How might one sum up the tumultuous life of Françoise Sagan (1935–2004)? I think this opening paragraph from a 2008 article in The Guardian does an apt job: "She was a hedonistic, tomboy beauty who drove racing cars barefoot round Saint Tropez, won literary acclaim and took so many drugs that her pet fox-terrier overdosed from sniffing her handkerchiefs."
Like Clarice Lispector, Sagan won literary acclaim at an early age with her debut novel, Bonjour Tristesse (Hello Sadness), published in 1954 when she was only 18 years old. The book scandalized puritanical readers with its story, set during a fated summer on the French Riviera, of love triangles spanning two generations that eventually lead to the grave. Some judged it as a "vulgar, sad little book," that appealed to disaffected youth, while others saw an authentic depiction of the internal lives of a young post-war generation (n.b. protagonist Cécile is only seventeen at the time of the novel's events).
If Bonjour Tristesse is Sagan's best-known book, then why have I chosen Un Certain Sourire (A Certain Smile), her follow-up novel from 1956 instead? Simply put, if Bonjour Tristesse created the hype surrounding Sagan, then A Certain Smile proved that there was more there than mere hype. While there's a lot of common ground between the two books — both are centered on young female leads exploring a new world of love, lust, and fidelity, both cross generational lines — the general consensus seems to be that A Certain Smile is the stronger of the two (cf. the cover of our edition with a blurb from the Spectator hailing it as "decidedly better" than its predecessor).
Like many of Sagan's novels, A Certain Smile would be adapted for the silver screen, and its title song would become a standard of sorts, covered by a diverse array of artists. Not bad for a book that a twenty year old wrote in two weeks! This raises an interesting question, as well, of genre or audience or taste, or other equally fraught terminology — the presence of a new foreword by Diane Johnson (respected contributor to The New York Review of Books, but also best known for Le Divorce, which was made into a Kate Hudson arthouse rom-com) reaffirms that as well. While some of our reading this semester falls under the aegis of heavy, serious literature (cf. Camus, Kundera) this is a book with literary merits that also appeals to more of a middlebrow audience. I say this not to prejudge the novel, but rather to more properly situate it — the much-beloved novels of Elena Ferrante are a good analogue for what The Economist called a "popsicle of a book."
Here's how we'll split up A Certain Smile over three classes:
- Wed. September 13: foreword; part 1, chapters 1–6
- Fri. September 15: part 1, chapter 7 – part 2, chapter 2
- Mon. September 18: part 3, chapters 1–6
And here are a few supplemental links for your reading pleasure:
No comments:
Post a Comment