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the complete review - interview
L'ecriture comme un couteau
by
Annie Ernaux
and Frédéric-Yves Jeannet
general information | our review | links | about the author
| Title: | L'ecriture comme un couteau |
| Author: | Annie Ernaux |
| Genre: | Interview |
| Written: | 2003 |
| Length: | 156 pages |
| Original in: | French |
| Availability: | L'ecriture comme un couteau - France |
| L'ecriture comme un couteau - Canada |
- Entretien avec Frédéric-Yves Jeannet
- L'ecriture comme un couteau has not been translated into English yet
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Our Assessment:
B : offers some interesting insights
See our review for fuller assessment.
The complete review's Review:
L'ecriture comme un couteau is a book-length interview / conversation / exchange between Annie Ernaux and Frédéric-Yves Jeannet, conducted by e-mail, Jeannet periodically sending her "un ensemble de questions et de réflexions" ("a set of questions and reflections") and Ernaux (eventually) responding.
It's been fairly well edited together, divided into short chapters, each focussing on an aspect of Ernaux's work or life but with a great deal of overlap among them (i.e. subjects aren't checked off one after another, but rather brought up time and again, wherever relevant).
Ernaux's books are suffused with autobiographical elements, but can't necessarily be read strictly as autobiography.
These conversations focus on her working method, and her products (which are often difficult to describe as novels, or even as fiction).
Particularly of interest is her explanation of her personal journals and how she uses them in her writing -- and the contrast bewteen the one type of writing (diary-keeping) and the other (creative writing).
So, for example, she explains:
Une des raisons qui m'a fait publier Se perdre, c'est de montrer le "jeu" -- au sens d'espace qui sépare -- entre le journal intime et le texte de Passion simple.A great deal is covered in these exchanges, from Ernaux's politics and what she likes to read to everything from the first-person narrators to the tone of her writings. While her works seem to reveal a great deal about her, these exchanges also offer additional background and interpretation that are surely of interest to those familiar with her work.
(One of the reasons I published Se perdre was to show the "play" -- in the sense of what separates them -- between the intimate journal and the text of Simple Passion.)
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L'ecriture comme un couteau: Reviews:
- Nuit Blanche (French)
- Télérama (French)
- Le Temps (French)
- The complete review's Annie Ernaux page
- Annie Ernaux site
- Nobel Prize in Literature, 2022
- Ce qu'ils disent ou rien
- Cleaned Out
- A Frozen Woman
- Getting Lost
- A Girl's Story
- Happening
- "I Remain in Darkness"
- Look at the Lights, My Love
- A Man's Place
- The Possession
- Shame
- Simple Passion
- Things Seen
- The Years
- See also the Index of French literature at the complete review
- See Index of Interviews, conversations, and dialogues
- See Index of Books by Nobel laureates under review
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French author Annie Ernaux was born in Normandy in 1940. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2022.
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© 2004-2023 the complete review
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