Address: 502 Rte de la Rivière, 82100 Les Barthes, FRANCE
Phone: (33) 6.07.33.33.30
E-Mail: srendall@gmail.com
EDUCATION
Johns Hopkins University, 1963-67. Ph.D., l967, Romance Languages and Literatures.
Dissertation: Elite and Peuple in Fontenelle. Director: J. L. Gossman.
Johns Hopkins University, 1962-63. Graduate study in Philosophy.
Université de Lille (France), 196l-62. Graduate study in Philosophy.
University of Colorado, 1957-61. B.A., Summa Cum Laude in General Studies, Magna Cum Laude in Philosophy, l96l.
HONORS AND AWARDS
The American Historical Association's James Henry Breasted Prize (for translation of Alain Bresson, The Making of the Ancient Greek Economy), 2017.
The French-American Foundation/Florence Gould Foundation Translation Prize (for the translation of Patrice Gueniffey, Bonaparte), 2015.
Finalist, French-American Foundation/Florence Gould Foundation Translation Prize (for translation of Grégoire Chamayou, Les Chasses à l'homme), 2013.
Finalist, French-American Foundation/Florence Gould Foundation Translation Prize (for translation of Pascal Bruckner, Perpetual Euphoria), 2012.
Modern Language Association of America, Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Scholarly Study of Literature, 2005 (for translation of Harald Weinrich, Lethe: The Art and Critique of Forgetting).
The National Jewish Book Council's Sandra Brand and Arik Weintraub Award (for translation of Marcel Bénabou, Jacob, Menahem, and Mimoun: A Family Epic), 1999.
Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung Research Fellowship, Universität des Saarlandes (Germany), 1995. Research on translation.
NEH Fellow, Center for Research on Translation, SUNY-Binghamton, 1993.
Camargo Foundation Fellowship, Cassis, France, 1988.
Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung Research Fellowship, Postgraduierten Programme, Theorie der Literatur und der Kommunikation, Universität Konstanz (Germany), 1980-8l, 198l-82.
NEH Fellow, "Toward a Theory of the Humanities" conference, University of Southern California, 1977.
NEH Fellow, School of Criticism and Theory, University of California, Irvine, 1977.
Grantee, University of Oregon Workshop on Teaching Composition, 1975.
Visiting Scholar in Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley, 1972-73.
University of Oregon Summer Faculty Research Award, 1969.
Danforth Fellow, Johns Hopkins University, 1962-67.
Gilman Fellow, Johns Hopkins University, 1964-67.
Woodrow Wilson Fellow, Johns Hopkins University, 1962-63.
Fulbright Scholar, Université de Lille, 1961-62.
Phi Beta Kappa Scholarship, President's Award, Rotary Scholarship, etc., University of Colorado.
POSITIONS HELD
1. Teaching
Professor Emeritus, Romance Languages, University of Oregon, 1997--; Professor, 1979-1997; Associate Professor, 1972-1979; Assistant Professor, 1967-1972.
Guest Professor, Universität Konstanz, 1981.
Seminar leader, NEH Summer Seminar ("The Production of Deviancy in Nineteenth-Century France"), 1987.
2. Editorial
Editor Emeritus, Comparative Literature; Editor, 1990-1997; Associate Editor, 1978--1990; Assistant Editor, l972-78.
Editorial Board and Advisory Committee, Montaigne Studies , 1989--. Editor-in-chief, Montaigne Studies, Vol. 5 ("Of History," 1994).
3. Consultant/ Reader
Harcourt Trade Publishers, HarperCollins/Ecco, St. Martin's Press, Dana Press, Cornell University Press, University of Nebraska Press, Columbia University Press, Princeton University Press, New York University Press, University of California Press, Melville House, Armand Colin (Paris), Plon-Perrin (Paris), C. H. Beck (Munich), Words Without Borders, Bloomsbury Publications.
4. Administrative (University of Oregon)
Co-Director, Comparative Literature Program, 1983-1992
Director, General Literature Program, 1976-1980
Director, General Humanities Program, 1978-1979
5. Related to Translation
Presiding Officer, Translation Section, MLA, 1995
Member, Executive Committee, Discussion Section on Translation, Modern Language Association of America, 1997-98.
Selection Committee, Aldo Scaglione Translation Prize, MLA, 1997-1998.
Animateur, Atelier de Traduction, MJC Montauban (France), 2008-2018.
Animateur, Atelier traduire la sociologie et l'anthropologie, ATLAS/Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 2018.
A. TRANSLATIONS FROM FRENCH: BOOKS
1. The Practice of Everyday Life (Les Arts de faire ), by Michel de Certeau. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984.
2. History and Memory (Histoire et mémoire ), by Jacques Le Goff. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. With Elizabeth Claman.
3. Astrea (Astrée ), by Honoré d'Urfé. Vol. I (1607). With a critical introduction. Binghamton: State University of New York Press (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies series), 1995.
4. The Torments of Love (Les Angoysses douloureuses qui procedent d'amours), by Helisenne de Crenne (1538). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. With Lisa Dow Neal.
5. Hitler (Hitler ), by Marlis Steinert. Commissioned and accepted by W. W. Norton (New York) but never published.
6. Black Fire on White Fire: An Essay on Jewish Hermeneutics (Feu noir sur feu blanc: Un essai sur l'herméneutique juïve), by Betty Rojtman. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997.
7. The Hidden Encyclical of Pius XII (L'Encyclique cachée de Pie XI: une occasion manquée de l'Église face à l'antisémitisme), by G. Passelecq and B. Suchecky. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1997.
8. Jacob, Menahem, and Mimoun: A Family Epic (Jacob, Ménahem, et Mimoun: Une épopée familiale), by Marcel Bénabou. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. Winner of the Jewish Book Council's Sandra Brand and Arik Weintraub Award, 1999.
9. Art in the Modern Age (L'art de l'âge moderne), by J.-M. Schaeffer. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.
10. Men of Learning at the End of the Middle Ages (Les Hommes de savoir à la fin du Moyen Âge), by Jacques Verger. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000. With Lisa Dow Neal.
11. On Private Indirect Government (Du gouvernement privé indirect), by Achille Mbembe. United Kingdom: African Books Collective, 2002.
12. The Rosetta Stone (La pierre de Rosette ), by Robert Solé and Dominique Valbelle. London: Profile Books, 2001.
13. Dump This Book While You Still Can (Jette ce livre avant qu'il soit trop tard), by Marcel Bénabou. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001.
14. Until Death Do Us Part (La rage au coeur ), by Ingrid Betancourt. New York: HarperCollins. 2002.
15. The Political Economy of Post-Adjustment: Towards New Theories and Strategies of Development (Vers un nouveau contrat pour l'Afrique), by Hakim Ben Hammouda. London: Ashgate, 2003.
16. To Write on Tamara? (Écrire sur Tamara), by Marcel Bénabou. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004.
17. Before Mao: Li Lisan and the Untold Story of the Creation of Communist China (L'Empire rouge: Moscou-Pekin, 1919-1989), by Patrick Lescot. New York: Ecco (HarperCollins), 2004. (Published in the U.K. under the title The Red Empires: A Tale of Love Divided . John Wiley and Sons, 2004).
18. The Story of the Marquise/Marquis de Banneville (L'Histoire de la marquise-marquis de Banneville), by the Abbe de Choisy. New York: MLA Texts and Translations Series. 2004.
19. Eretria, A Guide to the Ancient City (Erétrie, Guide de la cité antique ), ed. Pierre Ducrey et al. Athens: Swiss School of Archaeology in Greece. 2004.
20. The Illusion of Cultural Identity (L'Illusion identitaire), by Jean-François Bayart. London: Hurst, 2005; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
21. Resistance: The Human Struggle Against Infection (Les Microbes aussi ont une histoire: Des épidémies de peste aux menaces de guerre bactériologique), by Norbert Gualde. Washington, DC: Dana Press, 2006. Selected for Choice 's list of Outstanding Academic Titles, 2007.
22. Cannibal Island: Death in a Siberian Gulag (L'île aux cannibales. 1933, une déportation-abandon en Sibérie), by Nicolas Werth. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.
23. The Geopolitics of Africa (La Géopolitique de l'Afrique), by Philippe Hugon. Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2007.
24. Hitler's High Society (La Vie mondaine sous le nazisme ), by Fabrice D'Almeida. London: Polity Press, 2008..
25. Female Agents (Les Femmes de l'ombre ), by Laurent Vachaud. London: Revolver, 2008.
26. Valkyrie: The Plot to Kill Hitler (Nous voulions tuer Hitler ), by Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager, with Florence and Jérôme Fehrenbach. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2008; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.
27. Reason and Reasons (Raison et raisons ), by Jon Elster. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.
28. The Queens of Egypt (Les reines d'Egypte ). Exhibit catalog. Paris: Somogy, 2008. With Lisa Davidson et al.
29. Resentment in History: Understanding our Time ( Le ressentiment dans l'histoire: Comprendre notre temps ), by Marc Ferro. Cambridge: Polity, 2010.
30. The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on European Masochism (La Tyrannie de la pénitence: essai sur le masochisme européen ), by Pascal Bruckner. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2010.
31. Islam in Europe: The Lure of Fundamentalism and the Allure of Cosmopolitanism (Interpénétrations: L'Islam et l'Europe), by Nilüfer Göle. Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2011.
32. Perpetual Euphoria: An Essay on the Duty to be Happy (L'euphorie perpétuelle: essai sur le devoir de bonheur ), by Pascal Bruckner. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011. Excerpts also appeared in Harper's Magazine, February, 2011, p. 13 f. Finalist for the French-American Foundation/Florence Gould Translation Prize, 2012.
33. The Paradox of Love (Le paradoxe amoureux), by Pascal Bruckner. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012.
34. Manhunts: A History and Philosophy of Cynegetic Power (Les Chasses à l'homme: Histoire et philosophie du pouvoir cynégétique), by Grégoire Chamayou. Princeton University Press, 2012. Finalist for the French-American Foundation/Florence Gould Translation Prize, 2013.
35. Mapuche (Mapuche), by Caryl Ferey. New York: Europa, 2013.
36. The Fanaticism of the Apocalypse (Le Fanatisme de l'Apocalypse), by Pascal Bruckner. Cambridge: Polity, 2013.
37. Has Marriage for Love Failed? (Le mariage d'amour a-t-il échoué?), by Pascal Bruckner. Cambridge: Polity, 2013.
38. Summertime All the Cats are Bored (L'été, tous les chats s'ennuient), by Philippe Georget. New York: Europa, 2013.
39. The Economics of Creativity: Art and Achievement under Uncertainty (Le travail createur: s'accomplir dans l'incertain), by Pierre-Michel Menger: Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. (With Lisa Neal).
40. A Dictionary of Untranslatables: The European Philosophical Vocabulary (Le Vocabulaire européen des Philosophies: Un dictionnaire des intraduisibles), ed. Barbara Cassin. In collaboration with other translators. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2014.
41. The Cemetery of the Swallows (Le Cimetière des Hirondelles), by Mallock. New York: Europa. 2014.
42. Autumn All the Cats Come Back (Les Violents d'automne), by Philippe Georget. New York: Europa. 2014. (With Lisa Neal.)
43. The Making of the Ancient Greek Economy (vol. 1: L'Économie de la Grèce des Cités: Les structures et la production; vol. 2: L'Économie de la Grèce des Cités: Les espaces de l'échange), by Alain Bresson. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. Winner of the American Historical Association's James Henry Breasted Prize, 2017.
44. Bonaparte, 1769-1802 (Bonaparte, 1769-1802), by Patrice Gueniffey. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015. (With Lisa Neal). Winner of the French-American Foundation Translation Prize, 2016.
45. Eric Rohmer: A Biography (Eric Rohmer: Biographie), by Antoine de Baecque and Noel Herpe. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. (With Lisa Neal.)
46. Psychoanalysis and the Human Sciences (La Psychanalyse et les sciences humaines), by Louis Althusser. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016.
47. A Sociology of Freedom: Reading Howard S. Becker (Un sociologue en liberté ), by Alain Pessin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016.
48. The Crimes of Winter ( Méfaits d'hiver), by Philippe Georget. New York: Europa, 2016 (With Lisa Neal).
49. Montaigne, a Political Biography (Montaigne, une biographie politique), by Philippe Desan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017 (With Lisa Neal.)
50. Terror in France: the Rise of Jihad in the West (Terreur dans l'Hexagone: Genèse du Djihad français ), by Gilles Képel. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017.
51. The Wisdom of Money (La Sagesse de l'argent), by Pascal Bruckner. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017 (With Lisa Neal).
52. The Economics of the Common Good (Économie du bien commun ), by Jean Tirole. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017.
53. Sophocles: A Study of his Theater in its Political and Social Context (Sophocle), by Jacques Jouanna. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2018.
54. An Imaginary Racism (Un Racisme imaginaire), by Pascal Bruckner. Cambridge: Polity. 2018.
55. The Gunzburgs: A Family Biography (Une Grande famille russe: Les Gunzburg. Paris-Saint-Petersbourg, XIXme-XXme siècle), by Lorraine de Meaux. London: Halban Publishers, 2019.
56. Disturbance : Surviving Charlie Hebdo (Le Lambeau), by Philippe Lançon. New York: Europa, 2019.
57. Napoleon and de Gaulle: Heroes and History. (Napoléon et de Gaulle: Deux héros français), by Patrice Gueniffey. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2020.
58. A Brief Eternity (Une brève éternité ), by Pascal Bruckner. Cambridge UK: Polity, 2020.
59. The Tyranny of Algorithms: Freedom, Democracy, and the Challenge of AI (La Tyrannie des algorithmes), by Miguel Benasayag. New York: Europa, 2021.
60. A Brief History of Equality (Une brève histoire de l'égalité), by Thomas Piquetty. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2022.
61. Free to Obey: How the Nazis Invented Modern Management (Libres d'obéir: le management, du nazisme à aujourd'hui), by Johann Chapoutot. New York: Europa. 2023.
62. Paradises Lost (Paradis perdus), by Éric-Émmanuel Schmitt. New York: Europa, 2024 (with Addie Leaks).
63. Balance of Power: Central Banks and the Fate of Democracies (La Banque providence: Démocratiser les banques centrales et la monnaie), by Éric Monnet. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2024.
64. Martin Heidegger's Changing Destinies: Catholicism, Revolution, Nazism (Les Destins changeants de Martin Heidegger: Catholicisme, Révolution, Nazisme), by Guillaume Payen. New Haven CT: Yale University Press. 2023 (with Jane Marie Todd).
65. Homo Numericus: The "Civilization" to Come (Homo numericus: La Civilisation qui vient), by Daniel Cohen. Cambridge UK: Polity, 2024.
66. A History of Political Conflict: Elections and Inequalities in France, 1789-2022 (Une histoire du conflit politique: Elections et inégalités sociales en France, 1789-2022), by Julia Cagé and Thomas Piquetty. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2025.
B . TRANSLATIONS FROM FRENCH: ESSAYS AND ARTICLES
1. "Where Do They Come From? Those Superb Paintings and Awful Women of 'Picasso's War,'" by Brigitte Baer. Catalog of the exhibition on Picasso at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1998.
2. "God's Phallus" ("Le fouet de Dieu"), by Achille Mbembe. Public Culture 11 (1999), 1-23.
3. "The Birth of the Speculative Theory of Art," by J.-M. Schaeffer (extract reprinted from Art of the Modern Age; cf. supra, "Books," no. 12.). Southern Humanities Review 33 (1999), 321-360.
4. "The Final Manner," by Achille Mbembe, in Mbembe, Provisional Notes on the Postcolony (Notes Provisoires sur la postcolonie). Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
5. "The Civil Status of the State in Africa: A Conversation among Mamadou Diouf, Harris Memêl Fotê, and Achille Mbembe" ("L'état civil de l'État en Afrique"). CODESRIA Bulletin, 12 (1999), 39-47.
6. "Historians and Histories: What For? African Historiography Between the State and the Communities," ("Des historiens et des histoires: pour quoi faire? L'historiographie africaine entre l'État et les Communautés") by Mamadou Diouf. SEPHIS/CSSC Occasional Paper Series, Dakar, 1999.
7. "At the Edge of the World: Boundaries, Territoriality, and Sovereignty in Africa" ("À la lisière du monde: Frontières, territorialité, et souveraineté en Afrique), by Achille Mbembe. Public Culture 12 (1), 259-284 (2000); also in CODESRIA Bulletin, 3-4 (1999), 4-16.
8. "Getting out of the Ghetto: The Challenge of Internationalization" ("Sortir du ghetto: Le défi de l'internationalisation"), by Achille Mbembe. CODESRIA Bulletin 3-4 (1999).
9. "The Senegalese Murid Trade Diaspora and the Making of a Vernacular Cosmopolitanism," by Mamadou Diouf. Public Culture 12 (2000), 679-702; also in CODESRIA Bulletin 1 (2000), 19-30; reprinted in C. H. Breckenridge, et al., eds., Cosmopolitanism, Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.
10. "The End of Monologues" ("La fin des monologues"), by Achille Mbembe. CODESRIA Bulletin no. 1 (2000).
11. "An Essay on the Political Imagination in Wartime," by Achille Mbembe. CODESRIA Bulletin 2-3-4 (2000), 6-21.
12. "African Modes of Self-Writing" ("À propos des écritures africaines de soi"), by Achille Mbembe. Public Culture 14 (2002), 239-273; also published in CODESRIA Bulletin 1 (2000), 4-19.
13. "Race and Identity in Africa" ("Race et identité en Afrique"), by Fabien Eboussi Boulaga. CODESRIA Bulletin.
14. "State and Taxation in Africa," etc. ("État et fiscalisation en Afrique"). CODESRIA Bulletin.
15. "Factors Inhibiting Peasant's Organizations' Participation in the Process of Democratization in Senegal" ("Les facteurs inhibiteurs de la participation des Organisations paysannes au processus de démocratisation au Sénégal"), by Mohamadou Sy. Dakar: CODESRIA.
16. "Peasants' Organizations in the Cape Verde Islands : From Individualism to Associative Forms of Organization" ("Organisations paysannes aux îles du Cap Vert : de l'individualisme aux formes associatives d'organisation"), by Claudio Alves Furtado. Dakar: CODESRIA.
17. "The Union tunisienne de l'agriculture et de la pêche and its Role in Strengthening Civil Society in Tunisia" ("L'Union tunisienne de l'agriculture et de la pêche et son rôle dans la consolidation de la société civile en Tunisie"), by Gilbert Naccache. Dakar: CODESRIA.
18. "Organizations of women peasants in Cameroon : The example of the department of Lékié" ("Les Organisations paysannes de femmes au Cameroun : l'exemple du département de la Lékié"), by Jean Paul Komon. Dakar: CODESRIA.
19. "'Crushing the Pistachio': Eroticism in Senegal and the Art of Ousmane Ndiaye Dago" ("L'Èrotisme urbain en Afrique"), by T. K. Biaya. Public Culture 12 (2000), 707-720.
20. "The Revelation of the Abyss" ("La révélation de l'abîme"), by Vincent Descombes. Southern Humanities Review . Winter 2001, 45-59.
21. "Essay on the political imagination in times of war" ("Essai sur l'imagination politique en temps de guerre"), by Achille Mbembe. CODESRIA Bulletin.
22. "Economic Issues in Human Development" by Hakim Ben Hammouda. CODESRIA.
23. "The End of the Washington Consensus" ("La fin du consensus de Washington"), by Hakim Ben Hammouda. CODESRIA Bulletin.
24. "The Asian Model" ("Le modèle asiatique"), by Hakim Ben Hammouda. CODESRIA Bulletin.
25. "The Subject of the World" ("Le sujet du monde"), by Achille Mbembe. In Facing Up to the Past. Prins Claus Fonds voor Cultuur en Ontwikkeling (Netherlands), 2001, 21-28.
26. "Making Catleya" ("Faire Catleya"), by Serge Doubrovsky. Southern Humanities Review 7 (2002), 201-22.
27. "Writing Catleia" ("Ecrire Catleia"), by Gérard Genette. Southern Humanities Review 7 (2002), 222-225.
28. "Youth, Migration, and Citizenship" ("Jeunesse, Migration, Nationalité"), by Mamadou Diouf. Social Science Research Council (New York).
29. "Mohammed Chafiq, The Man Who Gave Me Roots and Wings," ("Mohammed Chafiq: l'homme qui m'a donné des racines et des ailes"), by Fatema Mernissi. Prinz Claus Fund Journal , 2002.
30. Prinz Claus Fund Prize Address, by Mohammed Chafiq. Prinz Claus Fund Journal , 2002.
31. "Working-class forms of illegality in France: Developments and regulations since the early 1980s" ("Evolutions et régulations des illégalismes populaires en France depuis le début des années 1980"), by Laurent Bonelli. Social Science Research Council (New York).
32. "Julie's Garden" ("Le Jardin de Julie"), by André Blanc. Southern Humanities Review , Summer 2007, 205-224.
33. "Judaism and Islam as Opposites" (Judentum und Islam als Gegensätze), by Johann von Leers. In Andrew Bostom, From Sacred Texts to Solemn History: The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism.
34. "Mass Deportations, Ethnic Cleansing, and Genocidal Politics in the Russian Empire and the USSR from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to the Mid-Twentieth Century" ("Déportations de masse, nettoyage ethnique et politiques génocidaires dans les espaces de l’Empire russe et de l’URSS ( milieu du XIXème siècle/milieu du XXème siècle"), by Nicolas Werth. In Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Genocide. Forthcoming.
35. "National Identity and Everyday Life," by Yves Deloye. In John Breuilly, ed., The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Forthcoming.
36. "Authoritarian Fault-Lines in Pluralist Democracies: A Few Thoughts on Authoritarianism in a Democratic Context" ("Les failles autoritaires des démocraties pluralistes: Quelques réflexions sur l’autoritarisation en contexte démocratique"), by Gilles Massardier. In Eberhard Kienle, ed., Between Democracy Building and Democracy Erosion: Political Change North and South of the Mediterranean. London: Saqi Books. 2009.
37. "Deceptive Liberal Reforms: Institutional Developments and the Dynamics of Authoritarianism in Tunisia (1997-2005) ("Des réformes libérales en trompe-l’œil : aménagements institutionnels et dynamique de l’autoritarisme en Tunisie (1997-2005), by Eric Gobe. In Eberhard Kienle, ed., Between Democracy Building and Democracy Erosion: Political Change North and South of the Mediterranean. London: Saqi Books. 2009.
38. "The Strange Italian Democracy" ("L’étrange démocratie italienne"), by Marc Lazar. In Eberhard Kienle, ed., Between Democracy Building and Democracy Erosion: Political Change North and South of the Mediterranean. London: Saqi Books. 2009.
39. "Constitutionalism vs. 'fiq'hism": The Evolution and Limits of the Constitutional State in Morocco" ("Constitutionnalisme versus « fiq’hisme ». Evolution et limites de l’Etat de droit au Maroc"), by Mohammed Mouaqit. In Eberhard Kienle, ed., Between Democracy Building and Democracy Erosion: Political Change North and South of the Mediterranean. London: Saqi Books. 2009
40. "The Ansbach Memorandum" ("La mémoire d'Ansbach"), by Maximilian von Montgelas. Selections. Washington: DC: German Historical Institute.
41. "Revisiting Pentekontaetia" ("Relire la pentékontaétie"), by Alain Bresson.
42. "Rhodes During the Siege of 305-304 BC: Population, Territory, and Defensive Strategy" ("Rhodes lors du siège de 305-304 av. J.-C. : population, territoire et stratégie défensive"), by Alain Bresson.
43. "Five Novels about Guilt" ("Cinq romans sur la culpabilité), by Pascal Bruckner. The Wall Street Journal, April 10, 2010.
44. "The Culture of Doubt" ("La Culture du doute"), by Pascal Bruckner. The Washington Post, November 19, 2010.
45. "The Art of Suffering" (Excerpt from Perpetual Euphoria, see I A, 32 above), by Pascal Bruckner. Harper's Magazine, February 2011, p. 13-16.
46. "Everything Has Gone Wrong: Levi-Strauss and Virtual History (Rien ne va plus: Levi-Strauss et l'histoire virtuelle), by Christopher Johnson. New Left Review, 79 (2013): 55-69.
47. "Le Bord des mondes," by Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel. Palais, Paris: Palais de Tokyo, 2014.
48. "The World of Art on its Borders" ("Le Monde de l'art en ses bords"), by Jean-Marie Schaeffer. Palais, Paris: Palais de Tokyo, 2014.
49. "A Prepared Universe " ("Un univers préparé"), by Frédérique Aït-Touati. Palais, Paris: Palais de Tokyo, 2015.
50. "In the Doubling of Dreams" ("Dans la doublure des rêves") by Fabien Danesi. Palais, Paris: Palais de Tokyo, 2015.
51. "The Misadventures of the Good Life between Modernity and Degrowth: from Happiness to Buen Vivir ("Les mésaventures de la vie bonne entre modernité et décroissance: du Bonheur au Buen vivir"), by Serge Latouche. In: The Good Life Beyond Growth: Critical Perspectives, ed. Hartmut Rosa. London: Routledge, 2016.
52. "Did I Write a Feel-Good Book?", by Philippe Lançon. Talk delivered at Yale University, January 28, 2020.
C. TRANSLATIONS FROM GERMAN: BOOKS
1. Shipwreck with Spectator (Schiffbruch mit Zuschauer ), by Hans Blumenberg. With a critical introduction by the translator. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1996.
2. A Berlin Republic: Writings on Germany (Die Normalität einer Berliner Republik ), by Jürgen Habermas. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.
3. Washington and Rome: Catholicism in American Culture (Washington und Rom: Der Katholizismus in der amerikanischen Kultur ), by Michael Zöller. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999. With Albert Wimmer.
4. The Dead Philosophers' Café (Das Café der toten Philosophen ), by Vittorio Hoesle. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000.
5. Function and Structure : The Ambiguities of Religious Drama (Funktion und Struktur: Die Ambivalenzen des geistlichen Spiels ), by Rainer Warning. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.
6. The Pyramids (Die Pyramiden ), by Miroslav Verner. New York: Grove/Atlantic Press, 2001. 2nd rev. ed., American University in Cairo Press, 2021.
7. Life Counts: A Worldwide Balance Sheet (Life Counts: Eine Globale Bilanz des Lebens ), by Michael Gleich, Dirk Maxeiner, Michael Miersch, and Fabian Nicolay. New York: Grove/Atlantic, 2002.
8. Morals and Politics (Moral und Politik ), by Vittorio Hösle. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2004.
9. Lethe: The Art and Critique of Forgetting (Lethe: Kunst und Kritik des Vergessens ), by Harald Weinrich. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004. Winner of the MLA's Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Translation of a Scholarly Study of Literature, 2005.
10. Pythagoras: Life, Work, and Influence (Pythagoras: Leben, Lehre, Nachwirkung ), by Christoph Riedweg. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005.
11. The History of Iran: From Islamization to the Present (Geschichte Irans: Von der Islamisierung bis zur Gegenwart ), by Monika Gronke. Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2007.
12. On Borrowed Time: The Art and Economy of Living with Deadlines (Knappe Zeit: Kunst und Kritik des befristeten Daseins ), by Harald Weinrich. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
13. Lost In The Sacred: Why the Muslim World Stood Still (Versiegelte Zeit: Über den Stillstand in der Islamischen Welt ), by Dan Diner. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.
14. Privacy: A Manifesto (Verteidigung des Privaten. Eine Streitschrift ), by Wolfgang Sofsky. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.
15. The Promise of Salvation: A Theory of Religion (Cultus und Heilversprechen ), by Martin Riesebrodt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
16. Prophets of the Past: Jewish Historiography in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Propheten des Vergangenen: Jüdische Geschichtsshreibung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert ), by Michael Brenner. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.
17. Nazi Germany 1933-1945 (vol. 7 of German History in Documents and Images ), ed. Richard Breitman. Washington, DC: German Historical Institute. Photo captions. (http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/)
18. Occupation and the Emergence of Two States: 1945-1961 (vol. 8 of German History in Documents and Images), ed. Volker Berghahn and Uta Poiger. Photo captions. Washington, DC: German Historical Institute. http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/
19. The Magdala Campaign: Ethiopia in Europe's Crosshairs (Unternehmen Magdala: Strafexpedition in Äthiopien), by Werner Matthies. Princeton: Markus Wiener. 2011.
20. Letters to Hitler (Briefe an Hitler), ed. Henrik Eberle. Cambridge: Polity, 2012.
21. You Are Not Like Other Mothers (Du bist nicht so wie andre Mütter), by Angelika Schrobsdorff. Rome and New York: Europa Editions, 2012.
22. Simon Bolivar, Liberator of South America. History and Myth (Simon Bolivar, Befreier Südamerikas. Geschichte und Mythos), by Michael Zeuske. Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2013. (With Lisa Neal.)
23. Philosophical Dialogue: A Poetics and a Hermeneutics (Der Philosophische Dialog: Eine Poetik und Hermeneutik), by Vittorio Hoesle. Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013.
24. Musica Naturalis: Speculative Music Theory and Poetics, from Saint Augustine to the Late Middle Ages in France (Musica naturalis. Tradition und Kontinuität spekulativ-metaphysischer Musiktheorie in der Poetik des französischen Spätmittelalters), by Philipp Jeserich. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2013. (With Michael J. Curley.)
25. The Commodified Body: Organ Transplantation and the Organ Trade (Der Warenkörper: Zur Sozialpsychologie der Medizin), by Oliver Decker. London: Routledge, 2014.
26. Islam and Women (Der Islam und die Frauen), by Irene Schneider. Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2013.
27. The History of the Amistad (Die Geschichte der Amistad), by Michael Zeuske. Princeton: Markus Wiener. 2014.
28. In the Land of a Thousand Gods: A History of Asia Minor in the Ancient World (Geschichte Kleinasiens in der Antike), by Christian Marek. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016.
29. A Short History of German Philosophy (Kurze Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie), by Vittorio Hoesle. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2017.
30. Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, vol. 16 (Einstein Papers Project). Princeton: Princeton University Press/Cal Tech., 2021. Co-translator.
31. Language in Texts: Selected Essays (Sprache in Texten), by Harald Weinrich, ed. Vasile Condrea. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers. Co-translator. Forthcoming.
32. Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, vol. 17 (Einstein Papers Project). Princeton: Princeton University Press/Cal Tech. Co-translator. In progress.
D. TRANSLATIONS FROM GERMAN: ESSAYS, POEMS, AND SHORT FICTION
1. "The Translator's Task" ("Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers"), by Walter Benjamin. TTR 10, no. 2 (1997): 151-165. Revised version in: Lawrence Venuti, ed., The Translation Studies Reader, 3rd ed., London: Routledge, 2012. Reprinted in Laszlo, forthcoming.
2. "Lolita" ("Lolita"), by Heinz von Lichberg. Southern Humanities Review , Summer 2005: 240-48.
3. "Rumpelstiltskin: Methodological Pluralism in Research on the Fairy Tale" ("Rumpelstilzchen: Vom Methodenpluralismus in der Erzählforschung"), by Lutz Röhrich. Southern Humanities Review, Summer 2008: 205-239.
4. Johann von Leers, "Judaism and Islam as Opposites" ("Judentum und Islam als Gegensatze"), in From Sacred Texts to Solemn History: The Legacy of Islamic Anti-Semitism, ed. Andrew C. Bostom and Ibn Warraq. New York: Prometheus, 2008.
5. Jakob Vogel, "Locality and circulation in the Habsburg Empire," BJHS (British Journal for the History of Science) 589-606 43(4), December, 2010, 589–606.
6. "Brother and Sister" (excerpt from "Bruder und Schwester"), by Christhard Läpple. In The Wall in My Head, New York: Words Without Borders, 2009.
7. Selected poems from Harald Weinrich, Das Leben und Lesen der Tieren: Ein Bestiarium. New York: Words Without Borders, 2009.
8. "The Night that Changed Everything" ("Die Nacht, die alles veränderte"), by Christhard Läpple. New York: Open Letter Books, 2010.
9. Selected poems from Harald Weinrich, Sag Schibboleth. Berlin: No Man's Land, 2009.
10. Rainer Maria Rilke, "The Panther" (Der Panther). http://www.thebeckoning.com/poetry/rilke/rilke3.html
11. "Fairground" (excerpt from Rummelplatz), by Werner Braeunig. Berlin: No Man's Land, 2010.
12. "You Worry too Much" (excerpt from Pazifik Exil), by Michael Lentz. Berlin, No Man's Land, 2011.
13. Selected poems from Harald Weinrich, Das Leben und Lesen der Tiere: Ein Bestiarium. Mad Hatter's Review 14 (2013) http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/poetry2_weinrich.shtml
14. "The Flying Eye" ("Das fliegende Auge"), by Falk Haberkorn. In: Oliver Decker, ed., Modern Times: Haunted by the Past, Hunted by the Future. London: Routledge, 2020.
15. "Acceleration and Depression: Reflections on Modernity's Relationship to Time" ("Beschleunigung und Depression: Ueberlegungungen zum Zeitverhaeltnis der Moderne"), by Helmut Rosa. In: Oliver Decker, ed., Modern Times: Haunted by the Past, Hunted by the Future. London: Routledge, 2020.
16. "Shock--Distractability--Attention Deficit--Lack of Time: Benjamin as Involuntary Prophet" ("Schock--Zerstreuung--Aufmerksamskeitsdefizit--Zeitmangel. Benjaman als unfreiwilliger Prophet"), by Christoph Tuercke. In: Oliver Decker, ed., Modern Times: Haunted by the Past, Hunted by the Future. London: Routledge, 2020.
17. "Growth and Acceleration as an Everyday Religion" ("Wachstum und Beschleunigung als Alltagsreligion"), by Oliver Decker and Johannes Kiess. In: Oliver Decker, ed., Modern Times: Haunted by the Past, Hunted by the Future. London: Routledge, 2020.
1. Review of Douglas Robinson, The Translator's Turn. Philosophy and Literature 16 (1992): 203-05.
2. Review of Lawrence Venuti, ed., Rethinking Translation: Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology . Philosophy and Literature 17 (1993): 181-82.
3. Review of Donald M. Frame's translation of The Complete Works of François Rabelais, and Burton Raffel's translation of Gargantua and Pantagruel. Comparative Literature 47 (1995): 84-85.
4. Review of Burton Raffel, The Art of Translating Prose. Comparative Literature 47 (1995): 88-90.
5. "Changing Translation." Review essay on Lawrence Venuti, The Translator's Invisibility: A History of Translation. Comparative Literature 48 (1996), 359-364.
6. "Translation, Quotation, Iterability (Walter Benjamin)." TTR 10 (1997): 167-187.
7. "Zohn's Translation of Walter Benjamin's "Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers." TTR 10 (1997): 191-206. Reprinted in Lawrence Venuti, ed., A Translation Studies Reader (London: Routledge, 1999, 2nd ed. 2004).
8. "Dump This Book," Festschrift for OULIPO, forthcoming.
9. "How I Came to Translate The Practice of Everyday Life, and What Happened Afterward." The Polity of Literature, ed. Matthew Stadler. Published online, July 1, 2021: https://www.artseverywhere.ca/reading-poaching-2/
1. "Translation, Quotation, Iterability (Walter Benjamin)." Public lecture, Universität des Saarlandes (Germany), 1995.
2. "Translation and Discursive Understanding." Paper presented at the First Stanford Conference on Translation, Stanford University, 1997.
3. Participant, Workshop on Translation, Übersetzerhaus Looren (Switzerland), 2008, 2012.
4. Guest speaker, Workshop on Barbara Cassin's Dictionary of Untranslatables, Humanities Center, University of Toronto, 2015.
5. Guest speaker, Translation Lunch Lecture Series, Princeton University, 2016.
1. Martin Kanes' translation of Balzac's Pierre Grassou. For University of Nebraska Press, 1996.
2. Jordan Stump's translation of Christian Oster's Le grand appartement . For University of Nebraska Press, 1996.
3. Clemens Meyer, Als wir traeumten, 2006. For Harcourt Trade Books, New York.
4. Jonathan Littell, Les Bienveillantes, 2006. For Harcourt Trade Books, New York.
5. Céline Curiol, Voix sans issue, 2006. For Harcourt Trade Books, New York.
6. Olivier Wieviorka, Histoire du débarquement en Normandie : Des origines à la libération de Paris 1941-1944, 2006. For Harcourt Trade Books, New York.
7. Jean Rolin, L'explosion de la durite, 2006. For Harcourt Trade Books, New York.
8. François Salvaing, Jourdain, 2006. For Harcourt Trade Books, New York.
9. Peter von Matt, Die Intrige: Theorie und Praxis der Hinterlist, 2006. For Harcourt Trade Books, New York.
10. Manfred Pohlen: Freuds Analyse: Die Sitzungsprotokolle Ernst Blums, 2006. For Harcourt Trade Books, New York.
11. Werner Bräunig: Rummelplatz, 2007. For Harcourt Trade Books, New York.
12. Joseph d'Arbaud, La bête du Vaccarès. 2007. For Harcourt Trade Books, New York
13. Michael Lentz: Pazifik Exil . 2007. For Harcourt Trade Books, New York
14. Vincent Delecroix, La Chaussure sur le toit, 2007. For Harcourt Trade Books, New York
15. Pierre Briançon: San Quentin Jazz Band, 2008. For Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York
16. Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude Carrière: N'Espérez pas vous débarrasser des livres . (Interviews conducted by Jean-Philippe de Tonnac), 2008. For Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York
17. Brigitte Hamann: Hitlers Edeljude: Das Leben des Armenarztes Eduard Bloch, 2008. For Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York.
18. Christian Kracht, Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten, 2009. For Melville House, New York.
19. Michael Onfray, Le ventre des philosophes. Critique de la raison diététique, 2009. For Bloomsbury Publications, New York.
20. Mahmud Dowlatabadi Der Colonel. 2009. For Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York.
21, Kai Schlueter, Guenter Grass im Visier die Stasi-Akte. 2010. For Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York.
22 . Arnon Gruenberg, Tirza, 2010. For Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York.
23. Hans-Juergen Schaedlich, Kokoschkins Reise, 2010. For Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York.
24. Martin Walser, Ein liebender Mann, 2012. For Melville House, New York.
25. Daniel Costelle, Prisonniers nazis en Amerique, 2013. For Melville House, New York.
26. Jonas Luescher, Fruehling der Barbaren, 2013. For Melville House, New York.
27. Sarah Stricke, Fuenf Kopeken, 2013. For Melville House, New York.
28. Christiane zu Salm, Dieser Mensch war ich: Nachrufe auf das eigene Leben, 2013. For HarperCollins, New York.
29. Nedim Gursel, L'Ange rouge, 2014. For Melville House, New York.
30. Chris Herzfeld, Wattana: Un orang-outan à Paris, 2014. For University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
31. Antoine Sylvere, Toinou, 2014. For "Books" blog, French Embassy in the United States.
32. Pascal Bruckner, I Suffer, Therefore I am, 2024. For Polity Books, Cambridge UK.
A. SCHOLARLY STUDIES : BOOKS
1. Distinguo: Reading Montaigne Differently. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
2. Montaigne. Paris and Tübingen: Oeuvres et Critiques VIII, l984. Editor.
3. Of History (Montaigne Studies 6). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Editor.
B. SCHOLARLY STUDIES: ESSAYS AND ARTICLES
l. "Imitation, Theme, and Structure in Garcilaso's First Elegy." MLN 82 (1967): 230-37. (With M.D. Sugarmon.)
2. "Fontenelle and his Public." MLN 86 (1971): 496-508.
3. "The Recognition Scene in Molière's Theater." Romanic Review 64 (1973): 16-31. (With R. D. Fraser.)
4. "The Rhetoric of Montaigne's Self-Portrait: Speaker and Subject." Studies in Philology 73 (l976): 285-301.
5. "Dialogue, Philosophy, and Rhetoric: The Example of Plato's Gorgias." Philosophy and Rhetoric 10 (1977): 165-79.
6. "Dialectical Structure and Tactics in Montaigne's "'Des Cannibales.'" Pacific Coast Philology 12 (1977): 56-63.
7. "Rhetoric and Persuasion in Marcela's Address to the Shepherds." Hispanic Review 46 (1978): 287-98. (With T.R. Hart.)
8. "Linguistic Competence and Literary Competence: Jonathan Culler's Structuralist Poetics." Proceedings of the Pacific Northwest Conference on Foreign Languages 30 (1978), Part II: 48-51.
9. "Mus in pice: Montaigne and Interpretation." MLN 94 (1979): 1057-71.
10. "The Critical We." Orbis Litterarum 35 (1980): 32-49.
11. "In Disjointed Parts / Par Articles decousus." In L.D. Kritzman, ed., Fragments: Incompletion and Discontinuity(New York: New York Literary Forum, l980): 71-83.
12. M.A. Screech, Rabelais. (Review article.) MLN 96 (1981: 921-29.
13. "Fish vs. Fish." Diacritics 12 (Winter l982): 49-56.
14. "Argument and Persuasion in French Classical Drama." Papers in Romance 5 (1983): 1-l5.
15. "Montaigne under the sign of Fama." In The Anxiety of Anticipation, ed. Sima Godfrey. (New Haven: Yale French Studies 66, 1984): 137-59.
16. Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction: Criticism and Theory after Structuralism; Vincent Leitch, Deconstructive Criticism: An Advanced Introduction; Jonathan Arac, Wallace Martin, and Wlad Godzich, eds., The Yale Critics: Deconstruction in America . Comparative Literature 36 (1984): 263-68. (Review article.)
17. "Reading Montaigne." Diacritics 15 (Summer l985): 44-53.
18. "Reading the Essais Differently." MLN 100 (1985): 1080-1085.
19. "On Diaries." Diacritics 16 (Fall, 1986): 57-65.
20. "The Decline and Fall of Humanist Rhetoric." (Review article on Victoria Kahn, Rhetoric, Prudence, and Skepticism in the Renaissance.) Comparative Literature 40 (1988): 59-65.
21. "Reading Faces (Montaigne)." In Manfred Frank and Anselm Haverkamp, eds., Individualität (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, l988; Poetik und Hermeneutik, Band XIII): 324-336.
22. "Corneille ou le triomphe du fils." In M. O. Sweetser, ed., Ouverture et dialogue: mélanges offerts à Wolfgang Leiner (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1988): 325-331.
23. "The Portrait of the Author." French Forum 13 (1988), 143-151.
24. "Montaigne and the Principle of Non-Correction." In Marcel Tétel and G. Mallary Masters, eds., Le Parcours des Essais: Montaigne 1588-1988 (Paris: Aux Amateurs du Livre, 1989): 253-262.
25. Reda Bensmaïa, The Barthes Effect: The Essay as Reflective Text. (Review article.) Textual Practice 3 (1989): 251-59.
26. "Reading Backward: Recognitions and Representations." (Review article on Terence Cave, Recognitions: A Study in Poetic.). Comparative Literature 41 (1989): 378-86.
27. "Examples, Counterexamples." (Review article on John Lyons, Exemplum: The Rhetoric of Example in Early Modern France and Italy.) Comparative Literature 44 (1992): 59-67.
28. Gérard Defaux, Marot, Rabelais, Montaigne: L'écriture comme présence. (Review article.) Textual Practice, 1991.
29. "Trapped between Romance and Novel: A Defense of La Princesse de Clèves." In An Inimitable Example: The Case for the Princesse de Cléves, ed. Patrick Henry. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1992: 127-138.
30. "Louise Labé: Memory, Reading, Writing." Romance Notes 33 (1993): 89-95.
31. "Duction, or the Archaeology of Rape." Review essay on Patricia Francis Cholakian, Rape and Writing in the Heptaméron of Marguerite de Navarre and Kathryn Gravdal, Ravishing Maidens: Writing Rape in Medieval French Literature and Law. Philosophy and Literature 17 (1993): 118-28.
32. "De l'Institution des enfans: Knowledge and Authority." In Approaches to Teaching Montaigne's Essais, ed. Patrick Henry. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1994. 146-150.
33. "Introduction." (Introduction to trans. of Astrea; see I, A, 3 above.)
34. "Of History." Montaigne Studies 6 (1994): 3-5.
35. "Reading in the French Renaissance: Textual Communities, Idleness, Boredom." In Reading the Renaissance: Culture, Poetics, and Drama, ed. Jonathan Hart. New York: Garland, 1996. 35-43.
36. "Polyphonic Narrative in Early Modern France: A Question of Literary History." Romanic Review 87 (1996): 297-306. (With Lisa Neal.)
37. "Translator's Introduction," in Hans Blumenberg, Shipwreck with Spectator. See I, a:6 above.
38. "Force and Language: Heptameron 10." In a special issue of Comparative Literature dedicated to Thomas R. Hart, ed. Julian Weiss and Caroline Jewers. Comparative Literature 60 (2008): 74-80.
N. B.: Five of my articles on Montaigne (nos. 4, 6, 9, 11, and 17 above) have been been reprinted in Montaigne: A Collection of Essays, 5 vols., ed. D. Berven (New York: Garland, 1995 ff.).
C. SCHOLARLY STUDIES: REVIEWS
1. George Watson, The Study of Literature: A New Rationale for Literary History. Comparative Literature (1972): 260-63.
2. W. G. McCollum, The Divine Average: A View of Comedy. Comparative Literature 24 (1972): 364-67.
3. Jackson Barry, Dramatic Structure: The Shaping of Experience. Comparative Literature 25 (1973): 79-81.
4. Richard A. Sayce, The Essays of Montaigne: A Critical Exploration. MLN 89 (1974): 855-60.
5. Louis Van Delft, La Bruyère, moraliste: quatre études sur les Caractères. MLN 89 (1974): 860-62.
6. Frederick Rider, The Dialectic of Selfhood in Montaigne. Comparative Literature 26 (l974): 91-94.
7. A. J. Krailsheimer, ed., The Continental Renaissance: l500-1600. Comparative Literature 26 (1974): 95. (With T. R. Hart.)
8. Margaret McGowan, Montaigne's Deceits: The Art of Persuasion in the Essais. Comparative Literature 28 (1976): 279-83.
9. Elizabeth Bruss, Autobiographical Acts: The Changing Situation of a Literary Genre. Comparative Literature 30 (1978): 181-85.
10. Harold C. Knutson, Molière: An Archetypal Approach. Comparative Literature 31 (1979): 89-92.
11. John Reichert, Making Sense of Literature. Comparative Literature 3l (1979): 174-76.
12. Richard L. Regosin, The Matter of My Book: Montaigne's Essais as the Book of the Self. Comparative Literature 32 (1980): 91-94.
13. Barbara Herrnstein Smith, On the Margins of Discourse: The Relation of Literature to Language. Comparative Literature 32 (1980): 295-97.
14. Terence Cave, The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance. Comparative Literature 33 (1981): 95-97.
15. Antoine Compagnon, La Seconde main ou le travail de la citation and Nous, Michel de Montaigne. Comparative Literature 34 (1982): 70-73.
16. Michel Beaujour, Miroirs d'encre: la rhétorique de l'autoportrait. Comparative Literature 34 (1982): 272-74.
17. Robert Cottrell, Sexuality/Textuality: The Fabric of Montaigne's Essais. MLN 98 (1983): 815-17.
18. Janet Varner Gunn, Autobiography: Towards a Poetics of Experience. Philosophy and Literature 7 (1983): 127-28.
19. Annette Lavers, Roland Barthes: Structuralism and After. Comparative Literature 36 (1984): 174-77.
20. Jean Starobinski, Montaigne en mouvement. Comparative Literature 37 (1985): 366-69.
21. Jonathan Culler, Roland Barthes. Philosophy and Literature 9 (1985): 111-13.
22. M.A. Screech, Montaigne and Melancholy. Comparative Literature 37 (1985): 185-87.
23. Steven Ungar, Roland Barthes: The Professor of Desire. Comparative Literature 38 (1986): 191-93.
24. Robert C. Holub, Reception Theory: A Critical Introduction. Philosophy and Literature 10 (1986): 139-40.
25. J. Hillis Miller, The Ethics of Reading. Comparative Literature 42 (1989): 80-83.
26. Graham Good, The Observing Self: Rediscovering the Essay. Philosophy and Literature 13 (1989): 415-6.
27. Hans Robert Jauss, Question and Answer: Forms of Dialogic Understanding. Philosophy and Literature 15 (1991): 151-52.
28. Jerome Bruner, Acts of Meaning. Philosophy and Literature 15 (1991): 331-32.
29. Sandy Petrey, Speech Acts and Literary Theory. Comparative Literature 45 (1993): 184-87.
30. Michael Riffaterre, Fictional Truth. Comparative Literature 45 (1993): 377-78.
31. Samuel Kinser, Rabelais's Carnival: Text, Context, Metatext. Comparative Literature 45 (1993): 293-95.
32. Ullrich Langer, Perfect Friendship: Studies on Literature and Moral Philosophy from Boccaccio to Corneille. French Forum 20 (1995): 181-182.
33. Kevin Dunn, Pretexts of Authority: The Rhetoric of Authorship in the Renaissance Preface. Philosophy and Literature 19 (1995): 245-246.
1. "Monsieur Marty," Southern Humanities Review 37 (2003): 64-68.
2. George's Career: Tales of the Fifties.
3. Hedges: Tales of Southwestern France.
4. Dead or Alive. (A detective novel.)
5. Another World. (A novel) In progress.
6. Alley Oop. (Essays) In progress.
Samples of my fiction are given in section II below. Please note that all material is copyrighted and may not be used commercially without permission. I will be glad to forward a free electronic copy upon request sent to stevenrendall@orange.fr I am looking for a publisher for the works described below, and would welcome inquiries. Comments from readers are also welcome; please write me at the same address: stevenrendall@orange.fr
I. About community narratives:
The rise of the novel, critics have been telling us for some time, was intimately connected with the rise of modern individualism, and usually focuses on the life of an individual character. Thus the titles of early novels were often taken from the names of their protagonists: Don Quixote, Simplicius Simplicissimus, La Princesse de Clèves, Moll Flanders, Pamela, Tom Jones, Wilhelm Meister. This is one of the ways in which the novel differs from the epic, whose hero, the Hungarian critic Georg Lukacs argued, typically represents a community. But if, as Lukacs maintained, the epic community is a coherent whole that can be represented emblematically by a heroic individual, modern society is not such a coherent whole; instead, it is often represented, both in fiction and in the social sciences, as a fragmented collection of atomic individuals.
However, the novel is not the only way of representing modern society in literary form. The story cycle--as represented, for instance, by the Canterbury Tales or the Decameron--offered an early alternative. In modern American letters, the archetype of this kind of book is Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, though it differs from some other books often described as story cycles--for instance, Eudora Welty's The Golden Apples--in that, like Chaucer's and Boccaccio's works, it focuses on a single community at a single point in time.
Another, analogous solution is represented by historical studies such as Emmanuel Leroy Ladurie's best-selling Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error (trans. Barbara Bray, Braziller, 1978), which examines the lives and interrelationships of the inhabitants of a village in the Pyrenees at a crucial point in the fourteenth century. Like many contemporary historians, Ladurie rejects les grandes histoires, those sweeping historical accounts that seek to explain vast areas of human experience by means of a few simple schemas, and argues that history should focus instead on detailed, concrete studies of specific communities and structures.
Anderson's and Leroy Ladurie's books are what might be called "community narratives," because they focus not on an individual protagonist but on a community. They do not have a single plot line moving inexorably from beginning to middle to end (though there is a certain development in each case), but instead a network of interlocking characters and themes that creates a different kind of unity in diversity.
My fiction is situated in such a framework. The first book, George's Career, is about life in a fictional Springfield, Illinois in the 1950s, while Hedges focuses on a small village in southwestern France called La Bastide. A detective novel, Dead or A;ive, is also set in La Bastide, as is Another World, a novel in progress that explores the development of rural life in twentieth-century France and the challenges it poses.
II. Samples
George's Career offers a mosaic portrait of life in a midwestern American town of the 1950s. It ranges across classes, races, religions, professions, ages, genders, and sexual preferences (as we say nowadays). The narrative represents the voices and outlooks of these different groups through the languages they speak, and thus relies primarily on dialogue for both characterization and plot development. The episodes are interlinked by recurring characters and themes--television, careers, baseball, cars, the Korean War, writing. The perspective is generally realistic, though there are certain fantastic elements that are intended to suggest the craziness that lay just beneath the bland surface of 1950s America, and occasionally raised its head in the form of McCarthyism, the specter of nuclear war, and an obsession with sex.
Synopsis of the chapters in George's Career :
1. An accountant discovers that he can make his swivel chair sing.
2. A girl learns just how important exposure is in television.
3. A man bankrupts himself by building a bomb shelter in his back yard.
4. A boy discovers a strange parallel between the Yanks in the pennant race and the Yanks in Korea.
5. A Korean War vet takes a job as a used car salesman.
6. A professor is consumed by his ambition to rise to the top.
7. A rake rediscovers his Jewish roots.
8. Three lawyers indulge in unwitting McCarthyism.
9. A boy and his father invent a time machine.
10. A couple ventures into the heart of darkness in the wild west.
11. A "loose" girl recovers her self-respect.
12. An old woman refuses to give up her farm.
13. A psychiatrist is seduced by one of his patients and acquires a new identity.
14. A housewife suspects that her friend is a lesbian.
15. A man is overcome by a suppressed memory.
16. Two co-eds idolize a black teacher and find racism next door.
17. A Catholic mother believes that her pregnant daughter is a virgin.
18. A boy reading Kerouac meets a bum who claims to be a writer.
19. How an old woman became a recluse.
20. A writer exhausts his dreams.
Hedges is set in Southwestern France, where I have been living for the past twenty years. The main theme of the stories is the modes of solidarity and exclusion in a fictional French village called La Bastide. In the second story, for instance, the long-standing enmity between two village families is temporarily erased when a young woman cyclist in black spandex passes through La Bastide, disrupting the social structure of the village in alarming ways. Other stories deal with the villagers' reaction to outsiders--foreigners, gypsies, loners, deviants of all kinds--and with the ways they define insiders.
Thus Hedges is concerned not only with what makes a village a community but also with the ways in which that community is both challenged and invigorated by having to incorporate or reject outsiders. Such a community is not a seamless whole, and its sense of identity is constantly forced to adapt to difference--and that is what constitutes its modernity, and its relevance to our world.
While Hedges is a work of fiction, it is based on things I have seen and heard in the village where I live, and to that extent it offers a relatively authentic image of life in a contemporary French rural community.
Hedges will interest anyone who would like to know more about rural France--or just read a good story. One of the chapters has appeared in the Southern Humanities Review under the title "Monsieur Marty." Hedges consists of twenty-two episodes:
1. Hedges: Cutting down a hedge raises an even more insurmountable barrier.
2. Spring: A woman cyclist in black spandex upsets an ancient village enmity
3. The Schoolmaster's Story: A flood proves to be the moral equivalent of war
4. Land: A farmer loses, then regains family land
5. Masonry: An old mason decides to build his own tomb
6. Madame Pacelli: A wife confronts her husband's mistress
7. Steeple: The village church's steeple collapses--whose fault is it?
8. Monsieur Marty: An atheistic communist who lives in the presbytery shoots an intruder
9. Legacy: Marcel Fabre's father hid his money--but where?
10. Albert: The village idiot is caught mounting a dog
11. Crossing the Tarn: Friendship and romance during the Occupation
12. Gypsies: A family of gypsies has a car accident, but are they thieves?
13. The Chatelaine: A love affair between an aristocrat and a farmer's son during WW II
14. Skull: When a skull is stolen from the cemetery, the theft has to be concealed
15. The Eye of the Village: A gay man in the village closet
16. The Frog War: French-British détente is derailed by anurans
17. The Great Fear: A peasant saves the baron during the Great Fear of 1789
18. Giovios: An internet search turns up a con man
19. Lluisa: A Spanish refugee family's struggle for survival
20. On the Road: A man waits for his wife to come home
21. A Way of Life: Small farmers face a grim future
22. The Bridge: A new bridge will transform the village but leave old enmities intact
A detective novel featuring characters who appear in Hedges.
“Goddammit, if he does that one more time, I’m going to throw my stapler at him,” Ray said.
“Try your file cabinet,” growled Carl. “Here he comes again.”
“Don’t you dare!” Lucille was pushing forty but still took people literally.
They worked in the shipping department at Central States Office Supply, on Springfield’s East Side. George was the bookkeeper. Recently, he'd started rolling up and down the hall in his swivel chair, and he was driving everyone bananas.
Ray had already asked him, “Can’t you just walk down to Charlie’s office, like everyone else?”
“Sure,” George answered. “But it’s faster and easier this way. And it’s sorta fun.”
“For you,” Ray said.
This week George was doing it more often, and he was going faster. The guys in the shipping department began to suspect he was doing it just for the hell of it. Or maybe to bug them. Something had to be done.
“Come on, Lucille,” Ray said, “it’s important that we all go.” They marched down the hall to George’s office. “George,” Ray said, “we want you to stop rolling around in your chair. It’s bothering us, and if you keep it up we’ll have to complain to Charlie.”
George seemed surprised, but agreed to stop.
“Well, it looks like we fixed that,” Carl said as they walked back to the shipping department. “I hope he really stops.”
A month or two later Ray and Carl were up in arms again. “It’s that damn chair. He’s squeaking it,” Ray complained.
“All the time,” Carl said. “How can it possibly squeak that much? Is he jerking off in there or what?”
“Carl!” Lucille said.
“Sorry, Lucille, but he’s driving me crazy.”
They all tramped down to George’s office again.
Ray said, “George, please stop squeaking your chair. We can hear it all the way down in the shipping office. It’s keeping us from concentrating on our work.”
“I’ll try,” George replied. “But it’s old and made of wood, and it just squeaks.”
“Why don’t you ask Charlie to get you a new metal one with a nice soft cushion and a hydraulic gizmo for adjusting the seat?” Carl asked. “That thing must be a million years old.”
“I’m kinda fond of it,” George said.
The squeaking got worse and worse. Again, the guys in the shipping department began to suspect that George was doing it on purpose.
One day Ray showed up for work carrying a small red and white can. “3-in-One,” he said. “For you know who.”
Carl’s desk was nearest the door, and Ray asked him to keep an eye out to see when George went to Charlie’s office. Twenty minutes later, Carl said, “There he goes, Ray.”
Ray picked up the can of 3-in-One and went out. When he came back he said, “That’ll fix the fucker.”
“Ray!” Lucille was shocked.
The next time Lucille went to George’s office, he was sitting in a chair upholstered in brown leatherette. “You got a new chair, George,” she said.
“Yup. I decided you guys were right, and I asked Charlie if he could get me a new one. He had this in his old office and he gave it to me. He said I could take the other one home.”
Lucille told Ray and Carl. “Thank God,” Ray said. “Finally.”
Two weeks later, Carl came into the shipping department looking uncharacteristically flustered. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “You’ll never believe it.”
“What?” Lucille said.
“George and that goddamn chair. I saw him at the Drive N' Save.”
“So?” Ray said. “What’s that got to do with his chair?”
“He was rolling up and down the aisles in it. I swear to God,” Carl said. “Just the way he used to roll up and down the hall.”
“Oh, dear,” Lucille said. “I hope he’s all right.”
“And it was squeaking to beat the band,” Carl said.
“Of course,” Ray said. “I should give him that can of 3-in-One. I wonder how he got the chair to the Drive N' Save.”
Ray got an answer to his question the next Saturday. As he was walking to the park to shoot a few baskets with his son, he heard a strange rumbling and squeaking behind him. And there, careering down the sidewalk at an alarming speed, came George. In his chair. Ray stared, but didn’t say anything as George flashed by. His son said, “Cool!”
“Come on,” Ray said. “Let’s shoot those baskets.”
When he got to the shipping department on Monday morning he said, “This is getting serious. I saw George out on the street in his chair.”
“What do you mean, “ Carl asked, “out on the street?”
“Well, not exactly on the street,” Ray said. “On the sidewalk. And he was going fast.”
“Where was he going?” Lucille asked.
“How would I know?” Ray said. “Maybe he was going to do his shopping.”
“Shouldn’t we do something?” Lucille asked.
“What?” Ray said. “Are we going to tell him to stay off the street?”
“I think he’s gone nuts,” Carl said. “I’d go nuts too if I had to sit in that office and punch an adding machine all day.”
“And the damn chair was squeaking worse than ever,” Ray said. “It sounded like a kid practicing the violin.”
Lucille decided to go and see George. Not at the office, at home. She felt a little odd about going to see him at home, all by herself, but she felt somehow he wouldn’t misunderstand. She just wanted to talk to him, to be sure he was all right. She looked up his address in the phone book.
When she got to his apartment building, she hesitated. She wasn’t sure she should be doing this. Then she pushed the button marked “G. Beltran.” George’s voice came over the intercom: “Who is it?”
His voice sounded strange, but Lucille told herself it was just the intercom. “It’s me, Lucille. From work. I just wanted to talk to you for a minute.”
“OK,” George said. He buzzed the door. Lucille opened it, stepped inside, and went up the stairs. As she walked through the hall to George’s apartment, she found herself wondering whether he rolled up and down it in his chair.
George was waiting for her at the door to his apartment. “Hi,” he said. “I didn’t expect to see you here. What’s up?”
“Oh, nothing special.” She blushed. “I was just passing by and wanted to see how you were.”
George looked pleased. “Well, it’s nice of you to come up. Would you like a drink?”
Lucille blushed again. “Just a little water, thanks.”
“I’ve got plenty of that,” George said. “Would you like an ice cube in your water?”
“Please."
George brought her a glass of water. While he was pouring himself a beer, Lucille glanced around the apartment, looking for the chair. It was next to the kitchen table.
“I see you brought your old desk chair home,” she said.
“Yeah,” George said. “I’m kinda attached to it. And I needed another chair here.” He sipped his beer.
“Have you lived here long?” Lucille asked.
“About two years,” George said. “I moved here after I started working at Central States. I used to live over on the West Side, near the big A & W on Elmhurst. My place there was convenient, but I like it better here. I have a nice view of the river from my window. Would you like to see it?”
They went and stood at the window. Below, a man and a woman were walking down the street, hand in hand. A few blocks away, the Drive N' Save sign glowed against an evening sky filled with dark blue clouds. Beyond, the river ran black under the elm trees. “Very nice,” Lucille said.
“Would you like some more water?” George asked. “Or maybe a beer? I’ve got some Miller’s.”
“No, thanks. I have to be going now,” Lucille said.
As Lucille was walking out to the parking lot after work the following Thursday, George came up to her. “Hi, Lucille,” he said.
“Hi,” Lucille said.
“I was wondering if you’d like to go to dinner with me tonight. I know this place near my apartment, and it’s pretty good.”
Lucille fidgeted with her car keys. “Well, I don’t know, I’ve got a lot of things to do at home tonight,” she said. “OK.”
They took George’s new Nash, leaving Lucille’s old Ford in the lot. “I’ll bring you back later so you can pick up your car,” George said.
After dinner, George invited Lucille up to his apartment for coffee. They sat at the kitchen table. George offered Lucille the swivel chair, but she laughed and said that it was his chair. She sat down on the other one, which was made of tubular, chromed metal and plastic. She noticed that George squeaked his chair in a rhythmical way as they talked. It made her somewhat uneasy, but at the same time it was rather pleasant and homey.
George’s apartment was near the Laundromat where Lucille did her laundry every Saturday. She got into the habit of stopping by to say hello to him. One day the entry door was propped open because the cleaning lady was doing the floors, and Lucille walked in without ringing George’s bell. As she walked up the stairs to his apartment, she could hear his chair squeaking, loudly and rhythmically. Remembering what Carl had said, she blushed. She was standing in front of his door trying to decide whether to knock when the squeaking suddenly stopped and George appeared at the door. “Lucille!" he said. "I was hoping you’d come by.”
They decided to split a beer, and as they sat at the kitchen table, Lucille kept looking at George’s chair. Finally she said, “I guess your old chair still squeaks. I heard it as I came up the stairs.”
It was George’s turn to blush. “Yeah,” he said. “Was it very loud?”
“Pretty loud,” Lucille said. “You should put some oil on it. Though in a way I kind of like it. It almost sounded like music.”
George stared at her. “Do you mean that?” he asked.
“Mean what?” Lucille said, vaguely alarmed.
“That it sounded like music.”
“Oh, yeah, well, sort of,” Lucille said.
George smiled. “Would you like to split another beer?”
One day a few months later, when Lucille came to visit George she heard the chair squeaking as she walked up the stairs, even though she’d rung the bell in the entryway. It did sound like music, and she even seemed to recognize a melody in it, something she’d heard on the radio. “I must be going crazy, too,” she thought. “I do like him, though.”
The door to George’s apartment was open, and he was sitting in his chair. “Come on in,” he said. “How about a beer?”
“George,” Lucille said, “how does your chair make that sound?”
“What sound?” George asked, looking at her with narrowed eyes.
“Well, that funny sound it makes. It almost sounded like a song I’ve heard,” Lucille said. She blushed.
“Really?” George said. “That’s great. Would you like to hear some more?” Without waiting for her to answer, he began to rock his chair, rotating it slightly from side to side as he did so, but after a few squeaks he stopped. “Wait, let me shut the door first,” he said. He shut the door and then came back and sat down in the chair again.
"George," Lucille said, "I think maybe I should be going."
“Wait,” he said, “listen to this and tell me what you think.”
As she listened, Lucille could hardly believe her ears. It was music. Like a crazy fiddle it soared and dipped, punctuated by staccato clicks and deep thumps. When he had finished, George sat quietly in his chair, looking intently at her. “Well?” he said.
“George, that’s amazing,” Lucille said. “How did you learn to do that?”
“I don’t know,” George said. “I guess I just started trying to make it sing.”
“Well. Fancy that.”
“Lucille, I want to ask you something.”
“OK,” Lucille said, a little apprehensively.
“There’s this talent show down at the local TV station, you know the one, it’s on Saturday night?”
“Yeah,” Lucille replied. “I’ve watched it a couple of times.”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about taking my chair down there.”
“On the street, you mean?” Lucille said, alarmed again.
“Not necessarily. I want to take it to the talent show.”
Lucille was afraid she knew what George meant. “George,” she said somewhat desperately, “they have seats for the audience there. You don’t have to take your own.”
“No, I mean I want to play my chair on the talent show. Do you think they’d let me?”
Lucille went pale. “George, that’s crazy. They’ll never let you do that.”
“Why not?” George asked. “You said it sounded like music. You even said you recognized the melody. It was “Bali Hai,” right? You know, from South Pacific?”
“Well, that’s what it sounded like to me, but...”
“Anyway, I’m going to try,” George said. “Will you come with me?”
Lucille looked sick. “I'm not sure, George,” she said. “OK.”
Lucille decided to have a permanent before she went to the television studio with George. “I don’t know, Flo,” she told the operator. “He’s a nice guy but he’s a little strange.”
“How do you mean, ‘strange?’” Flo asked as she wound another strand of Lucille's hair around a curler. “All men are strange, so far as I can see.”
“Well, he likes music,” Lucille said lamely.
“So does my brother, Larry. What’s strange about that?”
“Nothing, I guess. Do you think I should put a little color in my hair?”
When they got to the studio, they asked the man at the door where you went if you wanted to be a contestant. He pointed down a hall. “Over there, second door on the right. You’ll have to wait your turn.” There were already two people in line; one was a young man holding a guitar, the other a middle-aged woman with large rings on her fingers. They looked at George and Lucille, trying to size up the competition.
“What do you do?” the woman asked Lucille.
“Oh, it’s not me, it’s him,” Lucille replied, blushing. “He’s a musician.”
“What kind of musician?” the woman asked.
“Just a musician,” Lucille said.
“I’m a singer,” the woman said. “Does he sing or play an instrument?”
“I play a swivel chair,” said George.
The young man laughed. “Pretty funny,” he said.
The man who selected the contestants was tired of his job. He glared at George and Lucille and said, “Well? What’s your racket?”
“I make music with a swivel chair, and I’d like to be on your show,” George said.
“You do what?” the man said.
“I make music with a swivel chair, and I’d like to be on your show,” George repeated.
“I heard you the first time,” the man said. “Now wise up or get the hell out of here. I don't have time for fooling around. Or are you supposed to be some kind of comedian?”
“Maybe I could show you,” George said. “I could bring my chair in and play it for you, if you’d like.”
“Get outta here,” the man said.
“Wait,” Lucille said. “He really can do it.. I’ve heard him. It’s amazing.”
George beamed at her.
The man sighed. "Listen,” he said, looking at Lucille, “you’re kinda cute. If you’ll have dinner with me tonight, I’ll let this guy do whatever he does on the show. Is it a deal?
Lucille stared at him, then looked at George. George looked at his shoes. “OK,” Lucille said.
When George saw Lucille at work the next day, he asked her how the dinner had gone. “OK,” she said.
“He didn’t try anything afterward, did he?” George asked.
“No. It wasn’t too bad.”
“Thanks, Lucille. I really appreciate it. Can we have dinner Saturday night? Before the show?”
“OK,” Lucille said.
They arrived at the studio at about 7:30. George told the man at the front desk that he was a contestant for that night’s show and was sent to a room where six other people were already sitting on folding chairs. Neither the guitarist nor the woman with rings was there. George rolled his chair into the room and said, “Lucille, are you sure you don’t want to sit in it? It’s OK.” But Lucille said she’d rather sit on a folding chair. George sat down on his chair, being careful not to let it squeak. Lucille’s hands were sweating, and she wished she’d had a drink before dinner after all.
Soon a man came in and gave each contestant a card with a number on it. George got number seven, and that gave him confidence. “We’ll be starting in ten minutes,” the man said. “When the light over the door flashes, that’s your cue to go on stage. Number one goes first, number two goes second, and so on. Understand?”
George said, “Lucille, I guess you’d better go get a seat if you want to see me play. And I need a little time to get myself ready. I’ll see you right after the show, OK?”
“OK,” Lucille said.
When George rolled out his chair, Lucille felt as if she were on stage. She scrunched down in her seat, but kept her eyes fixed on George. The MC looked at his cue card and said, “And next, we’ll have the pleasure of listening to Mr. George Beltran, who plays...the swivel chair?”
“Right,” George said, and sat down.
The audience laughed. Lucille sank further into her seat.
Then George began to rock and spin his chair, and a strange melody filled the hall. The audience chuckled and coughed, then fell silent. George rocked faster and faster, swiveling back and forth, and the music grew louder and more insistent; then he began to play variations on the melody. Suddenly, he slowed down, moving almost dreamily, while the music softened into a sweet adagio. Then he began to whirl on his chair; the tempo accelerated again, becoming more and more frenetic, and the chair’s soprano reached into a higher register. At the climactic moment, George shot across the stage in his chair, stopped just short of the footlights, and launched into his finale. His eyes closed, he played the coda with deep feeling, bringing the audience almost to tears.
Lucille had never heard anything like it. Neither had the audience. They clapped wildly, and the MC shook George’s hand. George smiled, bowed modestly, and left the stage, pushing his chair in front of him. A few minutes later, a platinum blonde led him back onto the stage. The MC shook George’s hand again, and announced that he had won that evening’s competition. He gave George a pink envelope with a check in it. The blonde gave him a kiss. The audience clapped. George smiled and bowed again. Lucille was very proud of him.
And that was how George’s career began.
Marcel Fabre stood under the spreading branches of a plane tree in front of his house, watching his neighbor, Robert Vidal, a heavy-set man who was also getting on in years, drive his tractor up and down the field. "He's plowing our land," Marcel said to himself. "The salaud."
A century earlier, to gain more land for cultivation, Vidal's great-grandfather had cut down the broad hedgerow that separated his land from that of Marcel's great-grandfather. The Fabres claimed that at least half of that land, perhaps five meters wide, was theirs, and the two families had been on bad terms ever since. It had never occurred to either side to have the land surveyed; in any event, a survey would have settled nothing. In La Bastide, people knew where the boundaries were, or thought they did, and nothing some surveyor said could change that.
The land around La Bastide had once been crisscrossed by hedgerows like the one the Vidals had cut down. Most of these hedgerows had not been planted, but left to grow into natural tangles of thorny acacias, brambles, morning glory and nettles. Mice, rabbits, weasels, hedgehogs, and foxes lived under them, and multitudes of wrens, sparrows, larks, and thrushes sang on their branches, while hawks wheeled overhead, keeping an eye on them all. When he was a boy, Marcel had spent many hours trapping the rabbits and building nets to catch the larks and thrushes, delicacies his mother carefully cleaned and roasted. Sometimes he rowed across the river and climbed the ochre-colored cliffs on the other side; from the top, he could see the oddly-shaped fields separated by hedgerows like heavy seams of dark yarn on a patchwork quilt.
As he looked out now across Vidal's land, Marcel saw the red tile roofs of the houses in the village, and beyond them, the church with its missing spire. Both he and Vidal had been baptized in that church. And, as he knew, they would soon both be buried in the churchyard cemetery. But when they attended mass on Sunday mornings Marcel and his family avoided looking at Vidal and his family. "I'll look at him when I go to his funeral," Marcel used to say, grimly.
Of course, everyone in the village was aware of the feud, and no one would ever have considered inviting a Fabre and a Vidal to the same gathering. In fact, the Fabres made it clear that anyone who was a friend of the Vidals was no friend of theirs, and the Vidals felt the same way. And so virtually the whole village was divided into two mutually exclusive camps. These divisions corresponded in part to relationships between families: the Fabres were related to the Cazalens, the Lafargues, the Viguiés, the Delcasses, and the Labarthes; the Vidals were related to the Delthils, the Bousquets, the Larroques, the Durands, and the Guilhems. But within these families there were often schisms that complicated the picture considerably; sometimes one branch of a family was in Fabre's camp, and another in Vidal's. Moreover, if you went back four or five generations, all the old families in La Bastide were connected in one way or another. Thus François-Marie Fabre and Alexandre Vidal, the two patriarchs who initiated the quarrel, were great-uncles of the current mayor of La Bastide, Gaston Delprat, who steered a careful course between the two camps.
Marcel watched Vidal plowing the strip of land where the hedgerow had once stood, as he did every spring. He spat on the ground in disgust and turned aside, just in time to see a strange contraption come noiselessly down the road alongside his house. It was a bright blue recumbent bicycle--Marcel had never seen one before--with a bucket seat to the back of which was attached a rectangular, fringed parasol. On the seat was a young woman dressed in black spandex, with flowing blonde hair and large sunglasses. Marcel stared as she glided on toward the village. Then he turned and walked swiftly into the house. "Did you see that?" he asked his wife Odette, who was sitting at the kitchen table, slicing up leeks for the midday soupe.
"See what?" Odette asked.
"That woman on the strange bicycle."
"No. Who was she?"
"I don't know. I never saw her before."
"Who was she with?"
Odette got up and looked out the window. Although motorists who had lost their way were occasionally seen in La Bastide, and middle-aged men on racing bicycles sometimes rode through the village on Sunday mornings, a lone, unknown woman on a bicycle was an unusual event. "I don't see anyone," Odette said.
"She was going toward the village," Marcel said. "She was lying down on her bicycle."
"Lying down?"
"Yes, with her legs going straight out in front of her. It was some kind of foreign bicycle. She had long blonde hair and..." Marcel decided not to tell his wife what the young woman was wearing. "And huge sunglasses. And there was a big parasol on the bicycle."
Odette gave him an exasperated look. "Why are you telling me such tales?" she asked, shaking her head and turning back to her leeks.
"No, it's true, I saw her," Marcel insisted. His wife sighed and went on with her work. For some time, she'd been noticing that her husband was becoming more forgetful, and she worried about him, especially since his mother had become senile at about his age. She remembered how the old lady had waited for a visit from beaux who had died years before, confused Marcel with her brother, and ultimately recognized neither him nor his father.
Marcel walked out of the house and peered down the road. The woman on the bicycle had vanished. Vidal had stopped his tractor and was talking to his son Jean-Luc, who stood alongside him. Vidal was shouting and gesticulating wildly. Marcel briefly considered asking Vidal if he had seen the woman on the bicycle but decided against it. Instead, he climbed into his old 4L and drove into the village, studiously avoiding Vidal's eyes as he passed. He parked on the village square, in front of the cafe. When he came in, five or six other people were already there. Marcel stood at the bar, listening to what the other patrons were saying. No one was talking about a woman on a bicycle. He turned to Maurice, the cafe's owner, who was standing behind the bar, wiping glasses with a dirty towel. "Have you seen any cyclists go by this morning?" he asked.
"No," Maurice replied. "They come by on Sundays, mainly. Why do you ask?"
"I just wondered," Marcel said. "I'll have a pastis."
Maurice had never known Marcel to drink anything alcoholic in the morning, and he watched him mistrustfully as he set a glass on the bar and put a shot of Ricard in it. He pushed the glass toward Marcel and handed him a small bottle of water. "Nice day," he said. "Have you done your plowing yet?"
"The soil's still a little too wet," Marcel said. "I thought I'd plow tomorrow, if it doesn't rain."
"According to the weather report, it's not supposed to rain until the weekend," Maurice said. "Of course, the report is always wrong." Marcel nodded. Maurice lost interest in him and picked up his towel again.
Marcel began to wonder if he'd been seeing things. The woman on the bicycle must have passed in front of the cafe on her way through the village; how could all these people have failed to see her? He told Maurice he'd be back in a minute, and leaving his pastis half finished, he walked out into the street. There was no one in sight except Madame Cazalens, who was leaning out her window. Marcel walked over and greeted her. They exchanged views on the weather, and then Marcel asked her if she'd seen anyone pass by within the last hour.
"Well," Madame Cazalens said, "the bakery man was here a little while ago, and Madame Chauderon said hello on her way to the butcher's to get some more lard. I tell her she shouldn't eat so much lard; it's not good for her liver, but she won't listen to me. And I saw Monsieur Miramont going down to the cafe. He's getting so lame he can hardly walk, poor thing. But he has to get out of the house because of that wife of his. What a harridan! I don't blame him for spending all day at the cafe."
"Did you see anyone on a bicycle?" Marcel asked.
"Well, the postman, of course. He brought me the new Redoute catalogue. Did you get yours yet?"
"Not yet," Marcel replied. "No one else on a bicycle, then?"
"No," said Madame Cazalens. "Why do you ask?"
"I just saw someone I didn't know go by on a bicycle and wondered who it was," Marcel said.
"You can't be too careful," Madame Cazalens said. "I heard that Monsieur Albret saw a stranger on a bicycle pass his house the day before someone broke in and stole his silver candlesticks."
Marcel nodded, said goodbye to Madame Cazalens, and returned to the cafe. As he stood brooding over his pastis, the door flew open and Vidal and his son came in. When Vidal saw Marcel at the bar, he looked startled, but quickly turned away and sat down at a table at the other side of the room. "Maurice," he said in a loud voice, "tell this young twit that you saw a blonde woman riding a funny bicycle down the street this morning."
Maurice said, "Tell him I saw what?"
"A woman wearing nothing but tight black underwear and big sunglasses. She was lying down on her bicycle. What a sight!" He laughed. The other people in the cafe watched him apprehensively.
Maurice glared at Vidal. "Is everyone in the moon this morning? What kind of story are you telling me?"
"It's not possible that you didn't see her! Go on, tell Jean-Luc, he doesn't believe me."
Maurice shrugged his shoulders. "I didn't see anyone on a bicycle this morning except the postman, and I've no idea what color his underwear is. Do you want to order something?"
Vidal ignored Maurice and turned to the people sitting at the other tables. "You must have seen her--come on!" He approached an elderly man who looked at him with alarm. "You, Monsieur Lafargue, you're right there by the window, you saw her!" Lafargue shook his head. Everyone was staring at Vidal as if he'd suddenly gone mad. Vidal glanced at his son, whose eyes were full of pity. Vidal's face grew red, and he stood for a moment with his head bowed, as if studying his green rubber boots. Then he spun around and looked hard at Marcel.
Marcel felt everyone's eyes on him. He hesitated. Then he said, "I saw her."
There was a long, stunned silence in the cafe. Maurice stood transfixed, his mouth hanging open and his towel dangling from his hand. Finally Vidal said to his son, "You see, I told you." He turned to Marcel again. "She was wearing tight black underwear and sun glasses, wasn't she?"
"Yes," Marcel said. "And she was lying down on the bicycle."
"Are you telling me you actually saw this?" Maurice asked Marcel.
"Yes, I did. She had long blonde hair, and there was a kind of canopy over her head to keep off the sun."
Lafargue got to his feet and hobbled out of the cafe. Two or three others appeared inclined to follow his example, but they remained in their seats, unable to leave.
"She went right past your place, didn't she, Marcel?" Vidal said.
"Yes, she was riding into the village," Marcel replied. "But she was moving very quietly. Maybe no one heard or saw her as she passed through."
"That's right," Vidal said, turning to Maurice with a broad smile. "You must have missed her, poor devil. What a sight!"
That afternoon, Madame Cazalens saw Lafargue walking down the street. She leaned out her window and said, "Bonjour, Monsieur." Lafargue returned her greeting, and for a while they talked about the unseasonably warm, sunny weather. Then Madame Cazalens said, "I heard something unusual happened at the cafe this morning."
"Yes, indeed, Lafargue said. "I've never seen the like."
"Do tell."
"Eh bé, Marcel Fabre came in and asked Maurice whether he'd seen anyone ride past on a bicycle."
"Why, he asked me the same question!" cried Madame Cazalens. She and Lafargue both belonged to the Fabre camp.
"Then Monsieur Vidal came in and asked everyone if they'd seen a blonde woman riding a bicycle in her underwear."
"What's that you say? In her underwear!"
"In her underwear. It was black and she was lying down on her bicycle." Madame Cazalens was speechless. "Then Marcel said he'd seen her too, pardi!"
"Marcel? He said that?"
"He did. I couldn't believe it. It was so strange that I didn't know what might happen next, so I got up and left."
"I don't blame you. But I wonder what happened afterward?"
"Pierre--he was there, too--came by my house on his way home for lunch, and he told me that the two of them--Marcel and Vidal, think of that!--went and sat at a table in the back of the cafe and talked for almost an hour. Then they went out and got into Marcel's car and drove off together!"
"Marcel took Vidal away in his car? It's unbelievable!"
"It was as if they'd both gone mad!"
"These sudden changes in the weather can make people crazy. I told Madame Chauderon just this morning that this warm wind out of the south would give me a headache. They must have been out in the fields without their hats on."
"I've never seen either Marcel or Monsieur Vidal without his hat on, except in church," Lafargue said, doubtfully.
"Well, whatever it is, it's very disturbing." Madame Cazalens said goodbye to Monsieur Lafargue and hurried off to tell her neighbors the troubling news.
When Marcel got home, his wife said, "Where have you been? The soup has been ready for an hour."
"I've been at the cafe, talking with Vidal."
Odette dropped the spoon into the soup she was stirring. "What's that you say?" she asked. "With Vidal?"
"Yes, with Vidal. He saw her too."
"Saw who?" Odette was getting seriously concerned.
"The woman on the bicycle." Odette went pale and sank onto a chair. Her lips moved but no sound came out of her mouth. "And he said she was wearing black underwear and sunglasses," Marcel said, triumphantly. Odette began to weep, silently. "And she had long blonde hair!" Marcel shouted. "He saw her!"
The next morning, Marcel came storming into the kitchen, where his wife was mopping the floor. "Now he has gone too far!" he cried. "Vidal is planting trees on our land!"
Odette sighed with relief. "It's an outrage," she said, smiling.
MONDAY
On March 17, 2008 Lieutenant Boudou, the commander of the Castel Company of the Gendarmerie Nationale, was playing fantasy soccer on his computer when Barrère knocked at the door of his office. Boudou quickly minimized his game and looked up. "Yes?" he barked.
"A farmer in La Bastide just called to say that he'd found some human bones on his land. He wanted to know what he should do. I took his name and number, told him not to touch anything, and said we'd get back to him."
Boudou sighed. "Was he sure they were human bones? I don't want to send someone out there to look at an old boar carcass."
"He said there was a human skull. That's pretty hard to confuse with a boar's."
"Depends on the human. Anyway, we're too busy for this kind of crap. Call the investigative brigade and tell them to deal with it; they've got nothing better to do." He waved Barrère away and went back to his game.
When Barrère told Georges Morisot, the head of the Castel investigative brigade, what Boudou wanted him to do, Morisot said: "Okay, fine. I'll have Bages handle this." Morisot then called Maria Bages and asked her to undertake the task. "It won't take long," he assured her. "Just interview him and submit a report."
Maria suspected that Morisot had assigned her to the La Bastide case because he thought it would be routine police work. Although she had proven herself a competent investigator, he still tended to give her the less interesting cases—or at least the ones that seemed less likely to enhance the investigator's reputation. But she was glad for the chance to get out of the office, especially on a quiet Monday morning when nothing much was happening. Although her seniority now allowed her to escape the most tedious tasks—writing up reports of missing dogs, stolen cell phones, and traffic accidents—there was always plenty of work for her to do around the office, and she preferred to be in the field.
Maria Bages had been a gendarme for sixteen years, but had joined the investigative brigade in Castel only in 1997. She was one of the relatively few female gendarmes who specialized in criminal investigations, and was often asked how she came to do this kind of work. She always said that she just needed a steady job, but of course that wasn't the whole story. Twenty years earlier, she 'd been at loose ends, living with her boyfriend Dominic and working as a waitress in Montauban. She'd passed her secondary school exam and could have gone on to take a technical degree or even study at the university in Toulouse. But she didn't know what she wanted to do with her life, and decided to take a year off while she tried to make up her mind. But when Dominic left her the following year she felt even more disoriented and discouraged, and continued to drift.
One of Maria's regular customers at the café where she worked was a gendarme, a member of the national police force that has brigades all over France and is concerned with public security and crime. His name was Jean-Noël; he was about thirty and was involved in criminal investigation. He was attracted to Maria, who was then twenty-one and had the olive skin, black hair, and the large brown eyes of her Catalan forebears. He bantered easily with her, struck up conversations, and eventually asked her out.
Soon they were seeing each other regularly. Often they went to a movie and afterward finished the evening in a café on the Place Nationale. As they sat there looking up at the brick façades of the great houses surrounding the square, Jean-Noël told her about his adventures as a gendarme. He made her wish that she, too, could escape the boredom of her current life and do something as interesting and important as he did. Though her family had little good to say about policemen, and especially gendarmes—they had fled Barcelona when Franco took over, and hated his Guardia Civil above all things—she found much to admire in Jean-Noël's work. Someone, after all, had to catch murderers and rapists and people who robbed the weak and elderly, and it was no good pretending that they didn't matter or were victims of a repressive society who deserved sympathy more than incarceration. Besides, when Jean-Noêl talked about his investigations, she saw not only the moral side of his activity, but also the intellectual. He was always trying to find out the truth, and that took imagination, skill, and persistence. Even if some of his colleagues were lazy, unfair, violent, or even on the take, she felt sure that Jean-Noël was a dedicated public servant and someone who could be relied upon.
One night she asked him, "Are there any women gendarmes?"
Jean-Noêl looked at her quizzically. "Yes, a few; why do you ask?"
"I was just thinking that maybe I'd like to be a gendarme too."
Jean-Noël laughed. "You want to be a gendarme?"
"I don't know; maybe. I feel I'm drifting and need some kind of goal. How would I become a gendarme?"
"Well, if you're really serious, you could just enlist. They're always looking for new recruits."
"I'd like to do the kind of thing you do."
"To be an OPJ I had to complete a special training program."
"Why couldn't I do that too?"
"You've got your secondary school diploma, right?"
"Yes."
"Then after two years' service you could take the training program, the way I did. The program lasts fourteen months, and then you have to pass an exam. It's not easy."
"Nothing is easy for a woman."
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