adapter à son auditeur peu porté sur les abstractions et ce choix permet alors d'offrir au lecteur néophyte une introduction très progressive à la sémiologie. Et on fait difficilement mieux pour rendre plus cocasses les affrontements entre étudiants à Vincennes, ou entre intervenants au colloque de Cornell.
=> Ensuite, chaque action est accompagnée d'un arrière-plan sonore riche, avec en bruit de fond plusieurs personnes qui parlent dans le même temps. Ça donne des situations très vivantes à Vincennes, au café Flore, au Sauna gay...
=> La succession serrée des enquêtes et des joutes verbales au Logos Club permet de ferrer le lecteur comme pas deux.
=> Quelques scènes franchement hilarantes ! Je pense ici à la scène de poursuite dans la bibliothèque de Cornell (citation d'ouverture :))
=> Les lectures variées de l'auteur lui donnent plus de chance de toucher le plus grand nombre.
La référence aux Chroniques martiennes en fin de livre fait son petit effet !
=> L'auteur joue avec les clichés de lettrés m'as-tu-vu occupés de succès mondains et tous acquis à leurs lubies connues, dans l'emphase permanente. Et ça marche ! Ce peu de profondeur des personnages peut gêner d'abord, mais ça épouse le discours du livre :
=> De nombreuses irruptions du narrateur dans le récit et des adresses directes de l'écrivain au lecteur ne laissent pas si facilement deviner la suite de l'histoire :
' Je vous épargne le copier-coller, désormais d'usage, de la notice Wikipédia : l'hôtel particulier dessiné par tel architecte italien pour le compte de tel évêque de Bretagne. '
- p.54
' Il regarde l'accumulation de bordel qui s'entasse sur son bureau et pense à Poe : il glisse le document dans une enveloppe ouverte, qui contenait une publicité quelconque, pour une pizzeria du quartier, mettons, ou peut-être pour une banque, je ne me souviens plus des pubs qu'on distribuait dans nos boîtes aux lettres à l'époque '
- p.117
' Cette histoire possède un point aveugle qui est aussi son point de départ, le déjeuner de Barthes avec Mittérand. C'est la grande scène qui n'aura pas lieu. Mais elle a eu lieu pourtant... Jacques Bayard et Simon Herzog ne sauront jamais, n'ont jamais su ce qui s'était passé ce jour-là, ce qui s'était dit. à peine pourront-ils accéder à la liste des invités. Mais moi, je peux peut-être... Après tout, tout est affaire de méthode, et je sais comment procéder : interroger des témoins, recouper, écarter les témoignages fragiles, confronter les souvenirs tendancieux avec la réalité de l'Histoire. Et puis, au besoin... Vous savez bien. Il y a quelque chose à faire avec ce jour-là. Le 25 février 1980 n'a pas encore tout dit . Vertu du roman : il n'est jamais trop tard. '
- p.188
Quand Laurent Binet s'amuse à miner la vraisemblance, à détruire l'illusion romanesque en intervenant à titre personnel dans son corps de texte, c'est comme la mise en pratique du discours de J. Derrida sur l'itérabilité à Cornell (pp.335-340) : est souligné le caractère de citation de chaque réplique, de chaque intervention, de chaque personnage.
Bilan : Au fond, quelle meilleure démonstration du pouvoir performatif du langage qu'un roman ? :)
--------------------------------------
Quelques parents et petits cousins littéraires de La septième fonction du langage :
1) Des personnages qui expriment leur opinion sur leur vie comme personnages et qui se rebellent contre leur auteur.
Le Monde de Sophie
2) Des irruptions de l'auteur/narrateur dans son récit, l'adresse directe de l'écrivain au lecteur
Le Livre du rire et de l'oubli
3) L'abolition canaille du quatrième mur :
The Stanley Parable
Le trailer : https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x16...
4) Le côté "collage" assumé :
Tous à Zanzibar
---------------------------------
Dans le walkman :
Darben the Redd Foxx - Dizzy Gillespie
Il voit passer Searle à travers la correspondance de Tzara.
Il l'entend parler à quelqu'un dans le rayon adjacent. Simon retire délicatement le coffret relié des douze numéros en fac-similé de la Révolution surréaliste pour mieux voir et, par la fente, il reconnaît la silhouette gracile de Slimane.
Searle marmonne trop bas mais Simon entend distinctement Slimane lui dire : "T'as vingt-quatre heures. Ensuite je vends au plus offrant." Puis il remet son walkman et il retourne à l'ascenseur.
Mais Searle ne repart pas avec lui. Il feuillette distraitement quelques livres. Qui peut dire à quoi il pense ? Simon chasse de son esprit cette impression de déjà-vu.
En voulant replacer la Révolution surréaliste, Simon fait tomber un numéro du Grand Jeu. Searle dresse la tête, comme un chien d'arrêt. Simon décide de s'éclipser le plus discrètement possible, et il zigzague silencieusement dans les rayonnages tandis qu'il entend derrière lui le philosophe du langage ramasser le Grand Jeu. Il l'imagine flairant la revue. Il se hâte quand il entend des pas remonter sa piste. Il traverse le rayon Psychoanalysis et s'engage dans celui du Nouveau roman mais c'est une impasse. Il se retourne et sursaute en voyant Searle s'avancer vers lui, un coupe-papier dans une main, le Grand Jeu dans l'autre. Machinalement, il saisit un livre pour se défendre (Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein, il n'ira pas bien loin avec ça, se dit-il, le jette par terre et en saisit un autre : La Route des Flandres, c'est mieux)'
- La septième fonction du langage, pp. 326-327
-----------------------------------
L'argument de départ :
25 février 1980, au sortir d'un dîner chez François Mitterrand, Roland Barthes se fait renverser par une camionnette. Accident d'autant plus malheureux qu'on a subtilisé un document d'une importance capitale, que Barthes portait sur lui ce jour-là.
Le président Valéry Giscard d'Estaing met un homme terre-à-terre, conservateur et probe sur le coup : le commissaire Jacques Bayard. À lui de remonter la piste, de confondre les coupables, et de récupérer le précieux sésame.
-----------------------------------
Alors.
À mon avis, c'est une lecture très prenante, qui a de quoi satisfaire un bon nombre de lecteurs ici :)
Les qualités que je trouve à l'histoire :
=> C'est bien vu de faire d'accompagner Bayard de Simon Herzog. Le professeur de sémiologie doit s'adapter à son auditeur peu porté sur les abstractions et ce choix permet alors d'offrir au lecteur néophyte une introduction très progressive à la sémiologie. Et on fait difficilement mieux pour rendre plus cocasses les affrontements entre étudiants à Vincennes, ou entre intervenants au colloque de Cornell.
=> Ensuite, chaque action est accompagnée d'un arrière-plan sonore riche, avec en bruit de fond plusieurs personnes qui parlent dans le même temps. Ça donne des situations très vivantes à Vincennes, au café Flore, au Sauna gay...
=> La succession serrée des enquêtes et des joutes verbales au Logos Club permet de ferrer le lecteur comme pas deux.
=> Quelques scènes franchement hilarantes ! Je pense ici à la scène de poursuite dans la bibliothèque de Cornell (citation d'ouverture :))
=> Les lectures variées de l'auteur lui donnent plus de chance de toucher le plus grand nombre.
La référence aux Chroniques martiennes en fin de livre fait son petit effet !
=> L'auteur joue avec les clichés de lettrés m'as-tu-vu occupés de succès mondains et tous acquis à leurs lubies connues, dans l'emphase permanente. Et ça marche ! Ce peu de profondeur des personnages peut gêner d'abord, mais ça épouse le discours du livre :
=> De nombreuses irruptions du narrateur dans le récit et des adresses directes de l'écrivain au lecteur ne laissent pas si facilement deviner la suite de l'histoire :
' Je vous épargne le copier-coller, désormais d'usage, de la notice Wikipédia : l'hôtel particulier dessiné par tel architecte italien pour le compte de tel évêque de Bretagne. '
- p.54
' Il regarde l'accumulation de bordel qui s'entasse sur son bureau et pense à Poe : il glisse le document dans une enveloppe ouverte, qui contenait une publicité quelconque, pour une pizzeria du quartier, mettons, ou peut-être pour une banque, je ne me souviens plus des pubs qu'on distribuait dans nos boîtes aux lettres à l'époque '
- p.117
' Cette histoire possède un point aveugle qui est aussi son point de départ, le déjeuner de Barthes avec Mittérand. C'est la grande scène qui n'aura pas lieu. Mais elle a eu lieu pourtant... Jacques Bayard et Simon Herzog ne sauront jamais, n'ont jamais su ce qui s'était passé ce jour-là, ce qui s'était dit. à peine pourront-ils accéder à la liste des invités. Mais moi, je peux peut-être... Après tout, tout est affaire de méthode, et je sais comment procéder : interroger des témoins, recouper, écarter les témoignages fragiles, confronter les souvenirs tendancieux avec la réalité de l'Histoire. Et puis, au besoin... Vous savez bien. Il y a quelque chose à faire avec ce jour-là. Le 25 février 1980 n'a pas encore tout dit . Vertu du roman : il n'est jamais trop tard. '
- p.188
Quand Laurent Binet s'amuse à miner la vraisemblance, à détruire l'illusion romanesque en intervenant à titre personnel dans son corps de texte, c'est comme la mise en pratique du discours de J. Derrida sur l'itérabilité à Cornell (pp.335-340) : est souligné le caractère de citation de chaque réplique, de chaque intervention, de chaque personnage.
Bilan : Au fond, quelle meilleure démonstration du pouvoir performatif du langage qu'un roman ? :)
--------------------------------------
Quelques parents et petits cousins littéraires de La septième fonction du langage :
1) Des personnages qui expriment leur opinion sur leur vie comme personnages et qui se rebellent contre leur auteur.
Le Monde de Sophie
2) Des irruptions de l'auteur/narrateur dans son récit, l'adresse directe de l'écrivain au lecteur
Le Livre du rire et de l'oubli
3) L'abolition canaille du quatrième mur :
The Stanley Parable
Le trailer : https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x16...
4) Le côté "collage" assumé :
Tous à Zanzibar
---------------------------------
Dans le walkman :
Darben the Redd Foxx - Dizzy Gillespie
July 8, 2017
Que adjetivo poderíamos adotar para qualificar uma alma que, explorando assuntos e temas tão herméticos para a nossa compreensão e que incluem valências socioculturais que poderão surgir algo desenquadradas com a nossa atualidade, o nosso quotidiano – ou pelo menos de alguns de nós - como uma abordagem literária ou romanceada à semiologia, ao construtivismo ao estruturalismo que enformam algumas produções filosóficas nas quais se perfilam, sem alguma promiscuidade, as correntes peripatéticas, dialéticas e sofistas e conseguindo, talvez por um toque de Midas, transformar todas essas questões em algo apelativo, em algo extraordinariamente apaixonante?
Só me ocorre um: FORMIDÁVEL! Laurent Binet nesta “Sétima Função da Linguagem” com o subtítulo “Quem matou Roland Barthes” transporta-nos para o mundo surreal embora real para os intelectuais nascidos e criados nas maiores e mais conceituadas universidades francesas, um meio que sabemos pejado de intrigas, invejas, usurpações e proliferações de egos e super egos que, em muitos casos, se encontram num avançado estado de decomposição mas que lutam pelas suas “verdades” sejam elas próprias ou “adquiridas” em mentes alheias.
O enredo, aliás assaz interessante, consiste em descobrir quem possui a sétima função da linguagem, móbil possível do assassinato de Roland Barthes, aqui entendida como “a função mágica ou encantatória, cujo mecanismo é descrito como ‘a conversão de uma terceira pessoa, ausente ou inanimada, em destinatário de uma mensagem conativa”, ou seja, convencer seja quem for a fazer o que quer que seja em qualquer situação. A sétima função da linguagem consistia, pois, na fórmula “aquele que tivesse o seu conhecimento e domínio de tal função, seria virtualmente o senhor do mundo. O seu poder não teria nenhum limite”. Quem não estaria disposto a matar para a obtenção dessa espécie alquímica?
Entrementes, uma sociedade altamente obscura, uma espécie de maçonaria intelectual mas disparatada nos eus efeitos, na qual participam vários pensadores de renome mundial – entre os quais o mais conhecido é Umberto Eco reúnem-se no Longus Club, para, sem sessões dialéticas, provarem as suas capacidades mentais, possuidoras de fortes conhecimentos sobre uma temática diversa mas que visa sempre a proficiência dos seus códigos e conhecimentos cognitivos. Quem perde essa batalha, sofre humilhações de uma virulência inesperada.
Acresce dizer que a ação está localizada, no espaço temporal, nos meses que antecedem as eleições francesas que opuseram Giscard D’Estaign e Francois Miterrand à presidência da república francesa, algo que será exponencialmente importante para a compreensão de toda a trama desta magnifica narrativa!
Caberá ao comissário Bayard e a Simon Herzog destrinçar uma rede diabólica que mata os intelectuais que se interpõem entre a sétima função da linguagem e as suas repercussões num mundo em que o poder da argumentação, da convicção e mais ainda, do convencimento das massas opera, sem claudicar, impondo as suas melhores ou piores convicções!
Um livro extraordinariamente inteligente que vale muito a pena pelas aprendizagens que encerra.
Só me ocorre um: FORMIDÁVEL! Laurent Binet nesta “Sétima Função da Linguagem” com o subtítulo “Quem matou Roland Barthes” transporta-nos para o mundo surreal embora real para os intelectuais nascidos e criados nas maiores e mais conceituadas universidades francesas, um meio que sabemos pejado de intrigas, invejas, usurpações e proliferações de egos e super egos que, em muitos casos, se encontram num avançado estado de decomposição mas que lutam pelas suas “verdades” sejam elas próprias ou “adquiridas” em mentes alheias.
O enredo, aliás assaz interessante, consiste em descobrir quem possui a sétima função da linguagem, móbil possível do assassinato de Roland Barthes, aqui entendida como “a função mágica ou encantatória, cujo mecanismo é descrito como ‘a conversão de uma terceira pessoa, ausente ou inanimada, em destinatário de uma mensagem conativa”, ou seja, convencer seja quem for a fazer o que quer que seja em qualquer situação. A sétima função da linguagem consistia, pois, na fórmula “aquele que tivesse o seu conhecimento e domínio de tal função, seria virtualmente o senhor do mundo. O seu poder não teria nenhum limite”. Quem não estaria disposto a matar para a obtenção dessa espécie alquímica?
Entrementes, uma sociedade altamente obscura, uma espécie de maçonaria intelectual mas disparatada nos eus efeitos, na qual participam vários pensadores de renome mundial – entre os quais o mais conhecido é Umberto Eco reúnem-se no Longus Club, para, sem sessões dialéticas, provarem as suas capacidades mentais, possuidoras de fortes conhecimentos sobre uma temática diversa mas que visa sempre a proficiência dos seus códigos e conhecimentos cognitivos. Quem perde essa batalha, sofre humilhações de uma virulência inesperada.
Acresce dizer que a ação está localizada, no espaço temporal, nos meses que antecedem as eleições francesas que opuseram Giscard D’Estaign e Francois Miterrand à presidência da república francesa, algo que será exponencialmente importante para a compreensão de toda a trama desta magnifica narrativa!
Caberá ao comissário Bayard e a Simon Herzog destrinçar uma rede diabólica que mata os intelectuais que se interpõem entre a sétima função da linguagem e as suas repercussões num mundo em que o poder da argumentação, da convicção e mais ainda, do convencimento das massas opera, sem claudicar, impondo as suas melhores ou piores convicções!
Um livro extraordinariamente inteligente que vale muito a pena pelas aprendizagens que encerra.
November 19, 2019
It has been too long since I gave a novel five stars because it was an absolute joy from start to finish. This is most certainly the first such novel of 2018. ‘The 7th Function of Language’ is an extremely funny murder mystery farce set in the pompous and obscure world of European theorists. It pulls off a number of very neat tricks. One is enabling the reader to feel clever for recognising various characters, while mocking the theorists sufficiently that the risk of pretentiousness is undercut. (In my case there’s a particular risk of feeling pretentious because I started reading theory for fun.) Another is having a character wonder whether he’s in a novel and making it genuinely hilarious. A third is to convincingly evoke the quasi-nonsense, political ferment, and perpetual debauchery of French academia circa 1980.
Still a fourth is persuading me to read what is technically a murder mystery novel in the first place. If there’s one thing in a blurb that’s calculated to make me drop the book like a hot potato, it’s murder. I’m so bored by murders! Why is popular culture voyeuristically fixated on them? I want to read a book explaining that, not another policeperson and/or clever-amateur-with-a-gimmick working out who killed someone. I will only tolerate murders if the book offers something else much more interesting as well. The assumption that unusually intelligent fictional people must all feel compelled to solve crimes is absolutely baffling. None of the most intelligent people I’ve met have felt this compulsion. If I was a genius, I’m pretty sure I'd be much more interested in committing crimes (not murder, I hasten to add) than solving them. Surely there are many more complicated and interesting mysteries in the world than horrible and sordid murders? Then again, I may have exhausted my taste for this genre at the age of 11 by reading every Agatha Christie novel in the library.
I digress. The fact is, I loved ‘The 7th Function of Language’ because who murdered Barthes is hardly important. The plot hinges on why he was murdered and what it means. More importantly, it parodies the whole murder mystery concept. There is no procedure to be found here at all, the ostensible investigators are not particularly good at it (despite Simon's superheroic semiotic powers), and at times I suspected the plot was merely an excuse for a string of magnificently ridiculous set pieces. And why not, when said set pieces are utterly brilliant? Foucault is interrogated while he’s getting a blow job in a sauna! A train station ! Theorists comment on TV news! Debates in a secretive society that ! What I’m pretty sure was a Jack Halberstam cameo! Happenings in the library of Cornell University that made me absolutely honk with laughter! A gondola chase in Venice! : what a spectacularly unnecessary denouement!
Great as these scenes are, though, they're held together by the delightful buddy comedy mismatch of Jacques Bayard, a right wing cop, and Simon Herzog, the left wing postgrad he deputises. Bayard is disgusted that he has to try and understand this theory nonsense, so he drags along Simon as an interpreter. Neither of the two have much of an idea what’s going on, but they (and the reader) have a lot of fun along the way. What I should perhaps have begun my litany of praise with, though, is the dialogue. This a dialogue-heavy novel and it positively sparkles. Binet has such wonderful comic timing and affectionately skewers intellectual one-upmanship, French politics, and academic absurdity so well. The characters have very distinctive voices, which fit well with what I’ve read of their actual writing. Foucault in particular steals every scene in which he appears
What I’m trying to get at here is that Binet’s writing is exceptional, the milieu of the book is picaresque and diverting, and there’s a well-judged quantity of parody and self-consciousness thrown in. Unusually, I didn’t want to read too quickly as I was having such a good time. Moreover, Binet convinced me to read more Foucault, Derrida, Barthes, et al, as well as Semiotics: The Basics, which has been on my to read list for two years. All of them will be so much more fun with this novel in mind. That said, I suspect the sheer glorious farce of 'The 7th Function of Language' would have considerable appeal even if you've never come across Barthes and his compatriots. Hopefully 2018 will bring me more books like this and The Queer Art of Failure - both of which made me laugh at the world rather than despairing of it.
Still a fourth is persuading me to read what is technically a murder mystery novel in the first place. If there’s one thing in a blurb that’s calculated to make me drop the book like a hot potato, it’s murder. I’m so bored by murders! Why is popular culture voyeuristically fixated on them? I want to read a book explaining that, not another policeperson and/or clever-amateur-with-a-gimmick working out who killed someone. I will only tolerate murders if the book offers something else much more interesting as well. The assumption that unusually intelligent fictional people must all feel compelled to solve crimes is absolutely baffling. None of the most intelligent people I’ve met have felt this compulsion. If I was a genius, I’m pretty sure I'd be much more interested in committing crimes (not murder, I hasten to add) than solving them. Surely there are many more complicated and interesting mysteries in the world than horrible and sordid murders? Then again, I may have exhausted my taste for this genre at the age of 11 by reading every Agatha Christie novel in the library.
I digress. The fact is, I loved ‘The 7th Function of Language’ because who murdered Barthes is hardly important. The plot hinges on why he was murdered and what it means. More importantly, it parodies the whole murder mystery concept. There is no procedure to be found here at all, the ostensible investigators are not particularly good at it (despite Simon's superheroic semiotic powers), and at times I suspected the plot was merely an excuse for a string of magnificently ridiculous set pieces. And why not, when said set pieces are utterly brilliant? Foucault is interrogated while he’s getting a blow job in a sauna! A train station ! Theorists comment on TV news! Debates in a secretive society that ! What I’m pretty sure was a Jack Halberstam cameo! Happenings in the library of Cornell University that made me absolutely honk with laughter! A gondola chase in Venice! : what a spectacularly unnecessary denouement!
Great as these scenes are, though, they're held together by the delightful buddy comedy mismatch of Jacques Bayard, a right wing cop, and Simon Herzog, the left wing postgrad he deputises. Bayard is disgusted that he has to try and understand this theory nonsense, so he drags along Simon as an interpreter. Neither of the two have much of an idea what’s going on, but they (and the reader) have a lot of fun along the way. What I should perhaps have begun my litany of praise with, though, is the dialogue. This a dialogue-heavy novel and it positively sparkles. Binet has such wonderful comic timing and affectionately skewers intellectual one-upmanship, French politics, and academic absurdity so well. The characters have very distinctive voices, which fit well with what I’ve read of their actual writing. Foucault in particular steals every scene in which he appears
What I’m trying to get at here is that Binet’s writing is exceptional, the milieu of the book is picaresque and diverting, and there’s a well-judged quantity of parody and self-consciousness thrown in. Unusually, I didn’t want to read too quickly as I was having such a good time. Moreover, Binet convinced me to read more Foucault, Derrida, Barthes, et al, as well as Semiotics: The Basics, which has been on my to read list for two years. All of them will be so much more fun with this novel in mind. That said, I suspect the sheer glorious farce of 'The 7th Function of Language' would have considerable appeal even if you've never come across Barthes and his compatriots. Hopefully 2018 will bring me more books like this and The Queer Art of Failure - both of which made me laugh at the world rather than despairing of it.
September 16, 2018
1980- 1981
Μιτεράν vs Ζισκάρ
Λεντλ vs Μποργκ
Μπαρόκ vs Κλασσικού
Οργασμός σημειολογίας, γλωσσολογίας και διαλεκτικής.
Διαβασμενος ο Binet, αλλά λίγο κουράζει με τους από μηχανής Θεούς στο noir του.
Μιτεράν vs Ζισκάρ
Λεντλ vs Μποργκ
Μπαρόκ vs Κλασσικού
Οργασμός σημειολογίας, γλωσσολογίας και διαλεκτικής.
Διαβασμενος ο Binet, αλλά λίγο κουράζει με τους από μηχανής Θεούς στο noir του.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,106 reviews