Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- ‘C'est justement qu'il n'y a rien!’: Introducing NDiayean Blankness
- 1 Blankness/(Dis)integration: The First Novel Cycle
- 2 Blankness/(Re)generation: The Second Novel Cycle
- 3 Ghouls, Ghosts and Bloodless Abuse: NDiaye's Undead Theatre
- 4 Little Baby Nothing: Framing the Invisible Child
- Conclusion: A Beam of Intense Blankness (Prière pour le bon usage de Marie NDiaye)
- Appendix: Plot Synopses
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Blankness/(Re)generation: The Second Novel Cycle
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- ‘C'est justement qu'il n'y a rien!’: Introducing NDiayean Blankness
- 1 Blankness/(Dis)integration: The First Novel Cycle
- 2 Blankness/(Re)generation: The Second Novel Cycle
- 3 Ghouls, Ghosts and Bloodless Abuse: NDiaye's Undead Theatre
- 4 Little Baby Nothing: Framing the Invisible Child
- Conclusion: A Beam of Intense Blankness (Prière pour le bon usage de Marie NDiaye)
- Appendix: Plot Synopses
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
I saw some piglets suckling their dead mother. After a short while they shuddered and went away. They had sensed that she could no longer see them and that she wasn't like them anymore. What they had loved in their mother wasn't her body, but whatever it was that made her body alive.
Confucius, quoted in Manic Street Preachers, Generation TerroristsAt the end of the twentieth century and at the beginning of the twenty-first, NDiaye's place in French culture underwent a significant metamorphosis, shifting from being a rising star of the avant-garde literary scene, adored by the critics but little known by the general public, to being a household name. The publication in February 2013 of her novel Ladivine was a highly anticipated cultural event, discussed in newspapers and magazines, on the television and on the radio. On the day of the novel's release, NDiaye's image was featured on the front page of the daily Libération. Her snowballing celebrity was certainly helped by winning the Prix Femina for Rosie Carpe in 2001, as well as the much-reported event of the hyper-traditional Comédie-Française taking on her multi-ethnic play Papa doit manger in 2003; but it was her Prix Goncourt win for Trois femmes puissantes in 2009, together with the incredibly high-profile spat the same month with the right-wing politician Eric Raoult (discussed in the Introduction) that made her famous. Perhaps more importantly, it was during this period that NDiaye matured as a novelist, as well as developing into a playwright of note. If it had been clear from En famille onwards that NDiaye was not only an accomplished writer but one of no small cultural significance, the novels La Sorcière (1996) and Rosie Carpe (2001), the play Papa doit manger (discussed in Chapter 3) and the strange 2005 photo-novella Autoportrait en vert (discussed in Chapter 4) established her as an artist who had carved out a truly original niche, no longer dependent on homage of any kind in the increasingly disturbing stories she was telling about family, identity and alienation. Michel Crépu wrote of Rosie Carpe that this was an
étape majeure, étape de mutation qui relègue les précédents romans au rang de préludes avant l'entrée en matière véritable.
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- Information
- Marie NDiayeBlankness and Recognition, pp. 69 - 108Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2013