The City in Textual Form: Manhattan Transfer's New York

Cultural Geographies (formerly Ecumene)

Volumn 2, Issue 1, 1995, Pages 89-114

  Brosseau, Marc ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA   (Canada)

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EID: 77949335738     PISSN: 14744740     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/147447409500200105     Document Type: Article

References (128)

1. This research was undertaken at the geography department of the Université de Paris-Sorbonne. This essay is, in parts, a significantly reworked version of a chapter by Marc Brosseau, Des Romans-Géographes. Le Roman et la Connaissance Géographique des Lieux (unpublished PhD thesis, Université de Paris-Sorbonne, Paris, 1992).
2. For general assessments of geographical writing dealing with literature, see D.G. Pocock, ‘Geography and literature’, Progress in Human Geography 12, 1 (1988), pp. 87-102;
3. C. L. Salter and W. L. Lloyd, Landscape in literature (Resource paper for college geography, 76-3) (Washington, Association of American Geographrrs, 1977);
4. A. G. Noble and R. Dhussa, ‘Image and substance: a review of literary geography’, Journal of Cultural Geography 10, 2 (1990), pp. 49-65.
5. For example, R. Lafaille, Depart: géographie et poésie’. Le géographe canadien 33, 2 (1989 pp. 118-30;
6. B. Robinson, ‘The geography of a crossroads: modernism, surrealism, and geography’, in W. E. Mallory and P. Simpson-Housley, eds., Geography and literature. A meeting of disciplines (New York, Syracuse University Press, 1987), pp. 185-98;
7. J. Silk, ‘Beyond geography and literature’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2 (1984), pp. 151-78.
8. I have presented an interpretation of the contributions in the geography and literature subfield in M. Brosseau, ‘Geography‘s literature‘. Progress in Human Geography 18, 3 (1994), pp.333-53.
9. Robinson, ‘Geography of a crossroads’, p. 192.
10. Lafaille, ‘Géograpnie et poésie’.
11. This type of criticism does not only emerge from a radical perspective. From a resolutely humanistic standpoint, Lévy deplores this search for common ideas in literature. B. Lévy, Géographie humaiiste et littérature: l’espace existentiel dans l’oeuvre de Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) (Geneva, Le concept moderne/Editions, 1989).
12. The agency of culture is thoroughly discussed from different standpoints, see J. S. Duncan, ‘The superorganic in American cultural geography’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 70, 2 (1980), pp. 181-98;
13. D. Gregory, ‘Human agency and human geography’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 6 (1981), pp. 1-18;
14. and in the successive ‘progress reports‘ on cultural/humanistic geography in Progress in Human Geography. See D. Ley ‘Cultural/humanistic geography’, Progress in Human Geography 7, 2 (1983), pp. 267-75 and 9, 3 (1985), pp. 414-23;
15. and those of L. Rowntree, 11, 4 (1987), pp.558-64, and 12, 4 (1988), pp. 575-86.
16. See also D. Cosgrove and P.Jackson, ‘New directions in cultural geography’, Area 19, 2 (1987), pp. 95-101;
17. D. Cosgrove, ‘A terrain of metaphor: cultural geography 1988-89’, Progress in Human Geography 13, 4 (1989), pp. 566-75;
18. and ‘… Then we take Berlin’, Progress in Human Geography 14, 4 (1990), pp. 560-68;
19. Peter Jackson, Maps of meaning (London, Unwin Hyman, 1989);
20. and P. Claval, ‘Champ et perspectives de la géographie culturelle’, Géographieet Cultures 1 (1992), pp. 7-38.
21. T. Todorov, Mikhail Bakhtin, the dialogical principle (.Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1984), pp. 107-108.
22. Through dialogue Todorov, following Bakhtin, seeks to avoid, the two aporias identified by Lévinas: ‘It will not be a knowledge, because through knowledge, whether one wants it or not, the object is absorbed by the subject and duality disap- pears. It will not be an ecstasis, because in ecstasis the subject is absorbed in the object and recovers itself in its unity. All these relationships result in the disappearance of the other‘. E. Lévinas, Time and the other (Pittsburg, Duquesne University Press, 1987), p. 41.
23. This approach stems from a reflection on M. Bakhtin’s works, namely, The dialogical imagination, four essays (Austin, Texas University Press, 1981);
24. Art and answerability: early philosophical works (Austin, Texas University Press, 1990);
25. and Speech genres and other late essays (Austin, Texas University Press, 1986).
26. However, Bakhtin analysed dialogism within the novel (its specific plurivocality) and has not - strictly speaking - engaged himself in a dialogical critique that some are now trying to undertake in the continuation of his works. For a general appraisal, see Todorov, Dialogical principle; and M. Holqusst, Dialogism. Bakhtin and his world (London, Routledge, 1990).
27. In geography, see M. Folch-Serra, ‘Place, voice, space: Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogical landscape’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 8 (1990), pp. 255-74.
28. On the recent interest for a dialogical critique see T. Todorov, ‘Une critique dialogique?’ Le Débat 2 (1984), pp. 158-66;
29. and F. Dosse, Histoire du structuralisme. II. Le chant du cygne (Paris, Maspero, 1992), Part V, Le temps, l‘espace, la dialogique, pp. 537-68.
30. J. Derrida, ‘Yatt-il une langue philosophique?’, Autrement 102 (1988), p. 30.
31. ‘… there are reasons to doubt tnat tne novel allows itself to be neatly classified in a homogeneous taxonomy of narrative genres. Is not the novel an anti-genre genre, which by the very fact makes it impossible to fit back together the diegetic mode and the dramatic mode under the inclusive term “fictional narrative”. This type of argument receives impressive reinforcement in the essays that Bakhtin devotes to the “dialogical imagination”. According to Bakhtin, the novel escapes all homogeneous classification because we cannot place in the same set those genres, of which the epic is the perfect example, that have run dry and the sole genre that has been born after the institution of writing and books, the only one that continues to develop but never ceases to rethink (“remettre en chantier”) its own identity.’ P. Ricoeur, Time and narrative (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1985, c. 1984); II, p. 154.
32. M. Bakhin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s poetics (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p. 26.
33. H. Marcuse, The aesthetic dimension. Toward a critique of Mrrxist aesthetics (Boston, Beacon Press, 1978), p. 10.
34. M. Kundera, The art of the novel (New York, Grove Press, 1988), p. 64.
35. In this respect, I agree with Clifford when he writes ‘acute political and epistemological self-consciousness need not lead to ethnographic self-absorption, or to the conclusion that it is impossible to know anything certain about other people.’ ‘Introduction’ to J. Clifford and G. E. Marcus, Writing culture. The poetics and politics of ethnography (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1986)
36. V. Berdoulay, Des Mots et des Lieux. La Dynamique du Discours Géographique (Paris, CNRS, 1988);
37. and ‘Idées aristotéliciennes et effet-discours dans le géographie d‘origine méditerranéenne’, Annales de Géographie 542 (1988), pp. 404-18.
38. Robinson, ‘Geography of a crossroads’, p. 187.
39. G. Olsson, ‘Lines of power’, in T.J. Barnes and J. S. Duncan, eds., Writing worlds. Discourse, text and metaphor in the representation of landscape (London, Routledge, 1992), pp. 86-96.
40. See C. Geertz, Blurred genres. The renguration of social though’, The American Scholar 49 (1980), pp. 165-79, who does not so much insist on the obsolescence of generic difference, as on the interweaving of genre in recent social science discourse and, more specifically the use of a new set of metaphors which seems to indicate that social thought is turning away ‘from a laws-and-instances ideal of explanation toward a cases-and-interpretations one’, p. 165. In geography, more practitioners have drawn attention to the problem of textual strategies than they have marshalled thoroughly new strategies.
41. See Barnes and Duncan, Writing worlds; and Berdoulay, Des Mots et des Lieux.
42. Responding to Habermas’ ‘accusation’ that he had levelled off every generic ditierence between discourses, Derrida replied that, although genres may interweave in the same text, ‘Ce n‘est réduire le “discours philosophique” à la littérature que de l‘analyser dans sa forme, ses modes de composition, sa rhétorique, ses métaphores, sa langue, ses fictions, tout ce qui résiste à la traduction.’ Derrida, ‘Yatt-il une langue’, p. 31.
43. See J. Habermas, The philosophical discourse of modernity (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1987), Ch. VII.
44. For an analysis of the discourse of three social scientists on the city, see J.S. Duncan, ‘Metropeolis: or, Hayden White among the urbanists’, in A. King, ed., Representing the city (London, Macmlllan, 1994), forthcoming.
45. B. H. Gelfant, The American city novel (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1970).
46. J. Dos Passos, Manhattan transfer (Boston, Houghton Miflin Company, c. 1985), referred to in the text as MT.
47. see, for example, J.D. Brantley, The fiction of John uos rassos (the Hague-paris, Mouton, 1968).
48. M. Bakhtin, ‘The problem of content, material and form in verbal art’, in Art and Answerability (Austin, Texas University Press, 1990), pp. 257-325.
49. Dos Passos’ works have been the object of many analyses. I. Colley, Dos Passos and the fiction of despair (London, The Macmillan Press, 1978);
50. R. C. Rosen, John Dos Passos. Politics and the writer (Lincoln and London, University of Nebraska Press, 1981);
51. L. W. Wagner, Dos Passos. Artist as American (Austin, University of Texas Press, 1979);
52. and J. H. Wrenn, John Dos Passos (New York, Twayne Publishers, 1961).
53. For example, W. Benjamin, Paris, capitate du XIXe Stèele (Paris, gerct, 1989).
54. for a discussion on the relevance of Benjamin’s works in geography, see D. Gregory, ‘The historical geography of modernity’ in J. S. Duncan and D. Ley, eds., Place/culture/representation (London, Routledge, 1993), pp. 272-313.
55. V. spencer Carr, Dos Passos. A life (New York, DouDleday & company, 1984), p. 214.
56. The author also writes: ‘To describe Dos Passos’ innovative technique, they used such words as “impressionistic”, “expressionistic”, “supernaturalistic”, “neo-realistic”, “architectonic”, “panoramic”, “kaleidoscopic”, “fragmented”, and “cinemascopic” ’. For a review of the critical accounts of Manhattan transfer, see B. Maine, ed., Dos Passos. The critical heritage (London and New York, Routledge, 1988).
57. Of course, problems of ‘innovatio’ (of form or themes) are always linked to the historical context: what seems revolutionary or avant-garde at one time may well become classic in the next. See H. R. Jauss, ‘La “modernité” dans la tradition littéraire et la conscience d‘aujourd‘hui’, in Pour une esthétique de la réception (Paris, Gallimard, 1978), pp. 158-209.
58. It is also linked to the cultural horizon of reception: for example, Robbe-Grillet, the well-known representative of the French ‘nouveau roman’, is often considered as a postmodern writer in the United States whereas he is considered very modern in France. See A. Compagnon, Les cinq paradoxes de la modernuté (Paris, Seuil, 1990).
59. For example, David Ley’s admirable analysis, ‘Styles ot tne times: liberal and neoconserva-tive landscapes in Inner Vancouver, 1968-1986’, Journal of Historical Geography 13 (1987), pp. 40-56.
60. The textual metaphor has been central in the recent writings of J. S. Duncan, The City as text: the politics of landscape interpretation in the Kandyan kingdom (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990);
61. and J. Duncan and N. Duncan, ‘Re-reading the landscape’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 6 (1988), pp. 117-26.
62. In a similar vein, other metaphors have been explored: that of spectacle, see D. Ley and K. Olds, ‘Landscape as spectacle: world’s fair and th e culture of heroic consumption’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 6 (1988), pp. 191-212;
63. that of stage or theatre, D. Cosgrove and S. Daniels, ed., The iconography of landscape: essays on the symbolic representation, design and use of past environments (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988);
64. and J. Monntt, ‘Poésie ou urbanisme? Les modèles de ville dans les descriptions de Mexico (XVI-XX siècles)’, Acta Geographica 81 (1990) pp.3-30;
65. and Monnet, ‘Les jeux de la ville et du pouvoir’, Affil 6 (1990), pp. 29-35.
66. C. Geertz, The interpretation of cultures (New York, Basic Books, 1973).
67. For a critical appraisal of Geertz use of the culture-as-text metaphor, see M. A. Schneider, ‘Culture-as-text in the works of Clifford Geertz’, Theory and Society 16 (1987), pp. 809-39.
68. For a general overview, see J. S. Duncan and D. Ley, ‘Introduction: representing place and culture’, in Place/culture/representation and Barnes and Duncan, Writing worlds.
69. It is the early sedimentation of the organicist metaphor - and not the metaphor as such - that has been problematic in the French regional tradition. The metaphor was, initially, the source of tremendous creativity; however its ‘naturalization‘ resulted in the rigidity of the regional paradigm. See V. Berdoulay, ‘La métaphore organiciste: contribution à l‘étude du langage des géographes’, Annales de Géographie 507 (1982), pp. 573-86.
70. M. Bakhtin, ‘Forms of time and of the chronotope in the novel’, in The dialogic imagination, p. 84.
71. See also Bakhtin, ‘Le roman d‘apprentissage dans l‘histoire du réalisme’, in Esthétique de la création verbale (Paris, Gallimard, 1984), pp. 211-61.
72. The above-mentioned definition does not do justice to the great polysemy of the chronotope in Bakhtin‘s work. The notion has varying degrees of resolution. The chronotope may either function as a strictly internal category or as one which establishes parallels between the world in the text and the other cultural spheres. Internally, it may refer to time-space co-ordinates at a very general level, or a particular situation such as the meeting of two individuals on a street corner. ‘Externally’, it can refer to a human universe determined by an epoch and place, a representation that integrates the understanding of an epoch and that of a cosmos. Although Bakhtin insists on time-space co-ordinates, he places a stronger emphasis on time in his historical poetics. For further discussions, see H. Mitterand, ‘Chronotopies romanesques: Germinal’, Poétique 81 (1990), pp. 89-104.
73. C.-E. Magny, The age of the American novel. The film aesthetic of fiction between the two wars (New York, Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1972), p. 130.
74. For a discussion on fragmented space in literature, see B. Robinson, ‘Some fragmented forms of space’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 67, 4 (1977), pp. 549-63.
75. J.-P. Morel, Dos Passos. Manhattan transfer (Paris, PUF, 1990). This is one of the best overall analyses of Dos Passos‘ novel that has been most helpful throughout this essay.
76. R. E. Park, ‘The city: suggestions for the investigation of human behaviour in the urban environment’, in R. E. Park, E. W. Burgess and R. D. McKenzie, eds., The city (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1967), p. 40.
77. For analysis of ‘characterization‘ in Manhattan transfer, see S. Fusselman Mizener, Manhattan transients (Hicksville, NY, Exposition Press, 1977).
78. J. Frank, ‘Spatial form in modern literature’, The widening gyre (New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 1963), p. 9.
79. See also, J. Frank, ‘Spatial form: an answer to critics’, Critical Inquiry 4 (4) (1977), p. 235.
80. See, for example, J. Ricardou, Une maladie chronique. Problégrave;mes de la représentation écrite du simultané (Paris, Les impressions nouvelles, 1989).
81. Frank, ‘Spatial form’, p. 19.
82. See Morel, Dos Passos, who refers to V. Klotz, Die erzàuml;hlte Stadt (Müuml;nchen, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1969). The perceptible transition between the scenes may vary from one edition to another. In some, like the one referred to here, the transition is (often) noted typographically by double spacing.
83. Here, we have a good example of what Genette identified as the ‘exemplificative‘ function of style. For instance, let us take his simple example: the words short and long (‘bref‘ and ‘long‘ in French). While short denotes shortness and exemplifies it (being a short word itself), long denotes length but exemplifies shortness too (being also a short word). These relations can be extended at the trope level, the sentence or the text in general, and do not imply that denotation and exemplification need to reinforce each other in order to create a ‘stylistic‘ effect. See G. Genette, ‘Style et signification’, in Fiction et Diction (Paris, Seuil,1991), pp. 95-151.
84. Magny, American novel.
85. According to Mizener Manhattan transients, ‘Approximately thirteen categories of images serve to depict the everyday world of Dos Passos‘ Manhattan and contribute to the novel‘s atmosphere of futility: facial images of humanity, animal images, insect images, aquatic images, plant images, food images, urban or environmental images, color images, metal images, string images, liquor images, and death images‘ (p. 23). One can easily question the validity of this list, but it nevertheless indicates the wide ‘palette‘ of Dos Passos‘ descriptions.
86. As N. Thrift, ‘Landscape and literature’, Environment and Planning A 10 (1978), pp. 347-49;
87. and Lafaille, ‘Géographie et poésie’, have appropriately pointed out.
88. Descriptions have become the focal point of many discussions in geography, anthropology and literary theory. Geertz‘s ‘thick description‘ or the works of Clifford and Marcus come to mind. In French literary theory, the works of P. Hamon, although primarily concerned with the realist tradition, are very useful for rethinking the notion of description: ‘Qu‘est-ce qu‘une description?‘ Poétique 12 (1972), pp.465-85;
89. ‘Le savoir dans le texte’, Revue des sciences humaines 4 (1975), pp. 489-99;
90. Introduction à l‘analyse du descriptif (Paris, Hachette, 1981);
91. ‘Texte et architecture’, Poétique 73 (1988), pp. 3-26;
92. and La description littéraire. De l‘Antiquité à Roland Barthes: une anthologie (Paris, Macula, 1991).
93. The works of French writer Julien Gracq have been the object of many interesting accounts on the representation of landscape and the power of description. For instance, see M. Mouballin, Gracq, création et récréation de l‘espace (Bruxelles, De Boeck-Wesmael, 1987).
94. Note, for example, the transcription of the German accent: ‘It is fif years yet and every year a girl, and now dink of it, a poy…. But the kids they eat money…. Dont do nutten but eat and vear out clothes‘ (M,T pp. 8-9), a certain blend of French and Italian: ‘Beaucoup de soing, sparca madonna…. Thisa guy trows money about lika confetti, see…. Gives tips, see, he‘s a verra rich gentleman…. Fait pas, como, ca‘ (MT, p. 27). One will also find, as in some passages quoted earlier, many examples of ‘street talk‘ or ‘vernacular English‘: ‘De Carnasie moider has sumpen to do wid it I guess‘ (MT, p. 218). I find myself caught up in the ‘categories trap‘. The novel, although it does not escape what many have labelled the ‘politics of representation’, does not need these general categories to let ‘others‘ enter the text. This has been examined with great perspicacity by Bakhtin, ‘Discourse in the novel’, in The dialogical imagination. In geography, A. Pred, Lost words and lost worlds: modernity and the language of everyday life in late nineteenth-century Stockholm (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990), is certainly one of those who has been sensitive to the diversity of everyday language. He has faced the problem of the phonetic ‘retranscription‘ and normalization of ‘vernacular‘ accents (pp. 24-26).
95. See also, Jackson, Maps of meaning, Ch. 7.
96. Joyce has reached an extraordinarily rich level in the search for a phonetic transcription of ‘vernacular‘ accents. A. Burgess, Joysprick (New York, Harvest Book, 1975, c. 1973).
97. For more details, see Morel, Dos Passos. For a comparison, Jimmy Herf, who is also a central character, is in contact with only 13 other characters.
98. Colley, Fiction of despair, p. 55.
99. The collage technique has been tried out by the surrealist. See A. Bonnet, ‘Art, ideology, and everyday space: subversive tendencies from Dada to postmodernism’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 10 (1992), pp. 69-86.
100. Dos Passos‘ use of the collage, see J.-P. Morel, ‘Collage, montage et roman chez Dublin et Dos Passos’, Revue d‘esthétique 3 / 4 (Paris, UGE 10/18, 1978), pp. 212-233.
101. See, Morel, Dos Passos, pp. 75 et seq.
102. See J.-F. Augoyard, Pas à pas. Essai sur le cheminement quotidien en milieu urbain (Paris, Seuil, 1979).
103. R. Barthes, The pleasure of the text (New York, The Noonday Press, 1975), pp. 10-11. The original version resorts to more spatial metaphors which the translation has left out: ‘survoler ou emjamber certains passages … pour retrouver plus vite les lieux brücirc;lants de l‘anecdote‘.
104. See Morel, Dos Passos.
105. Kundera, Art of the novel, p. 57.
106. G. Stein, ‘Composition as explanation’, in Look at me now and here I am. Writings and lectures 1909-1945 (London, Penguin Books, 1967), pp. 21-30.
107. Mizener, Manhattan transients.
108. See G. Genette, The architext: an introduction (Berkeley, University of California Press); and Genette, Seuils (Paris, Seuil, 1987).
109. See G.-A. Astre, Thégrave;mes et structures dans l‘oeuvre de John Dos Passos (Paris, Minard, 1974).
110. M. Butor, ‘La ville comme texte’, in Répertoire 5 (Paris, Minuit, 1982), p. 41.
111. R. Barthes, ‘Texte, Théorie du’, in Encyclopaedia universalis (Paris, Encyclopaedia Universalis 1989, c. 1975) XXII, p. 373.
112. L. Spitzer, ‘Linguistics and literary history’, in Linguistics and literary history. Essays in stylistics (New York, Russell and Russell, 1962), p. 28.
113. R. Barthes, ‘Semiology and the urban’, in M. Gottdiener and A. P. Lagopoulos, eds., The city and the sign: an introduction to urban semiotics (New York, Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 92.
114. For a discussion of Barthes‘ writings, see James S. Duncan and Nancy G. Duncan, eds., ‘Ideology and bliss. Roland Barthes and the secret histories of landscape’, in T. J. Barnes and J. S. Duncan, eds., Writing worlds, (London, Routledge, 1992) pp. 18-37.
115. M. Coornaert, ‘A la recherche de l‘espace pour un nouveau monde urbain. A propos de L‘espace en question de Raymond Ledrut’, Espaces et sociétés 57-58 (1989), p. 68.
116. See also R. Ledrut, ‘Speech and the silence of the city’, in Gottdiener and Lagopoulos, eds., The city and the sign (New York, Columbia University Press, 1986) pp. 114-34.
117. J. N. Entrikin, The betweenness of place. Towards a geography of modernity (Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 1991).
118. See G. Olsson, ‘Of ambiguity of far cries from a memorializing mamafesta’, in D. Ley and M. S. Samuels, eds., Humanistic geography - prospects and problems (Chicago, Maaroufa Press, 1978), pp. 109-20.
119. Dos Passos has been considered as ‘America‘s leading proletarian writer‘. From the mid 1920s to the late 1930s, he was involved at different levels in ‘leftist‘ movements. See T. Ludington, John Dos Passos. A twentieth century odyssey (New York, E. P. Dutton 1980), 114 Ch. 18.
120. The importance he placed on his form is also very well documented. For example, ‘Dos Passos hoped that his own shockingly crafted novel, The 42nd Parallel, would reach the people in the way that the play had not. Perhaps then the workers would get and do something about it.‘ Spencer Carr, Doss Passos, p. 263.
121. See also J.-P. Morel, Le Roman insupportable. L‘internationale littéraire et la France 1920-1932 (Paris, Gallimard, 1985).
122. Gregory, ‘Areal differentiation and post-modern human geography’, in D. Gregory and Walford, eds., Horizons in human geography (London, Macmillan, 1989), p. 90, is receptive to the problem: ‘… when set alongside the variety of textual strategies encompassed by the contemporary novel… the conservative character of many of the most radical geographers is truly astonishing.‘
123. Gregory, ‘Areal differentiation’, p. 90.
124. Many are trying to break geography‘s discursive monotony and conformity by using different ‘textual strategies‘. Most often they rise on the text‘s surface with punctuation [-, /, ()] or puns, to pluralize meanings, and are by no means ‘revolutionary‘ writing practices. When trying to be more radical, one often feels the need to caution the reader from the outset. Pred‘s latest attempt at ‘exploiting the landscape of the page’, in Lost words - although a fascinating book - is not very convincing or, as Gregory, ‘Geography of modernity: p. 297, would put it, ‘I do not think that the strategy works very well.‘ Kundera writes that ‘the novel has an extraordinary power of incorporation: whereas neither poetry or philosophy can incorporate the novel, the novel can incorporate both poetry and philosophy without losing thereby anything of its identity, which is characterized … precisely by its tendency to embrace other genres, to absorb philosophical and scientific knowledge’, Kundera, Art of novel, p. 64. A textual strategy that ‘works‘ does not need to be announced, it speaks for itself: it works. To make it work, one needs the rare gift of ‘textual savoir-faire’, and the reader, an acute awareness of its importance.
125. See, for example, R. Lafaille, ‘En relisant Reclus’, Annales de Géographie 548 (1989), pp. 445-59
126. who argues that Reclus‘ marginalization cannot only be attributed to his political ideas, but also to the specificities of his writings which were not respecting the ‘norms‘ (a ‘clear‘ distinction between science and literature) of academic geography. Closer to us, we have the ambivalent reception of G. Olsson‘s works. For example, see M. Billinge, ‘The mandarin dialect: an essay on style in contemporary geographical writing’, Transactions Institutes of British Geographers n.s.8 (1983), pp. 400-20;
127. and C. Philo, ‘Reflections on Gunnar Olsson‘s contribution to the discourse of contemporary human geography’, Environment and Planning D, Society and Space 2 (1984), pp. 217-40.
128. P. Ricoeur, Time and narrative (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1985 II), pp. 159 and 160.