Chevillard Probes Dichotomy between 'The Author and Me'

Christopher Marlowe—author of “The Jew of Malta” and “Doctor Faustus,” Shakespeare’s rival and influence, bon-vivant, spy, atheist, reputed homosexual and, worse, reputed Catholic—died in a drunken fight on May 30, 1593. After quarreling with associates over financial matters, he was stabbed above the right eye, dying (by the coroner’s account) instantly.

Marlowe’s own beliefs and habits are the matter of ultimately irresoluble historical controversy. For the critic, however, the questions about Marlowe’s person are subordinate to the question of whether or not Marlowe, the author, is relevant to the interpretation of his work. New Historicism, with its niggling concern for ever-more minute details of authors’ lives and these details’ effects, has reigned as a preeminent critical school for some 30 years, and, as its proponents delve into what seem to be increasingly unsure waters—did the reading of Lucretius really start the Renaissance, after all?—it seems that the time is ripe for a reexamination of the question. It is this question that Éric Chevillard examines in his new novel, “The Author and Me,” translated into fine workmanlike English by Jordan Stump. Purportedly setting out to prove the independence of the voices of narrator and character from their originator, he presents a haunting argument for the inescapability of the author.

A foreword sets out Chevillard’s reputed intentions. After the publication of an earlier work, “Demolishing Nisard” (“Démolir Nisard”), he found himself entangled in disputes with readers about the opinions of his narrator. He describes his attitude: “He [the author] is nonetheless in the habit of mocking—oh, the many things he mocks!—those novelists who claim that their characters suddenly spring to life and escape their control…. The real phenomenon, which does actually happen, is entirely different: it’s rather the author who finds himself snatched up by his fiction.” He then declares his project: “This cannot go on. The author has his pride, and his autonomy. He stands before you determined to keep his distance from the narrator of his new book, to distinguish himself from him as sharply as he can, and thus to hold fast to his mastery.”

To this end, in addition to the voice of his narrator, he adds his own voice as the “author” by means of footnotes commenting on what the narrator is saying (especially to note contrasts between himself and his narrator) as well as the voice of the young lady whom the narrator accosts in a cafe and to whom he pours out his story. Her comments are interspersed within the text in italicized parentheses. The narrator is defined primarily for his love of trout amandine and his loathing for cauliflower gratin, which lead him to murderous excesses.

Two points arise in opposition to this project. First, much of the author’s time becomes absorbed in describing and distinguishing himself from his creation, so much that this description acquires a life of its own and subsumes an enormous portion of the novel: of the 141 pages, 42 are spent on a single footnote describing the author’s life, which begins with a cheeky declaration: “Surely there can be no better way for the author to ensure his mastery and to stand up to his character than to drag him out of his soliloquy by one ear and cast him without warning into another fiction.” The author’s words always bend toward his own experience, as is especially evident in the his discussion of his religious experience, when the narrator’s utterance, “My God!” leads to an extended footnote on the author’s Catholic upbringing.  Second, and more subtly, is not defining a narrator (or any other character) in opposition to the self of the author a true separation of the two, or is it just another determinism? Does one paint the light by painting the shadows? On the narrator’s utterance, “...take that…bitch!…you like it, you know you like it…!” the author comments, “Never would the author have written such a thing.”  But writing a thing because one would “never” write it is being as obedient to external stimuli as writing a thing because it is the sort of thing one writes.

Chevillard’s project is very important, but he retains a wonderful humor that prevents it from dropping to the valleys of pomposity that many of his postmodern brethren populate. His narrator in one instance declares, “If all cauliflower and even all memory of cauliflower were abruptly to vanish from the face of this earth—O miracle!—then, I swear, I would don mourning clothes of red and gold, with a pointy hat and a party whistle unrolling from my lips with every breath.” Regardless of the direct importance of the author, his humor is preeminent in Chevillard’s vision.

While asserting the conventional modern critical opinion that the author cannot be separated from his text, Chevillard probes the question with a discernment that cannot be attributed to the hordes of petty Historicists who treat authors like computers, with straightforward biographical inputs leading to straightforward literary outputs. “The Author and Me,” with its insights into the interactions and even struggles between the creator and his creation, should be required reading for every would-be student of literature in this generation.