Friday nights at the Libary: Bénabou

Several authors have written reviews of nonexistent books. Nowadays that’s child’s play. You could hardly call yourself a modernist, let alone a post-, without having attempted something in that line. But almost no-one has written a nonexistent review of an existing book.

Comment je n’ai écrit aucun de mes livres is, whatever its origin, a book. But I am not reviewing it. How, after all, could one review a compendium of the means by which someone whose vocation is to write convinces himself that avoidance, in all its guises, is not not-writing but rather being-about-to-write? How could one describe an author who is best known as a member of OuLiPo, the Ouvroir de la Littérature Potentielle, or ‘LiPo’ for short, who joined OuLiPo in 1969, not long after Georges Perec, and nine years after its founding by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais, and who has been its “secrétaire définitivement provisoire” since 1970 (he is now also the “secrétaire provisoirement définitif”)? How could one exhibit enthusiasm about the wonderful passages in which Bénabou recalls his early fascination with paper, his relations as a Francophone Jew in Morocco with the French language, his methods of being a writer without writing, and the eventual happy ending of an impossible love?

De fait, j’avais déjà,In fact, I had already, in imagination, established myself solidly in the heart of the future and, at the very instant I accomplished the most ordinary acts (a conversation with a friend in the courtyard of the School, an amorous walk on the Isle Saint-Louis, dinner on the sidewalk at a hole-in-the-wall place on the Rue Mouffetard or Contrescarpe), I preoccupied myself above all with imagining the memory I was going to preserve later, when—my life having finally found its fulfillment in literature—I could, fondly, recall my old acts and confer on them that dignity of being steps or signs which they were sure to have acquired. en imagination, solidement établi mes quartiers en plein cœur de l’avenir et, à l’instant même où j’accomplissais le plus ordinaire de mes actes (une conversation avec un ami dans la cour de l’École, une promenade amoureuse dans l’île Saint-Louis, un déjeuner à la terasse d’un petit bouiboui de la rue Mouffetard ou de la Contrescarpe), je me préoccupais surtout d’imaginer quel souvenir j’allais en garder plus tard, lorsque, ma vie ayant enfin trouvé dans la littérature son accomplissement, je pourrais, attendri, me remémorer mes gestes anciens et leur conférer la dignité d’étapes ou de signes qu’ils n’auraient pas manqué d’avoir acquise.

How, indeed, could one catalogue the nonexistent results of his summertime labors?

Ainsi, au fur et à mesure que l’été avance, Thus, bit by bit as the summer goes on, my self-imposed requirements wither away. I abandon the dreamed-of book. No jury will have the pleasure this fall of bestowing laurels on Parapets of old or False windows. No publisher will kick himself for not having accepted into his most prestigious collection A schoolboy’s ways, or for not having brought out, in a printing of more than a hundred thousand, Chestnuts in the fire. No magazine critic will boast of having penetrated the secret of Cryptograms or of having presented for the admiration of his readers A pear for the thirsty. Booksellers, as they design their holiday displays, will not have Cartes blanches; and the public will not en masse be asking for Manna. I did not, all the same, take refuge in their being “not yet ripe”; I was not fooled by that.mes exigences décroissent. Je renonce au livre rêvé. Aucun jury cet automne n’aura le plaisir de déposer ses couronnes sur Les anciens parapets ou sur Fausses fenêtres. Nul éditeur ne se mordra les doigts de n’avoir pas pris, dans sa collection la plus prestigieuse, Les chemins de l’écolier ni tiré à plus de cent mlle exemplaires Les marrons du feu. Pas un critique de magazine ne pourra se vanter d’avoir percé le secret de Cryptogrammes ni proposé à l’admiration de ses lecteurs Une poire pour la soif. Les libraires n’auront pas, lorqu’ils composeront leur vitrine pour les fêtes, Cartes blanches ; et le public ne viendra pas en masse demander La manne. Je ne me réfugie pas pour autant dans le «ils sont trop verts», qui ne suffit plus à me tromper (41–42).

It is plainly an impossible task, which has, in any case, already been performed. Not only can all the books not written by Bénabou be found scattered through the libraries of the world, but all their unwritten reviews too…

Les livres queDon’t go thinking, dear reader, that the books I have not written are pure nothingness. On the contrary (let it be said once and for all), they are as if in suspension in universal literature. They exist in libraries, word by word, or by groups of words, or in certain cases, entire sentences. But around them there is so much useless filler, they are caught up in such a superabundance of printed matter that I myself, to tell the truth, despite all my efforts, have not yet succeeded in isolating them and putting them together. je n’ai pas écrits, n’allez surtout pas croire, lecteur, qu’ils soient pur néant. Bien au contraire (que cela une bonne fois soit dit) ils sont comme en suspension dans la littérature universelle. Ils existent dans les bibliothèques, par mots, par groupes de mots, par phrases entières dans certains cas. Mais il y a autour d’eux tant de vain remplissage, il sont pris dans une telle surabondance de matière imprimée, que moi-même à vrai dire, malgré tous mes effort, n’ai pas encore réussi à les isoler, à les assembler.

Marcel Bénabou. Comment je n’ai écrit aucun de mes livres. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2002 (orig. publ. Hachette, 1986). See Warren Motte, “Reading Marcel Bénabou” at oulipo.net.