Volume 30, Number 7 · April 28, 1983
Why Not the Best?
By Roger Shattuck
Friday
by Michel Tournier, translated by Norman Denny
Doubleday, 235, out of print pp.
The Ogre
by Michel Tournier, translated by Barbara Bray
Doubleday, 373, out of print pp.
Gemini
by Michel Tournier, translated by Anne Carter
Doubleday, 452 pp., $14.95
The Four Wise Men
by Michel Tournier, translated by Ralph Manheim
Doubleday, 257 pp., $14.95
Le Vent du Paraclet
by Michel Tournier
Gallimard (Paris), 318 pp., 2F50 (Folio edition)
It's hard to consider the case of Michel Tournier without falling back on a conspiracy theory. How else can one explain the fact that this French writer still in his fifties, whose four novels have won prizes, stirred up rumbling controversy, and gained a loyal audience in Europe and parts of the Orient, remains virtually unknown in the United States? And even in his own country popular success and official recognition appear to disqualify him in many intellectual circles from genuine literary eminence. A recent rumpus in New York and Paris newspapers about the state of contemporary French culture raised the blunt question whether Tournier is the only 'novelist of real importance' to appear there in twenty years.[1] The overblown dispute will probably serve more to swell the envy of Tournier's detractors than to gain him new admirers. From both a literary and a social standpoint, his case will bear scrutiny.
Review, 5145 words
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