Background

The 16th and most recent (for now) French Nobelist is one of the oldest winners for the Nobel, which makes sense as a she plumbs the depths of her personal experience for her writing. Her works frequently cover her own lived experiences as auto-socio-biographical or memoir-style composition. Her childhood in Normandy was marked by a young girl’s stressful and shameful agonies of post-war trauma in a misogynist patriarchy. Her adulthood, as a teacher and author, has been marked by stressful and shameful agonies of a modernizing world that retains many old power structures.

As the patriarchy remains dominant (if a little more discrete) she has had plenty of fodder for her writing. Covering everything from traditional families and romance to assault and marginalization, her works were specially marked “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory”.

Works

With as short and direct as Ernaux’s prose is, I’ve been able to listen to a couple of her works Happening, and Shame. Her writing is often blunt plain, one of her books includes the explanation: “my writing is still confined to the language of the past. I shall never experience the pleasure of juggling with metaphor or indulging in stylistic play.” Still, her writing has an honest beauty.

“I realize this account may exasperate or repel some readers. It may also be branded as distasteful. I believe that any experience, whatever its nature, has the inalienable right to be chronicled. There is no such thing as a ‘lesser truth.'”

“Among all the social and psychological reasons that may account for my past, of one I am certain: these things happened to me so that I might recount them. Maybe the true purpose of my life is for my body, my sensations, and my thoughts to become writing. In other words: something intelligible and universal causing my existence to merge into the lives and heads of other people.”

–Happening

“I almost feel I am committing a sacrilege replacing the sweet landscape of memory…by a far harsher one that strips it of all magic but whose truth cannot be questioned.”

“The worst thing about shame is that we imagine we are the only ones to experience it.”

—Shame

(Side bar–that last line about shame might need to be my personal mantra)

Message

There are a lot of assumptions that Ernaux’s work and message is limited to women and others who suffer directly from misogyny. But one thing that stands out on reading her works is how the pain and difficulty she faces stems from revisiting and reviewing her life and how, despite the pain, there is power and meaning there. We all face those moments, and they can cut us to our core, but if we can find some of the strength that Ernaux does we’ll be well-served. Memory is informative and inescapable.

Position: #7–Left Wing

I was torn on where to put Ernaux. Her plain Marxist leanings put her on the left for sure. She’s short in her prose, direct, and a little blunt, which feels defensive.

But her bluntness is confrontational, challenging, and uncomfortable. Much more like an attacker. She questions and challenges tradition more than I think would be appreciated by the other French winners (looking at you Prudhomme and Simon)–so let’s call her a winger with some wingback tendencies.

What do you think? Given that Ernaux scrupulously avoids rooms with soccer matches on, I figure she doesn’t care…but feel free to prove me wrong Madame Ernaux (or literally anyone else).

Next Time (back to our 80th anniversary winner!) 1946 Honoree–Herman Hesse

BONUS!

I started making videos about these posts, feel free to watch it here, or on the YouTubes