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Contested Spaces in
Contemporary North
American Novels
Contested Spaces in
Contemporary North
American Novels:

Reading for Space

By

Şemsettin Tabur
Contested Spaces in Contemporary North American Novels:
Reading for Space

By Şemsettin Tabur

This book first published 2017

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2017 by Şemsettin Tabur

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-5275-0298-8

ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-0298-7
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ................................................................................... vii

List of Abbreviations .................................................................................. ix

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1

Chapter One ............................................................................................... 11

Space, the Spatial Turn, and Spatially Oriented Literary Studies
1.1 Space, Identity, Politics, and Place: Theorizing Space
as a Contested Concept .................................................................. 12
1.2 The Spatial Turn in the Social Sciences ......................................... 18
1.2.1 Henri Lefebvre and the Social Production of Space .............. 20
1.2.2 Edward Soja and Thirdspace ................................................. 23
1.2.3 Doreen Massey and the Relational Space.............................. 29
1.3 Reading for Space .......................................................................... 32
1.3.1 Space, Narrative, Geography, and Literature ........................ 32
1.3.2 Spatially Oriented Literary Studies ....................................... 41
1.3.3 The (Relational) Space of This Study.................................... 45
1.4 Conclusion ..................................................................................... 47

Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 49

Reading Colonial Spaces in A Mercy
2.1 Colonialism, Space, and Literature ................................................ 50
2.2 Reading A Mercy for Space ........................................................... 55
2.3 Narrative Spaces in A Mercy .......................................................... 62
2.3.1 The Physical Spaces of Colonialism ..................................... 62
2.3.2 “Dark Matter out There, Thick, Unknowable, Aching to be
made into a World”: The Imagined Spaces of Colonialism ........ 73
2.3.3 The Real-and-Imagined Spaces of Colonial Spatiality .......... 77
2.4 Conclusion ..................................................................................... 89
vi Table of Contents

Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 91

Spatial Justice and Claiming Space in In Another Place, Not Here
3.1 Space, Spatial Justice, and Literature............................................. 92
3.2. Reading In Another Place, Not Here for Space .......................... 100
3.3 Narrative Spaces in In Another Place, Not Here ......................... 107
3.3.1 The Physical Spaces of Injustice ......................................... 108
3.3.2 “And They Have Imagined Themselves into the White
Town’s Imagining”: The Imagined Spaces of Injustice.......... 118
3.3.3 Claiming Space: Real-and-Imagined Spaces
and Seeking Spatial Justice ..................................................... 121
3.4 Conclusion ................................................................................... 132

Chapter Four ............................................................................................ 135

Reading Diaspora Spaces in The Namesake
4.1 Diaspora, Diaspora Space, and Literature .................................... 137
4.2 Reading The Namesake for Space ................................................ 145
4.3 Narrative Spaces in The Namesake .............................................. 152
4.3.1 The Physical Spaces of Diaspora ........................................ 153
4.3.2 The Dominant Representations of Diaspora Spaces ............ 165
4.3.3 Lived Spaces of Diaspora .................................................... 170
4.4 Conclusion ................................................................................... 182

Chapter Five ............................................................................................ 183

Reading Riskscapes in There Will Never Be Another You
5.1 Risk, Space, and Literature .......................................................... 185
5.2 Reading There Will Never Be Another You for Space.................. 195
5.3 Narrative Spaces in There Will Never Be Another You ................ 204
5.3.1 The Physical Spaces of / as Riskscapes ............................... 205
5.3.2 The Dominant Representations of Riskscapes .................... 212
5.3.3 Real-and-Imagined Spaces as Alternative Riskscapes ........ 216
5.4 Conclusion ................................................................................... 223

Conclusion ............................................................................................... 225

Works Cited ............................................................................................. 231

 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book began as a dissertation project at Bayreuth University,

Germany. It involves the support, time, and work of many people. First
and foremost, my sincere thanks go to my doctoral advisor Professor
Sylvia Mayer. Her intellectual guidance, incisive criticism, and ceaseless
encouragement have made me feel exceptionally fortunate at every step of
this project. I am also deeply grateful to Professor Jeanne Cortiel, my
second advisor, for her critical remarks and invaluable guidance. I feel
very much indebted to the participants of the American Studies colloquia
held regularly at Bayreuth University and Bamberg University for their
thoughtful suggestions and for discussing central issues relating to my
doctoral project with me from its earliest stages until its completion.
I am grateful to several institutions that supported me in various ways:
Bayreuth University has provided me with a stimulating intellectual
atmosphere and wonderful working environment. The Graduate School of
Intercultural Encounters (IPP) of Bayreuth University offered me an
enriching, interdisciplinary space. The Graduate School of Bayreuth
University generously supported my research fellowship at the Institute for
Research in the Humanities (IRS) at Wisconsin-Madison University,
where I had the opportunity to meet Professor Susan S. Friedman and
other fellows, and to discuss my dissertation as well as some initial ideas
about my post-doctoral project. In addition, I want to thank the Bavarian
American Academy (BAA) which funded my participation in their
Summer Academy in 2013.
Thanks are due as well to the many others who helped me prepare this
book. I want to thank my colleagues and friends in Bayreuth, and Katie
Croll-Knight for critically reading through the whole work more than
once. I extend my thanks to the editors of Cambridge Scholars Publishing
for their support in publishing this study.
Above all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my parents,
Emine and Mustafa Tabur, and all the other family members for their
ceaseless, unconditional support, and their firm belief in me throughout
my studies. Finally, I am indebted to my wife, Ayúenur for her love,
encouragement, support, and patience.
 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Following abbreviations are used to refer to the primary sources:

AM: A Mercy

AP: In Another Place, Not Here

TN: The Namesake

AY: There Will Never Be Another You

 INTRODUCTION

“I take SPACE to be the central fact

to man born in America, from Folsom cave to now. 
I spell it large because it comes large here.
Large, and without mercy.”
(Olson 11)

In this study of contemporary North American fiction, the novels of

four women writers are analyzed from several spatially oriented
perspectives. The selected texts are Toni Morrison’s A Mercy (2008),
Dionne Brand’s In Another Place, Not Here (1996), Jhumpa Lahiri’s The
Namesake (2003) and Carolyn See’s There Will Never Be Another You
(2006). Linking a variety of critical concepts from spatial studies,
sociology and literary studies, the spatially oriented analyses of the novels
examine how these works narrativize the ways spaces are physically,
ideologically, and socially produced. Elaborating on the open, relational,
multiple, and processual features of space, the analyses disclose the
inseparable relations between space, politics, and identity on both
individual and social levels. The approach adopted is based on a
conception of space as a contested, fluid, generative and political
constituent of society and social experience. Accordingly, I use the
expression “contested space” to refer to the relational, often contradictory,
and alternative processes of producing space differently. By analyzing
different spatial perspectives and literary forms on the contested grounds
of space, this study seeks to contribute to the criticism of the novels and to
shed light on the theoretical and methodological handling of the concept of
space in literary studies.
As a whole, the present study responds to the postmodern geographer
Edward Soja’s call “to think differently about the meanings and
significance of space and those related concepts that compose and
comprise the inherent spatiality of human life: place, location, locality,
landscape, environment, home, city, region, territory, and geography”
(Thirdspace 1, italics in original). Space, as many scholars of various
disciplines have come to acknowledge, is an integral component of
individual and social experience. It “becomes more urgent than ever to
keep our contemporary consciousness of spatiality—or critical geographical
2 Introduction

imagination—creatively open to redefinition and expansion in new

directions and to resist any attempt to narrow or confine its scope” (Soja,
Thirdspace 2).1 Following the Marxist geographer Henri Lefebvre, who
demonstrated the relevance of space in the production and representation
of the social order, Soja argues that space should be re-theorized
continuously as a central category in the enquiry of contemporary social
phenomena. Since the so-called spatial turn in the second half of the
twentieth century, and since the late 1960s in particular, the study of space
has acquired importance. This has led to constant interest in the concept
across various disciplines; space has been approached and conceptualized
differently. As Soja argues, “the organization, use, and meaning of space
is a product of social translation, transformation, and experience” (“Socio-
Spatial” 210), and a large number of studies have examined the processes
that construct space in diverse ways. Literary studies, in this respect, has
participated actively in addressing and re-theorizing the complex, myriad
forms of spatial production. Especially since the 1990s, literary critics have
increasingly acknowledged the complexity of space. The conventional,
taken-for-granted notion that refers to space as either an empty, static
setting or simply as a metaphor in literary works is now questioned and
reconsidered using insights from other disciplines, such as cultural
geography and sociology.
Literary works, as social and spatial practices, are significant not only
in reflecting social milieus and space production processes but also in
shaping what has been and can be discovered about the spatiality of human
life, a fact explained by bell hooks as follows: “Spaces can be real and
imagined. Spaces can tell stories and unfold histories. Spaces can be
interrupted, appropriated, and transformed through artistic and literary
practice” (152). With bell hooks in mind, it is clear that analyzing how
spaces are represented and communicated in/through literary works can
certainly contribute to the study of space. In this regard, a literary work
can actually be considered as a critical map2 that provides readers with an
orientation to understand, interpret, and interrogate the world. Narratives
do not simply reflect the actual world but enable the imagination of
alternatives. As Robert Tally argues, the spaces that literary works address
“call for new cartographic approaches, new forms of representation and

1
Similarly, Doreen Massey describes her 2005 study For Space as “the case for an
alternative approach to space,” and proposes that spatial thinking, like space itself,
should never be “finished” or “closed” (8).
2
A solid number of literary scholars like Andrew Thacker, Bertrand Westphal, and
Robert Tally have already referred to the relationship between cartography and
narration. For more information, see Section 1.3 of Chapter One.
 Contested Spaces in Contemporary North American Novels 3

new ways of imagining our place in the universe” (Spatiality 42-3, italics
in original).
This study analyzes literary works “as” space as well as “for” space,
which is to say I read each selected novel as a contested space that
questions conventional and often authoritative understandings of social
and spatial structures. All the writers featured in this study approach space
as complex, processual, and relational constructions. Their works represent
different, multiscalar spaces and places as well as the social, historical,
cultural, and political processes that produce them. They explore the
spaces of power and the dominant representations of space in their novels,
which emphasizes the fact that space is not neutral and innocent but “filled
with politics and ideology” (Keith and Pile 4). Therefore, the novels,
which are themselves embedded in their own socio-political contexts,
represent multifarious power relations and cultural negotiations. Moreover,
each novel critiques fixed, essentialist conceptions of space by emphasizing
the lived, “real-and-imagined” spaces of various characters.3 Furthermore,
movement, border transgression, and the complex relationship between
diverse productions of space and the varied practices of characters are
significant in all of the selected novels. The novels plunge the reader into
issues of identity, power, belonging, oppression, intercultural encounter,
parenthood, home, and community. In particular, the entangled
intergenerational relationships stand out. In these novels, both identity and
the process of making space are shown as fluid and dynamic through
characters that are shaped by such spaces while actively transforming
them.
I will explore each novel from a spatial perspective to investigate the
thematization of space through the following three central questions: First,
how are narrative spaces produced and practiced physically in the novels?
Second, how are spaces represented and constructed ideologically?
Finally, how are these physical and imagined spaces alternatively lived
and contested by the characters? To explore such questions and investigate
each novel spatially, the analytical chapters will follow a tripartite
structure. In the first part of each chapter, I will investigate the spatial
dimensions of the following concepts: colonialism, justice, diaspora, and
risk. In the second part of each chapter, I will investigate the novels as
textual spaces. I use the term textual space to refer to the four relational
spaces that can be distinguished in analyzing literary works from spatially

3
The term “real-and-imagined” belongs to Edward Soja. Bringing these two words
together with a hyphen, Soja emphasizes how real and imagined aspects should be
conceptualized together in thinking about space. In the rest of this study, I will use
the term in the same sense.
4 Introduction

oriented perspectives: the socio-cultural context or the real-world space in

which a novel can be situated, the material space of each novel
(paratextual features), the narrative organization, and the storyworld that
the novel narrates (narrative space). More precisely, I will firstly
investigate the socio-cultural contexts of each novel as the relational
spaces of textual spatiality. Secondly, each text will be analyzed as a
material object to examine how narrative spaces shape the paratext of the
novels. Thirdly, discourse elements such as narrative situation, i.e.
narration, narrative voice, point of view, focalization, language usage, and
the reader’s positioning will be examined as the spatial practices that
shape what Ryan, referring to the scholars such as Joseph Frank, calls “the
spatial form of the text” (“Space”). My primary assumption is that the
spatial themes that are explored in the novels’ storyworlds are constitutive
to the act of narration. My specific focus on space in exploring these issues
should not mean that the spatial is more important than the temporal, for
both time and space are mutually constitutive in the narrativity of a literary
work. Yet, considering the traditional peripherialization of space within
literary studies, I follow Susan S. Friedman’s suggestion to put “a
compensatory emphasis on space” (“Spatial” 194) in my analyses. Finally,
narrative spaces, which are the conceived, perceived, and lived settings in
the storyworld, will be examined in the third part of each chapter. I will
analyze how different narrative spaces are produced and practiced
physically, imagined and represented ideologically, and experienced and
negotiated alternatively. To this end, I will draw on a wide range of
theories and concepts from literary studies, cultural studies, spatial studies,
geography, and sociology.
The book consists of five chapters. The theoretical chapter which
follows introduces the concepts of space and spatiality, and delves into
their relationship to identity, politics, and literature. To obtain a
comprehensive understanding of the term for my literary analyses I will
first delineate the concept of space as contested, relational, dynamic,
political, and socially produced. Secondly, I will examine the spatial turn
in the social sciences, and provide an overview of the changes in the
conceptualization of space since the 1960s. Here, I will take a brief look at
the theories of cultural geographers Henri Lefebvre, Edward Soja and
Doreen Massey in order to develop my specific use of “contested space”.
Thirdly, I will analyze the close relations between space, narrative,
geography, and literature. In doing so, I will focus on how recent spatial
theorizations have been received in literary studies and how the latter has
contributed to the study of space and place. Space-related insights into
literary works as offered by Walter Benjamin, Michel de Certeau and
 Contested Spaces in Contemporary North American Novels 5

Mikhail Bakhtin will be discussed as early examples of theorizing space

and spatializing narrative within literary studies. After analyzing the
theories that approach literary works as closely related to the spatial
project, I will discuss literary cartography as a recent example of spatially
oriented literary studies. The same chapter will also introduce the ways I
approach the selected novels as contested spaces. In so doing, I will
explain the different forms of textual spatiality that will be considered in
the analysis of the novels and introduce the ways I will use Lefebvre and
Edward Soja’s conceptual triad to examine the narrative space of each.
After these theoretical explorations, Chapter Two presents an in-depth
textual analysis of Toni Morrison’s A Mercy. Morrison, in Playing in the
Dark, contends that she “want[s] to draw a map of a critical geography and
use that map to open as much space for discovery, intellectual adventure
and close exploration as did the original charting of the New World—
without the mandate for conquest” (3). A Mercy, I argue, exemplifies
Morrison’s project: the novel offers complex, contested literary mappings of
late seventeenth-century America. Bringing a range of characters (European
slave owners, indentured servants, Native Americans, Presbyterians,
Puritans, enslaved and free Africans) together in the “ad hoc territory” (AM
11) of America, Morrison “unmaps”4 the “beginning” of America (AM 2),
and interrogates how racism and colonization were institutionalized through
a wide range of spatial themes including “fluid land claims” (AM 10)
displacements, (dis)possession, slavery, land owning, and (re)naming. The
novel suggests that colonialism and the invention of racism at that
particular time in America were spatial as well as social and historical
processes.
Elaborating on the concept of colonial space, I will draw on Lefebvre
and Soja’s conceptual triad and firstly analyze how the novel represents
the physical production of colonial spaces. As I argue, the narrative
locations are physically produced by figures like Senhor D’Ortega and
Jacob Vaark; these characters go on to discover, name, and order the
landscape of the “New World” through the spatial practices that constitute
Firstspace or the perceived spaces of colonialism. Physical practices,

4
Here and in the rest of this book I use the word “unmap” in the way Sherene
Razack, who, in turn, refers to Richard Phillips, describes it: “‘To unmap,’ Richard
Phillips notes, is not only to denaturalize geography by asking how spaces come to
be but also ‘to undermine world views that rest upon it. Just as mapping colonized
lands enabled Europeans to imagine and legally claim that they had discovered and
therefore owned the lands of the ‘New World,’ unmapping is intended to
undermine the idea of white settler innocence [...] and to uncover the ideologies
and practices of conquest and domination” (5).
6 Introduction

however, cannot be considered to be entirely distinct from imagined,

symbolic constructions, and representations. To be more precise, the
physical spaces of colonialism are manifested according to particular
conceptualizations, “fantasies” (Noyes 71, 84) and “myths” (Upstone 6),
which I will analyze as Secondspace or the conceived spaces of
colonialism.5 The dominant representations which produce America as an
empty Eden, the discourses that construct colonized lands as properties
that can be enclosed and named, and the binarism of order and chaos will
be discussed as the symbolic, imagined spaces of colonial spatiality with
reference to the novel. I will examine how such Cartesian
conceptualizations of space affect the spatial practices of colonial figures
like D’Ortega and Vaark. In addition to these physical and conceptual
productions of colonial space, the novel represents the lived spaces of
characters. The diverse ways in which characters Lina, Sorrow and Florens
experience and negotiate the real-and-imagined spaces of colonialism will
be analyzed as examples of Thirdspace.
The third chapter analyzes Dionne Brand’s In Another Place, Not Here
by looking at the concept of spatial justice as theorized by Edward Soja in
his Seeking Spatial Justice. In this substantial work, Soja investigates the
interlocking relations between space and (in)justice, and claims that “the
spatiality of (in)justice […] affects society and social life just as much as
social processes shape the spatiality or specific geography of (in)justice”
(Seeking 5). Refusing to offer a “simplified cook-book definition” (Seeking
6), Soja uses the term spatial justice to refer to the social production of space
with the democratic participation of individuals and local grassroots
organizations that claim a right to construct and negotiate socially
produced spaces. The notion of spatial justice recognizes the role of spatial
constructions in different sorts of unjust, oppressive arrangements and
calls attention to the often-neglected effects of space in social, economic,
and political structures. From this perspective, spatial (in)justice is closely
related to social, political, and economic forms of (in)justice. In his theory,
Soja points toward the spatial injustices on different spatial scales, and
investigates the complex factors that produce such unjust spatialities.
Literary works, in this regard, can contribute to further conceptualizations
about the ways spatial (in)justice is produced, imagined, and experienced
at the individual as well as at the social levels.
In the third chapter, I seek to develop my own understanding of spatial
(in)justice in exploring the real and imagined spaces of Brand’s In Another

5
Similarly, Neil Smith claims that “the production of space also implies the
production of meaning, concepts and consciousness of space which are inseparably
linked to its physical production” (Uneven Development, 77)
 Contested Spaces in Contemporary North American Novels 7

Place, Not Here. Suggesting that “true artists always break open a space”
(Olbey, “Conversation” 89), Brand brings various characters together in the
contested, unjust, and dominant geographies of an unnamed Caribbean
island and Canada in In Another Place, Not Here. The novel unmaps the
violent geographies of injustice and oppression as practiced and represented
by ideologies like racism, colonialism, and imperialism. I will analyze the
spatial practices (Firstspace) as well as the dominant, ideological discourses
(Secondspace) that project spatial injustices in multiscalar narrative spaces
such as domestic places, cane fields, and urban settings like Sudbury and
Toronto. Exploring these narrative spaces as relational geographies of
injustice, domination, and exploitation, the novel represents the physical
production of injustice on the spatial level and the ideological representation
of unjust spaces as two complementary and dominant processes. After
examining both the perceived and conceived spaces which deny the
characters’ participation in the social production of space, I will analyze
how major black, woman characters respond to injustices and domination,
and claim their lived spaces (Thirdspace). More precisely, I will first
examine how the character of Adela constructs and perceives the island
after her violent displacement from Africa. As my reading of Adela will
demonstrate, she is so entrapped in the idea of Africa as the nostalgic
homeland that she refuses to interact with the here and now of the
Caribbean island. Her refusal to bring up her offspring and name her
environment suggests that Adela cannot take part in the social production
of space. Secondly, Verlia’s varied relationships with Sudbury, Toronto,
and rural Grenada will be examined. Verlia, as an intellectual, socialist,
and rebellious character, exhibits a binary worldview toward space: she is
so immersed in the ideological space that she underestimates the
significance of physical and lived spaces in her struggle against social
injustices. Unlike Adela, Verlia thinks that she can easily leave her past
behind and devote herself to the socialist revolution. She acknowledges
the true power of interacting with people and knowing one’s immediate
environment only after she moves from Toronto to Grenada. Thirdly,
Elizete, as an illiterate and peasant character, exemplifies another,
contested spatial experience in the novel. Contrary to Adela and Verlia,
Elizete strives to negotiate her lived space despite the social and spatial
injustices and dominations. After the invasion of the island by the United
States, she moves to Toronto as an illegal immigrant. Elizete’s initial
contact with the city conjures up Adela’s enslavement. Her mapping of
Toronto reveals its spatial, economic injustices and oppressions of various
sorts as well as racialization toward non-white immigrants. Yet, with space
Elizete begins to do something about her situation. Using the spatial tactics
8 Introduction

she develops, she can survive and negotiate a sense of place in Toronto.
Although it is not clear whether she accomplishes this or not, Elizete’s
finding Abena, who is Verlia’s former lover, and their subsequent coalition
building conjures up what Soja’s calls “a critical strategy of ‘thirding-as-
Othering’” (Thirdspace 5). Elizete rejects the “either/or” choice imposed
on her in Toronto, for she refuses to go back to the Caribbean and to give
herself to the white, dominant, racist, patriarchal hegemony there. In so
doing, Elizete promises the hope of claiming a right to space in Toronto
despite her “illegal” status as an immigrant and the many other forms of
social, economic, and spatial oppression which she faces.
Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake is examined in Chapter Four. I will
explore the ways the complex, relational spaces of diaspora and
immigration are represented in the novel. The Namesake narrates varying
spatial experiences of first and second-generation Bengali immigrants in
America and Calcutta. On the very first page of the novel, the
heterodiegetic narrator describes Ashima Ganguli in her kitchen. In this
opening scene, Lahiri draws the reader’s attention to the fact “there is
something missing” (TN 1), not only in the “concoction” that Ashima is
preparing, but also in the life that the Gangulis lead in America. She
compares her life as a foreigner in the United States to “a sort of lifelong
pregnancy—a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out
of sorts” (TN 49), and my analysis of the novel seeks to examine the
spatial conditions of this “complicated and demanding” (TN 49-50) life for
the different plethora of characters. The novel has already been analyzed
from different perspectives to address the Gangulis’ experience in
America: name, belonging, national identity, the parents in the home
country, language, and diaspora to mention but a few. Since these are all
experienced in/through space, I will look at different sorts of space as well
as their relation to the issue of diasporic identity. The parents Ashima and
Ashoke, and their American-born children Gogol and Sonja experience the
physical and imagined spaces differently. While Ashima describes her life
as a foreigner as “a sort of lifelong pregnancy” (TN 49), second-generation
characters like Gogol and Moushumi initially call America their home.
The novel, however, complicates the differences in the perception and
conception of diaspora spaces by introducing the relational geographies of
Calcutta and Paris, and shows how these spaces, as well as the diaspora
identities, are fluid, in-between and processual.
After focusing on the novel’s context, its paratexts, and narrative
organization, I will explore physical spaces and spatial practices. The
apartments and the family house where the Gangulis live will be
contrasted with the two houses owned by the Montgomerys and the
 Contested Spaces in Contemporary North American Novels 9

Ratliffs. The Gangulis’ family house on Pemberton Road will be central to

my discussion because this functions as a metaphorical “overcoat” for the
Gangulis and their Bengali friends. This house, which Ashima decides to
sell in the end, is a conflictual space which is defined and practiced
differently by the characters and the dominant discourse. Additionally, the
public spaces in American cities and Calcutta will be examined as well.
Secondly, I will analyze how the dominant discourse of the “model-
minority myth” constructs the private and public spaces of diaspora and
the spatial practices of characters. While the “American” families interact
with space in a way that assumes that they “possess every piece of
landscape, not only the house itself but every tree and blade of grass” (TN
154-55) the immigrant families, and the first-generation members in
particular, live in “perpetual fear of disaster” (TN 148), even in their own
houses. This, I argue, is related to the dominant discourses and
representations, and they will be examined as the conceived spaces of
diaspora. Thirdly, I will explore how three characters, namely Ashima,
Gogol and Moushumi, negotiate the real-and-imagined diaspora spaces.
The novel suggests that these characters experience and negotiate lived
spaces differently. Their accounts show the complexity and relationality of
diaspora spaces, and demonstrate the heterogeneity of diaspora experiences.
The final analytical chapter focuses on Carolyn See’s There Will Never
Be Another You. In her novel See maps post 9/11 Los Angeles, where the
symptoms of risk, uncertainty, anxiety, and fear are experienced by
various characters in different ways. The novel begins with the “news” of
the 9/11 attacks and interrogates how this event affects the various
characters’ lives. The experience of the catastrophic destruction of the
World Trade Center is accompanied by experiences of risks such as
international terrorism, environmental degradation, deterritorialization,
cancer, shattered personal and familial relations, bioterrorism, and
epidemics. In my spatially oriented analysis of the novel, I will turn to the
perspective of risk to examine the processual and relational spaces. Both
terms, risk and space, are highly contested and closely related to one
another. In the same way that spatiality always has a risk dimension, risk has
a spatial dimension: “[t]he spatial dimension is essential for the social
construction of risk, including risk governance and moral judgements about
risk taking and risk distribution” (Müller-Mahn and Doevenspeck 202).
Drawing on recent theorizations about risk, in particular Ulrich Beck’s
“world risk society,” Chapter Five sheds light on the ways in which
literary works participate in the narrativization and communication of the
spatial dimensions of risk. In so doing, I will examine the concept of
“riskscape” as theorized by Detlef Müller-Mahn and Jonathan Everts, and
10 Introduction

combine their insights with the spatial theories that I investigate in the
present study. I will conceptualize riskscapes as produced and productive,
relational, multilayered, and processual. The riskscapes in the novel are
the products of the relations between different spaces; domestic spaces, the
workplace, the city of Los Angeles, and the dominant institutional
representations of these spaces by government officers, and the media. In
an attempt to anticipate and control the catastrophes that might befall the
city, the government maps Los Angeles as an enclosed space targeted by
the danger of international terrorism. For Ulrich Beck, “the narrative of
risk is a narrative of irony” (“Living” 329), and one of the “bitter ironies”
is as follows: “in order to protect their populations from the danger of
terrorism, states increasingly limit civil rights and liberties, with the result
that in the end the open, free society may be abolished, but the terrorist
threat is by no means averted” (“Living” 330). Correspondingly, in See’s
There Will Never Be Another You, the institutionalized claims of Los
Angeles as being under threat from international terrorism contrast with
the characters’ lived spaces which reflect more ambivalent, uncertain, and
new types of risks that resist easy definition and activism. To explore the
contradictions between institutional, top-down risk claims and more
individual and socio-cultural experiences, I will analyze the narrative
spaces in the novel. I will first look at the physical locations at different
scales and examine how they are produced and practiced to reflect and
promote the institutionalized risk and security claims. Secondly, the
representations of spaces will be investigated by focusing on the
discourses projected by the media and government. The conceived spaces
are the dominant ways of representing the physical spaces as infused with
certain types of risks like international and medical terrorism, which affect
both the physical and social production of riskscapes. Thirdly, the lived,
real-and-imagined spaces of the characters Andrea, Danny, Phil, Vernon
and Edith will be examined as alternative spaces to the ways riskscapes are
physically and conceptually produced by the government and the media.
In the conclusion, I will return to the introductory research question of
how literary texts map, represent, and contest spaces in alternative ways.
After comparing the ways that space is represented and produced in the
selected novels, I will evaluate the first chapter’s theoretical premises and
examine how the theoretical framework is modified, negotiated, and
functionalized in the literary works. Bringing together four novels from
different literary and cultural traditions around the issues of space and
identity, the present study seeks to offer new ways of thinking about
spatiality in literary works and thus can be situated within spatially
oriented literary criticism.
 CHAPTER ONE

SPACE, THE SPATIAL TURN,

AND SPATIALLY ORIENTED
LITERARY STUDIES

“For the future to be open, space must be open too.”

(Massey, For Space 12)

“Mapping, like language, is creation more than representation,

and so it is not illogical to think of fiction as cartography. 
The only way a country can be truly mapped is with its stories.” 
(Aritha van Herk 80)

In a well-known and often quoted sentence, Fredric Jameson contends

that “our daily life, our psychic experience, our cultural languages, are
today dominated by categories of space rather than categories of time”
(Postmodernism, 16). Although it is a vital and critical concept for
understanding the contemporary world, space was overlooked in the
analysis and interpretation of individual and social experiences for a long
time. Similarly, conventional and redundant attitudes toward space, as well
as the tendency in both everyday and academic use to regard the meaning
of the term as self-evident, today seem rather problematic. Since the late
1960s, the so-called spatial turn in the social sciences and humanities has
led scholars to continuously reassess the centrality of space. Since then,
scholars from various disciplines have approached space as one “of the
most diffuse, ill-defined and inchoate concepts” (Hubbard, “Space/Place”
41). Literary studies has engaged extensively with issues of spatiality and
the study in hand seeks to investigate the ways space has been, and can
further be, addressed, represented, and reconsidered in literary works.
In the first part of this chapter I will introduce the concept of space as
contested, relational, and processual. Furthermore, I will provide an
overview of the complex connections between space, place, identity, and
politics, and will refer to the distinctions made between space and place.
The second part will focus on the spatial turn in the social sciences and
humanities by discussing the works of three inaugurating figures: Henri
12 Chapter One

Lefebvre, Edward Soja and Doreen Massey. The third part will offer an
overview of how space is approached in literary studies. After
investigating space, narrative, geography, and literature in relation to each
other, I will discuss how literary cartography, as a spatially oriented
literary approach, theorizes space as an analytical category in the analysis
of literary works. This part will introduce the theoretical framework of my
study, my approach to the selected novels and the ways in which I analyze
them from spatially oriented perspectives.

1.1 Space, Identity, Politics, and Place:

Theorizing Space as a Contested Concept
Defining space as such is a highly ambitious and problematic endeavor.
For Doreen Massey, space is “one of the most obvious of things which is
mobilised as a term in a thousand different contexts, but whose potential
meanings are all too rarely explicated or addressed” (“Philosophy” 27).
Therefore, space, contrary to one’s immediate inclination to regard it as
something which is already known, is a term that requires more critical
attention. One of the many reasons for the underestimation of space’s
importance in humans’ individual and social lives is the conventional
notion of space. As many critics have convincingly argued, Western
thought has traditionally defined space either as a distance between entities
or as an empty container which can house all sorts of things.1 As a
counterpart of space, time was, and sometimes still is, prioritized as the
cause of action, change, and development.2 Space has often been regarded

1
The Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, for instance, defines “space” in terms of
emptiness: “an amount of an area or of a place that is empty or that is available for
use,” “the quality of being large and empty, allowing you to move freely” (“Space”
Def.1. oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com. Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, Aug. 2015.
Web) The Oxford English Dictionary defines it in relation to time: “Time which is
free or available for doing something; leisure; opportunity” (“Space” Def.1.
oed.com. Oxford English Dictionary, Aug. 2015. Web).
2
Michel Foucault explains that “Space was treated as the dead, the fixed, the
undialectical, the immobile. Time on the contrary, was richness, fecundity, life,
dialectic” (Power/Knowledge 70). Likewise, Massey points to the dichotomy
between time and space, and argues that space was long seen as “not time”
(“Politics” 71). She further claims that the most widespread notion about space is
“the view of space which, in one way or another, defines it as stasis, and as utterly
opposed to time” (“Politics” 67). Her article titled “Politics and Time/Space”
includes a detailed overview of the reasons why temporality was understood as
dynamism in Western thought, with a particular focus on Ernesto Laclau’s work.
 Space, the Spatial Turn, and Spatially Oriented Literary Studies 13

as an empty, stable, and neutral object which, for many spatial theorists, is
a political and ideological choice for the justification of dominant
operations on the spatial level. To be more precise, the everyday
conception of space as empty, natural, and homogeneous leads to the
invisibility of the processes that produce space and which space produces.
As Soja explains: “We must be insistently aware of how space can be
made to hide consequences from us, how relations of power and discipline
are inscribed into the apparently innocent spatiality of social life, how
human geographies become filled with politics and ideology” (Postmodern
6). An immigrant neighborhood, for instance, is not just a natural, empty
space filled with individuals but a space that is produced by a number of
processes including social, economic, political, ideological, and cultural
ones. Despite earlier attempts that sought to question the objective and
vacuum-like status of space,3 it was only with the spatial turn in the social
sciences and humanities in the 1960s that the term began to be approached
more openly and critically in disciplines like geography and sociology. In
literary and cultural studies, the conceptualization of space also underwent
a transition from a simplistic notion to a more complex one. Although
space had long been equated only with narrative settings, functioning as a
box or backstage for action, since the 1990s the terms space and place
have received more critical attention in literary studies.
As David Harvey avers, “[h]ow we represent space and time in theory
matters, because it affects how we and others interpret and then act with
respect to the world” (Postmodernity 205). A large number of studies have
re-theorized space; many of these emphasize that social and spatial
phenomena are mutually related. With the reassertion of space in the social
sciences and the humanities, space is no longer conceptualized as a
passive, empty container or a category independent of human beings.
Various disciplines, ranging from mathematics to architecture and
cognitive science have approached and conceptualized it differently. This
shows that space is a contested concept. What I prefer to call spatial
studies has engaged with the myriad ways space is related to society and
social life. This school of thought has sought to demonstrate that it is an
indispensable constituent and active participant in social relations and
politics. My understanding of space as contested is informed by various

3
As Russell West-Pavlov argues, Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, for
instance, “showed that space appeared to have different consistencies, so that
depending on the position of an experiencing or perceiving subject time might
stretch or shrink accordingly” (16). Similarly, German sociologist Georg Simmel
called for attention to the social dimensions of space as early as 1903.
14 Chapter One

studies from different disciplines that emphasize the active, always changing,
relational, political, and liminal aspects of space.
Identity and politics have often been examined as being closely related
to the ways space is produced and productive. Like space, theorizations of
identity have recently undergone conspicuous changes. Many studies,
from a wide range of disciplines, have conceptualized identities as socially
constructed and performed, in clear juxtaposition with the traditional
notions of identity as a stable, self-sustaining, and essential entity. Identity
politics has been a broadly explored and contested field since the 1960s,
when a number of movements called attention to the visibility of various
identities that had been oppressed until that time. More recently,
postmodern conceptualizations have explored the processes through which
identities are discursively and relationally constructed. In the process of
such conceptual developments, the relationship between identity and space
has been redescribed as intricate and disputed. Space and identity produce,
and are produced by, one another. As James Martin argues, “[s]patiality is
widely recognised as a key dimension in the formation of social identities:
identities are understood to be generated in relation to specific places, both
territorial and social” (98). Writers like bell hooks, Gloria Anzaldúa and
Homi Bhabha have addressed the relationship between identity, place, and
space, and pointed toward the fact that spaces can be seen as sites of
resistance for individuals and communities to develop and perform
alternative identities. Drawing on the works of such critics, I will examine
identities as relational processes that are constructed and performed socio-
spatially. Categories that constitute identities such as race, gender and
immigration are spatially performed and negotiated. As I seek to
demonstrate through my analysis, identity is a central category in each of
the four novels. Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, for instance, is a highly
intriguing text for such an enquiry since it investigates a number of
identity-related issues in/in-between a wide range of narrative spaces and
perspectives. The diasporic identities are developed through the
characters’ constant movements from Calcutta to Boston, New York and
their re-settlements in these spaces.
 Space, the Spatial Turn, and Spatially Oriented Literary Studies 15

Recent spatial theorizations have also emphasized the fact that space is
not neutral and innocent, but permeated with politics.4 Therefore, thinking
critically about space necessitates consideration of the political aspects of
the concept. A broad range of interdisciplinary work has addressed the
complex relationship between space and politics. Edward Said’s work, for
instance, introduces his notion of “imaginative geographies”. According to
Said, spaces are not only physically, but also imaginatively, culturally and
ideologically constructed. He points out that colonization, imperialism and
Eurocentric orientalism were, and still are, about culture and imagination
as well as politics, economics and military power. The imagination
processes that Said mentions include a broad range of physical and
ideological spaces and the everyday places that individuals use such as
classrooms and hospitals. Being aware of the spatial dimension of politics
and the political dimension of spatiality is important because any
resistance or opposition to neo-colonialist, imperialist and orientalist
operations should address the spatial and geographical dimensions: “If
there is anything that radically distinguishes the imagination of anti-
imperialism, it is the geographical element. Imperialism after all is an act
of geographical violence through which virtually every space in the world
is explored, charted, and finally brought under control” (Said, Culture and
Imperialism 225).
Henri Lefebvre pointed out the political aspects of space and spatiality
from a Marxist perspective. In Everyday Life in the Modern World he
examines the connection between capitalism and urban space-making, and
suggests that “[t]he great event of the last few years is that the effects of
industrialisation on a superficially modified capitalist society of production
and property have produced their results: a programmed everyday life in
its appropriate urban setting. Such a process was favored by the
disintegration of the traditional town and the expansion of urbanism” (65,
italics in original). For Lefebvre, contemporary capitalism has developed
its own “abstract space,” which, in turn, has turned out to be essential for
the survival and commodification of capital. Moreover, individuals’
conceptions and spatial practices have been defined and appropriated by

4
In her article, “Politics and Space/Time,” Doreen Massey briefly lists some
remarks by contemporary scholars who address the relationship between space and
politics as follows: “‘It is space not time that hides consequences from us’
(Berger); ‘The difference that space makes’ (Sayer); ‘That new spatiality implicit
in the postmodern’ (Jameson); ‘It is space rather than time which is the
distinctively significant dimension of contemporary capitalism’ (Urry); and ‘All
the social sciences must make room for an increasingly geographical conception of
mankind’ (Braudel)” (65).
16 Chapter One

the abstract space of capitalism as well. Similarly, Soja argues for the
spatial aspects of politics as well as the political aspects of space. His idea
of the “socio-spatial dialectic” refers to the fact that “social processes
shap[e] spatiality [and] at the same time spatiality shapes social processes”
(Seeking 18), and suggests that “the geographies in which we live can have
both positive and negative effects on our lives” (Seeking 19). Such effects,
however, are not natural, but are produced both physically and ideologically.
Soja connects these propositions about the spatiality of human life with
social and political action in his theory of “spatial justice” and argues that
(in)justice has a spatial dimension. Seeking justice should necessitate
consideration of spatial dimensions. Since space is bound to politics in
complex ways, the spatially oriented literary analyses of the selected
novels will examine the political aspects of space. As already discussed in
the Introduction, the analytical chapters will bring together different
perspectives on the ways space is represented, produced and contested in
literary works. Colonialism, spatial justice, diaspora, and risk, among
many other issues, will be investigated from spatial perspectives.
Furthermore, I seek to show the ways these four other issues might
contribute to spatial theory in the social sciences in general and in literary
studies in particular.
To show how space is a contested concept, the term place must also be
discussed here. Both terms are used extensively in everyday and academic
contexts, although they are not distinguished clearly. While space and
place are used synonymously and often arbitrarily with other words such
as environment, location, territory or area, many spatial theorists, and
cultural geographers in particular, have maintained that there are
distinctions to be made between them. In Marxist geography, for instance,
space is approached mostly with a particular emphasis on its socially
produced, consumed and political aspects. Place, however, “emerges as a
particular form of space, one that is created through acts of naming as well
as through the distinctive activities and imaginings associated with
particular social spaces” in Lefebvre and other Marxist geographers’
accounts (Hubbard, “Space/Place” 42). Human geography is more
interested in place than space; place is space with meaning and human
experience. Tim Cresswell, for instance, explains that “[s]pace, then, has
been seen in distinction to place as a realm without meaning […] When
humans invest meaning in a portion of space and then become attached to
it in some way (naming is one such way) it becomes a place” (10).
However, such a distinction between the two terms brings more issues
to the surface. Once place is conceptualized as a type of space to which
people ascribe emotions and feelings depending on their experiences, it is
 Space, the Spatial Turn, and Spatially Oriented Literary Studies 17

“often equated with security and enclosure, whereas space is associated

with freedom and mobility” (Hubbard, “Space/Place” 43). Following the
same line of thought, a further distinction is made between space and place
with regard to movement and stillness. Yi-Fu Tuan explains “if we think
of space as that which allows movement, then place is pause; each pause
in movement makes it possible for location to be transformed into place”
(6). Some theorists point out that space is prioritized over place under the
influence of globalization and capitalism. Marc Augé, for instance,
“argues that there are now many ‘non-places’ solely associated with the
accelerated flow of people and goods around the world that do not act as
localised sites for the celebration of ‘real’ cultures” (Hubbard, “Space/Place”
44).
Although such definitions point toward significant distinctions, they
run the risk of establishing a clearly bordered dualism between these two
concepts, which seem to have a more complex relationship with one
another. Places, private houses for instance, can no longer be seen as
immune to the political, global and capitalist flows of information and
practices. Similarly, spaces can also be imbued with meanings depending
on the use and gaze of other people. Therefore, the boundaries between
these terms seem to have been blurred with the recent changes in the
understanding of the impact of power relations and globalization
processes. More recent insights accordingly emphasize the contested and
unfixed natures of space and place. For instance, Doreen Massey seeks a
global and more “progressive sense of place” in her Space, Place, and
Gender, and theorizes the concept as “constructed out of a particular
constellation of social relations” (154). Place, like space, is a contested
concept, and its various dimensions have been defined differently
depending on perspectives.
As will become clear in the following analytical chapters, I will focus
more on space than place. The concept of space that I employ in this study,
however, already stresses its radically open, real, and imagined
characteristics. Such an approach to space does not neglect the aspects that
have been popularly reserved for place. Therefore, I subscribe to the
postmodernist position of conceptualizing both space and place as “real-
and-imagined assemblages constituted via language” (Hubbard,
“Space/Place” 47). In this, I follow other studies in literary and cultural
studies. For Sheila Hones, the difficulty in distinguishing between space
and place is representative of the problems that can occur in an
interdisciplinary work which draws on geographical and narratological
approaches. She argues that contemporary geography’s “self-conscious
interrogation of spatial terminology […] can, for example, produce
18 Chapter One

problems if the imperative to think and rethink the nature of basic concepts
such as space, place, distance, and scale becomes a source of frustration
for scholars working in other fields” (75). She gives the example of
literary scholar Susan S. Friedman, who refuses to make any distinction
between space and place, for “such distinctions (rampant in geography and
social theory) vary considerably and are often contradictory” (qtd. in
Hones 75). For the kind of spatially oriented analysis of literary texts that I
seek to accomplish in this study, it is not practical to stick to such
distinctions either. Without denying the various distinctions that have been
mentioned above, I approach both concepts as unfixed, contested, and
significant for the critical space that the novels open. The analyses of the
lived spaces, in particular, will stress the subjective, imagined, and
rhizomatic features of the spaces that the characters negotiate in the
novels.

1.2 The Spatial Turn in the Social Sciences

Conceptualizations of space as a container or backdrop for human
actions prior to the spatial turn either relegated the concept to a subject
matter for Euclidean geometry and mathematics or approached it as a
subjective experience.5 From the nineteenth century to the second half of
the twentieth century, time and history continued to be seen as superior to
and more important than space and geography in understanding and
interpreting social phenomena. Especially after the end of World War II,
the belief in science and objectivity dominated geography, and space was
theorized within rational, statistical and mathematical patterns. However,
this so-called quantitative revolution and essentialist absolutism aroused a
counter-reaction. With the spatial turn in the second half of the twentieth

5
René Descartes understood space as a geographical extension and expansion
within three dimensions. Space, within this line of thought, is considered to be a
res extensa, which, in turn, leads to the conceptualization of space as stable,
objective and geometrically measurable. For Immanuel Kant, however, space is the
necessary condition of our experience (experianta) of the physical world along
with time. To be more precise, Kant argues that space and time are the a priori
existences which are neither mental categories nor completely empirical things.
For a succinct overview of the ways space has been approached in Western
thought since René Descartes, see Tally’s Spatiality.
Another random document with
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 CHAPITRE VIII

DU JOURNALISME

« Un journaliste, me demanda Pamphile avec une certaine

appréhension, un journaliste est-il un écrivain ?
— J’entends ce que vous voulez dire, et la cause intime de votre
souci. Vous songez que, si vous vous aperceviez un jour que vous
n’avez point l’imagination créatrice, et pourtant des idées, une façon
vive, personnelle, ou simplement suffisante de les présenter, enfin
l’esprit critique au lieu de l’esprit d’invention, vous pourriez, au lieu
de faire « de la littérature », « faire du journalisme », tout uniment.
Non pas sans doute du journalisme politique — c’est une tout autre
affaire — mais de la chronique ou de la critique littéraire…
— C’est à peu près ça…
— En somme, vous considérez, pour un écrivain, le journalisme
comme un pis-aller ?
— Mon Dieu…
— Vous le pensez. Dites que vous le pensez, mon ami, et que
vous n’osez le dire, par politesse, de plus parce que vous m’aimez
bien, que vous ne voulez pas me faire de la peine, et que vous
savez que je suis aussi journaliste !
— Eh bien, oui !…
 — Il y a en effet, dans la gent écrivaine, une hiérarchie
implicitement admise. Si l’on range à part les dramaturges, qui sont
jalousés pour les fructueux bénéfices de leur industrie, mais dont on
admet qu’ils peuvent, selon le cas, être ou n’être point, quel que soit
leur succès, des écrivains méritant ce nom, l’opinion générale
distingue des degrés de dignité qui vont du poète et du romancier au
journaliste, avec des nuances, toute une série de nuances
intermédiaires, dans le roman, la poésie, le journalisme.
— Est-ce injuste ?
— Oui et non. C’est injuste parce qu’une chronique, une simple
chronique, peut manifester beaucoup plus d’originalité, d’invention,
de talent, que tout un roman ; parce qu’un journaliste peut avoir, sur
l’esprit de son temps, une action plus forte, et j’ose dire plus durable,
qu’un romancier. Ce n’est pas cependant sans motif pour deux
raisons principales.
« La première est que l’œuvre du journaliste est éphémère, sinon
dans son influence qui, je viens de le dire, peut être durable, du
moins quant à la réputation, la gloire, si vous voulez, qu’il en retire.
Même quand il signe, quelques jours après la publication de son
article, s’il arrive qu’on sache encore ce qu’il a dit, nul ne sait plus
que c’est lui qui l’a dit. Personne jamais ne relit un journal vieux de
deux jours !… La seconde est que le poète, le romancier, jouissent
de toute l’indépendance de leur pensée et de l’expression de leur
pensée.
« Vous connaissez le vieil axiome juridique : « La parole est libre,
la plume est serve ». Je dirais volontiers : « Le livre ou le poème est
libre, l’article est serf. » Oh ! dans une certaine mesure seulement !
Mais cette mesure existe. Elle existe parce qu’un journal est
nécessairement l’organe d’un parti, et qu’on y peut dire certaines
choses, non pas d’autres ; parce qu’aussi le journal est lu par un
grand nombre de personnes et qu’il y faut alors tenir compte d’une
opinion moyenne, d’une moralité moyenne, respecter de plus les
enfants et les femmes sous les yeux desquels il peut tomber. Dans
un livre, au contraire, je ne dépends plus de personne. C’est affaire
entre moi, mon éditeur qui a accepté l’ouvrage, et mon lecteur.
 — N’y a-t-il pas de l’hypocrisie dans cette distinction ?
— Prenez que c’est une convention. Mais l’existence d’une
communauté sociale repose sur des conventions… Après tout, c’est
aussi une convention qu’au théâtre le dramaturge — même à cette
heure, où il s’est relativement libéré — doive observer, à beaucoup
d’égards, une plus grande réserve que le romancier. Toujours pour le
même motif : le théâtre, comme le journal, s’adresse à un grand
nombre de gens à la fois.
— Donc vous considérez comme légitime cette hiérarchie qui
donne le pas, dans le monde des lettres, à l’écrivain de livres sur
l’écrivain de journal ?
— Pamphile, je vais vous révéler un grand secret, ne le répétez à
personne ! Cette hiérarchie est en train de s’effondrer, comme toutes
les hiérarchies, qui ne durent jamais éternellement, sauf celle de
notre sainte Église : le ver est dans le fruit, pour parler comme
l’excellent M. Micawber, dans David Copperfield.
— En vérité ?
— En vérité… Parce que presque tous les écrivains, presque
tous les romanciers de ce temps se sont mis à « faire » du
journalisme ! J’en pourrais citer de nombreux et illustres exemples ;
je me contenterai d’un seul : M. Maurice Barrès. Et je vais me
permettre d’exprimer un soupçon qui me hante : que si, pour M.
Barrès, publier un livre était une gloire, écrire un article était pour lui
un plaisir… Dois-je encore vous rappeler des hommes de talent, tels
que Catulle Mendès, et le plus grand de tous, Théophile Gautier,
dont la vie entière fut partagée entre le livre, la poésie et le
journalisme ? Enfin, de nos jours même, M. Henri Béraud pratique,
de la barre fixe du roman au trapèze du journalisme, une voltige
intéressante.
— Ainsi, les barrières tombent ?
— Mettons seulement qu’elles ont des fissures, par où l’on
voisine, d’un champ à l’autre. Dans l’apparence, le préjugé
hiérarchique demeure : la preuve c’est qu’il est moins malaisé pour
un romancier d’écrire dans un journal — de toutes parts même on
l’en sollicite — que pour un journaliste qui se risque à publier un
roman d’être agréé, par les romanciers, comme un authentique
confrère.
— Y a-t-il à cela une raison ?
— Aucune, si ce n’est d’ordre commercial. Un écrivain qui a
commencé par le roman, s’il devient chroniqueur ne perd pas un
seul des lecteurs de ses livres. Il en accroît plutôt le nombre. Un
journaliste qui aborde le roman éprouve de la difficulté à se faire lire
comme romancier. Devant la couverture jaune, bleue ou verte de
son ouvrage, le public doute : « N’ai-je pas déjà lu ce qu’il me
propose dans les feuilles publiques ?… » De là vient qu’un
journaliste mué en romancier se trouve souvent, même s’il le désire,
dans l’impossibilité de renoncer à sa besogne de chroniqueur, qui
l’accable : celle-ci continue à rester pour lui un gagne-pain
nécessaire.
— Alors il est préférable de se faire d’abord un nom comme
auteur d’ouvrages de longue haleine, avant d’aborder le
journalisme ?
— Si on le peut, oui !… Mais vous oubliez le point de départ de
cette conversation. Nous avons admis que le journalisme convenait
particulièrement aux débutants, même d’avenir, qui ne se sentent
pas encore d’imagination créatrice. Or ce peut être le cas de
beaucoup de jeunes gens qui acquerront plus tard cette imagination,
au contact de la vie, et par les spectacles que leur aura offert le
monde. Et où seraient-ils mieux placés que dans le journalisme pour
assister à ces spectacles ?
— Dans ces conditions, la décision pour un jeune homme est
embarrassante.
— Je l’avoue : d’autant plus que le labeur du journaliste, étant
dispersé, est accablant. Il faut, quand la besogne quotidienne est
achevée, un grand courage pour se dire : « Maintenant, ce n’est pas
fini ; je m’en vais travailler pour moi. »
— Mais enfin, si l’on se décidait ? Comment faire alors pour
entrer dans un journal ?
 — Vous m’accordez une petite expérience de la matière ? Eh
bien ! c’est un problème que, malgré cette expérience, je ne suis pas
jusqu’ici parvenu à résoudre. Qui que vous soyez, balayeur,
ingénieur ou millionnaire, si vous avez écrit un livre, il ne vous reste
plus qu’à trouver un éditeur ; et, si ce livre est bon, ou simplement
acceptable, il y a de grandes chances qu’il soit publié. Tandis que je
ne sais pas encore, à l’heure qu’il est, comment on entre dans un
journal, comment on arrive à y faire ses premières armes. Il y en a
mille manières et pas une seule.
— Vous plaisantez !
— Pas le moins du monde. Voilà une carrière où l’on ne vous
demande — c’est sans doute la seule parmi les carrières libérales —
aucun diplôme, aucun certificat d’origine. Vous pouvez arriver de
n’importe où, vous entrez n’importe comment. Mais c’est
précisément en cela, je suppose, que gît la difficulté. Cela me
rappelle le mot d’un enfant interné dans un patronage au règlement
largement humanitaire : « Tu n’as pas envie de t’enfuir ? —
M’enfuir ? répond l’enfant presque douloureusement, comment
ferais-je ? Il n’y a pas de murs ! »
« Dans le journalisme, Pamphile, il n’y a pas de murs, et par
conséquent pas de portes. Elles sont partout, et nulle part. »
 CHAPITRE IX

TYPES DE JOURNALISTES

Pamphile parti, je me prends à songer aux hasards qui président

aux « vocations » dans le journalisme. Bien des visages, bien des
noms, s’évoquent à ma mémoire. Je ne veux retenir ici que ceux de
journalistes qui ne sont plus.
Il y avait aux Débats, il y a une vingtaine d’années encore, André
Heurteau. La plus forte et la plus vaste culture. Une vigueur
polémique dont j’ai connu peu d’égales. Le sens des formules
incisives qui se fixent à jamais dans l’esprit. Après un si long temps
écoulé je me rappelle encore la fin d’un de ces « papiers » — écrit
d’un trait d’autant plus sanglant qu’on le lisait dans une feuille
réputée légitimement pour la réserve de ses attitudes politiques. Il
s’agissait d’un président du Conseil qui, pour se débarrasser —
disait-on — d’un adversaire au Parlement, venait de le nommer
gouverneur général d’une de nos grandes colonies. « Que M. X… ne
s’y trompe pas, disait Heurteau, il y a tels marchés qui
compromettent autant l’homme sans scrupules qui les propose que
le pauvre diable qui les accepte, le tentateur que le tenté, l’acheteur
que le vendu. » Et la phrase allait, allait ! Elle avait du nombre, elle
avait du poids, elle avait de la férocité. Si l’on composait un jour une
anthologie du style pamphlétaire, cet article y devrait trouver une
place, et la plus brillante.
 Or Heurteau n’était entré aux Débats que par hasard, à quarante
ans. Jusque-là, il n’avait jamais donné une ligne dans un journal ; il
n’y avait jamais songé ; il était, de son métier, chef de je ne sais plus
quel bureau au ministère de la Justice.
Mais il venait parfois, à cinq heures, à la parlotte qui avait lieu
quotidiennement, le journal enfin composé et imprimé, dans la salle
de rédaction des Débats. Je n’ai jamais rien connu de plus
exceptionnel en qualité que les conversations qui se tenaient à cette
heure, journellement, dans cette vieille maison de la rue des Prêtres-
Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois. J’y ai vu Renan, le général de Galliffet,
qui déconcertait souvent Taine par des souvenirs militaires et
algériens d’une saveur plus que gaillarde : mais Taine,
consciencieusement, prenait des notes…
Un jour, à propos de je ne sais quel incident politique, Heurteau
se mit à parler… Le directeur des Débats à cette époque, M. Patinot,
qui avait lui-même infiniment d’esprit, et du plus dru, lui dit tout à
coup : « Mais, Heurteau, si vous nous écriviez ça !… » Heurteau
passa dans un cabinet, à côté, et une heure plus tard revenait avec
son premier article. Il en donna d’autres, presque tous les jours,
pendant un quart de siècle. Une minute avait suffi pour le révéler à
lui-même et aux autres.
Quand il avait terminé sa tâche, et moi la mienne, beaucoup plus
modeste, je le reconduisais souvent, à pied, jusque chez lui, rue
Oudinot, dans un vieux pavillon dont une moitié était occupée par
François Coppée, son ami intime. Je me souviens qu’un jour nous
parlions de Flaubert. Il me dit, avec une sorte d’impatience :
« Je n’aime pas Bouvard et Pécuchet.
— Pourquoi ?
— Quand on vient de lire ça, on ne peut plus écrire… C’est
toutes les mêmes bêtises que nous disons sérieusement, tous les
jours, dans le métier. Ça décourage ! »
Je me rappelle aussi Paul Bourde. Un saint laïque, et dont la
carrière, sinon la vocation, fut davantage encore imprévue et
diverse. Car il avait, lui, dès son adolescence, voulu « faire » du
journalisme. C’était le fils d’un humble employé des douanes, retraité
avec mille deux cents francs de pension, en Bresse. Il n’avait jamais
été qu’à l’école primaire, mais il lisait, lisait, accumulait une vaste
somme de connaissances, dispersées d’abord, mais dont, à la fin de
sa vie, il avait fini par construire un système, presque une religion.
Ses yeux, alors, étaient devenus mauvais : il l’attribuait à ce que,
pour lire et travailler, il n’avait jamais, dans son enfance, possédé de
lampe, rien que le feu de l’âtre, dans la misérable maison de son
père.
Il avait comme condisciple, à l’école de son village, Jules Mary,
qui devint un romancier populaire. Tous deux partirent pour Paris,
vers 1870, avec l’intention de devenir « de grands hommes ».
Bourde s’estima fort heureux d’y trouver une petite place de
« nègre » au Moniteur Universel, je crois… Puis la guerre éclata, et
les trente sous par jour payés aux gardes mobiles lui assurèrent du
pain. Peu lui importait du reste : il était « dans » un journal, il en
respirait l’atmosphère. Il devint reporter, secrétaire de rédaction d’un
journal illustré, reporter encore. Sa soif de tout savoir le poussait à
voyager. C’est ainsi qu’il entra dans le grand reportage. Il fit une
enquête en Corse, une autre en Algérie, pour le compte du Temps.
Elles ont été réunies en volumes et méritent encore qu’on les
consulte. Elles demeurent parmi les documents les plus sérieux,
jusqu’à ce jour, qui existent. Rien de plus original et de plus juste à la
fois que les vues de Bourde sur la Corse, en particulier.
Il écrivit aussi un roman campagnard, Au bon vieux temps, un
peu pauvre de forme, mais d’une qualité d’observation et de
sympathie telle que j’en souhaiterais la réédition… Puis il repartit,
cette fois, pour l’Indo-Chine, le Tonkin, dont la conquête
commençait. Sa santé avait toujours laissé à désirer. Il contracta en
Extrême-Orient une dysenterie et une maladie cutanée dont il ne
guérit jamais entièrement et qui abrégèrent ses jours. Il ne s’en
inquiéta pas : je n’ai jamais connu d’homme dont l’esprit dominât
plus entièrement le corps.
Il alla en Tunisie… C’est ici l’épisode le plus extraordinaire et le
plus glorieux de cette existence singulièrement pleine. Sur la
Tunisie, selon sa coutume, il avait tout lu, y compris les auteurs
anciens, en traduction, puisqu’il ignorait le grec et le latin. Ces
auteurs signalaient, sur le territoire de la Régence actuelle, « des
forêts ». Bourde n’en vit pas ; il n’y en avait pas, il n’y en avait jamais
eu. Armé des ouvrages de botanique générale qu’il avait dépouillés,
il pensa :
« Les arbres, pour croître, exigent une précipitation pluviale de
cinquante centimètres cubes, au minimum, par mètre carré et par
an. Cette quantité d’eau n’est jamais tombée en Tunisie depuis le
début de la période géologique contemporaine. Qu’est-ce que mes
textes peuvent signifier ? »
Il s’était lié avec un jeune secrétaire d’ambassade, qui se trouvait
être un latiniste et un helléniste distingué — il est aujourd’hui
ambassadeur. — Bourde lui communiqua ses textes. Marcilly lui
répondit : « Il y a erreur de traduction. Il ne faut pas lire « forêts »,
mais « jardins » ou « vergers ».
Alors Bourde comprit. Il retourna aux lieux « boisés » signalés par
les vieux auteurs. Il n’y trouva pas un arbre, mais partout les ruines
de moulins à huile datant de l’époque romaine. Le mystère était
expliqué : il s’agissait de jardins d’oliviers !… Les Bédouins
conquérants les avaient détruits. Mais il n’y avait qu’à replanter les
oliviers, ils pousseraient. Bourde dessina la carte de l’aire où se
rencontraient ces moulins à huile, et déclara : « Sur toute cette
superficie les oliviers viendront ! »
Il y en a actuellement douze cent mille, autour de Sfax surtout. Ils
rapportent des millions ; c’est une des fortunes de la Tunisie. Voilà
ce qu’a fait un journaliste qui avait la passion de savoir et de
raisonner pratiquement sur ce qu’il savait. Cet homme devrait avoir
sa statue…
On l’avait nommé directeur de l’Agriculture en Tunisie.
Récompense méritée… Il abandonna cette situation pour aller à
Madagascar, en qualité de secrétaire général, immédiatement après
la prise de Tananarive par nos troupes. Il rêvait y faire de grandes
choses : la chute du régime civil, qui fut remplacé par le
gouvernement militaire de Gallieni, mit fin à cet espoir… Alors il
revint à Paris, et sans une plainte, sans même un sentiment de
rancune contre ceux qui l’abandonnaient, redevint journaliste,
simplement, uniquement journaliste, jusqu’à sa mort.
… Quand j’y songe, je me dis qu’une carrière de journaliste, telle
que celle-ci, est plus belle, plus féconde, plus glorieuse que celle de
n’importe quel homme de lettres, même le plus grand. Mais les
journalistes ne s’en doutent pas. Ils n’ont pas du tout l’habitude
qu’on parle d’eux, après leur mort. Ils n’y comptent pas…
 CHAPITRE X

POLÉMIQUES LITTÉRAIRES
CONTEMPORAINES

Continuant de s’entraîner méthodiquement à la carrière,

Pamphile lit les jeunes revues et les feuilles littéraires. Au bout de
quelque temps, il me dit :
« Il paraît que Sidoine n’a aucun talent, et qu’Ariste a de
mauvaises mœurs… Mais pour Polydore, Théodote et Micromégas,
ce sont de purs génies.
— D’où tenez-vous cela ?
— De la Foudre, journal jadis exclusivement politique, mais
devenu, à ce qu’on affirme, le principal organe littéraire
contemporain… Ah ! ce qu’il en raconte, sur Sidoine et Ariste, ce
qu’il en raconte…
— Pamphile, répondis-je, ne prenez pas ces belles choses trop à
la lettre. Vous n’avez pas lu les journaux qui se publiaient entre 1890
et 1900, et pendant l’affaire Dreyfus. Je parle des journaux
politiques, non littéraires. C’était alors l’époque, en politique, de
l’invective à jet continu. Quatre ou cinq journaux s’en étaient fait une
spécialité, et chacun avait son artiste ès injures et diffamations. Au-
dessous de cette vedette il y avait des sous-vedettes : leur travail
était moins accompli, mais l’expression, plus maladroite, était encore
plus raide. On cultivait le genre, on s’ingéniait chaque jour à le
perfectionner.
— On dirait qu’il en devient ainsi en littérature…
— Laissez-moi continuer… Il y eut des inventions géniales. Je
me souviens d’un pauvre diable de député, qui eut le malheur de
passer ministre, étant parfaitement inconnu. On ne savait
naturellement rien de lui : c’était un honnête homme. Son adresse
n’était même pas dans le Bottin. Le rédacteur d’un de ces journaux
dont je viens de parler s’écria : « Il couche sous les ponts, alors !… »
Cela suffit. Durant tout son ministère, on put lire : « X…, qui couche
sous les ponts ». Rencontrez-vous dans les feuilles politiques
actuelles quoi que ce soit qui rappelle le ton de ces anciennes
polémiques ?
— Non, je vous dis que c’est en littérature…
— Attendez, Pamphile, j’y arriverai… Dans les controverses
politiques on est aujourd’hui bénin, bénin. Tout, jusqu’à « je vous
hais », se dit presque poliment. Et même on ne dit plus rien du tout.
Les journaux sont comme les belles femmes qui croient n’avoir pas
besoin d’ouvrir la bouche pour plaire. La consigne est de ronfler.
— Il est vrai. Mais je croyais que ç’avait toujours été comme ça…
— C’est que vous êtes jeune. Dans ces mêmes journaux la
critique littéraire tenait jadis très peu de place. On s’y souciait de la
littérature autant qu’une morue de la précession des équinoxes. Et
quand par hasard ces feuilles parlaient d’un écrivain, c’était presque
toujours en termes abrégés, ou bien dans des notes de publicité
payée, dithyrambiques.
« Aujourd’hui, changement à vue. Non seulement il se publie
deux ou trois journaux hebdomadaires uniquement consacrés à la
littérature, aux beaux-arts, à la musique ; mais des journaux
quotidiens, assez plats quand ils traitent de politique, se sont
appliqués à recruter la clientèle qui leur manquait un peu en
ménageant une place de choix aux questions littéraires, et surtout
aux polémiques littéraires, conduites avec la même âpreté, la même
fureur, la même iniquité que jadis les polémiques politiques.
« Il y a plusieurs républiques des Camarades dans la république
des Lettres, et qui se traitent, réciproquement, en ennemis : « Ah ! tu
ne trouves pas de mérite au bouquin d’Un Tel qui est de ma coterie !
Attends un peu, tu vas voir. Ton père a été au bagne ! Ta mère à
Saint-Lazare… Et où étais-tu, pendant la guerre ? »
« Où étais-tu pendant la guerre ? » Pamphile, c’est exactement
ce qu’on demandait, après 1870, aux candidats à un siège
parlementaire. Ce sont maintenant Vadius et Trissotin qui se posent
réciproquement cette question.
— Vous n’exagérez qu’à peine.
— Voyez-vous, Pamphile, on a transféré la polémique de la
politique à la littérature. On est, en littérature, de droite ou de
gauche. On vitupère « l’infâme XIXe siècle » ou bien on crie : « Halte-
là ! Le romantisme est un bloc, il est défendu d’y toucher ! » On fait
un volume énorme, au lieu d’écrire des volumes, parce que le poète
Barbachon des Barbachettes, ce génie, n’a pas été compris dans la
dernière promotion de la Légion d’honneur. Et toujours, par derrière,
ce motif plus ou moins avoué ou dissimulé : « Durand n’est pas de la
bande à Dupont, dont je suis ; Durand n’a aucun talent ! »
Exactement comme jadis en politique.
— Mais d’où cela vient-il ?
— Cela vient justement de ce que les grands journaux ne parlent
plus politique. Alors les polémiques se sont déplacées, déportées
vers la littérature. Un journal où l’on ne prend pas parti, un journal où
il n’est plus question que de la dernière étoile à qui l’on a volé son
dernier collier de perles, ou de la dernière femme coupée en
morceaux, devient un journal ennuyeux. Car il faut bien que les
journalistes — c’est leur métier — diffèrent entre eux sur quelque
chose. Sinon, pourquoi lire l’un plutôt que l’autre ? On n’en lirait plus
aucun si les polémiques littéraires ne bouchaient le trou…
— Cela va-t-il durer longtemps ainsi ?
 — Cela durera tant que durera chez nous cette atonie de la
politique intérieure, légitimée du reste par les soucis de la politique
extérieure, qui continue d’exiger l’union sacrée. Si jamais
l’Allemagne paie, la vie politique reprendra.
— Et alors ?
— Alors il y aura beaucoup moins de polémiques littéraires. Et ce
sera du reste tant pis pour les écrivains. Car il en est des hommes
de lettres comme des politiciens : il est de leur intérêt qu’on parle
d’eux, même en mal. »
 CHAPITRE XI

UNE OPINION POLITIQUE POUR

L’ÉCRIVAIN ?

« Un autre souci m’est venu, me confia Pamphile.

— Bon Dieu, encore ?
— Pour écrire, surtout un roman — tout le monde, maintenant,
écrit des romans, et décidément j’admire le courage des poètes —
convient-il d’adopter une opinion politique, ou d’exclure absolument,
comme le veut M. Eugène Montfort, la politique de mes
préoccupations ?
— Pamphile, de quoi vous inquiétez-vous là ? J’ai lu jadis dans
les Marges, la revue de mon excellent et distingué confrère Montfort,
l’enquête à laquelle il s’est livré à ce sujet ; et il m’a paru discerner,
dans la centaine de réponses qu’il a obtenues, que tous ceux qui
répondaient avaient une opinion politique, même ceux qui
prétendaient n’en pas avoir, et même M. Eugène Montfort : car, pour
démontrer que la politique est chose honteuse, indigne d’un homme
qui tient une plume, il a écrit un roman, d’ailleurs assez bon,
entièrement consacré à dénoncer l’ignominie des politiciens et des
hommes politiques. Haïr la politique et le dire de cette façon,
Pamphile, n’est-ce point, pratiquement, avoir une opinion politique ?
 — C’est un paradoxe !
— Hé, hé !… Voyez-vous, Pamphile, ma conviction est qu’il est
difficile, malgré qu’on en ait, d’écrire dix pages sans que celles-ci
prennent une signification politique. Quand Voltaire écrivait Candide,
ça n’avait pas l’air d’être de la politique. Pourtant, tournant en
dérision cet optimisme qui prétend que tout est pour le mieux dans le
meilleur des mondes, et que par conséquent rien n’est à changer,
Voltaire ouvrait la voie à la Révolution, c’est-à-dire à ce qui change,
ou veut changer. A tout le moins, son pessimisme était un hymne
ironique au progrès, et c’est en partie de la religion du progrès qu’est
issu l’élan des réformes démocratiques du XIXe siècle.
« Même l’Émile de Rousseau, pour ne pas parler de ses autres
ouvrages, sauf Héloïse — et encore ! — aboutit à de la politique : car
il est impossible de préconiser un programme d’éducation sans
souhaiter le faire adopter par toute la communauté sociale ; pour
obtenir ce résultat, il faut que des disciples enthousiastes réclament
des lois, un système ; pour édicter ces lois, établir ce système, il faut
convertir les pouvoirs — ou les renverser.
— Cela veut dire que la littérature peut, ou même doit être
sociale. Je l’admets… Par exemple, en France, à force de prendre
pour lieu commun l’adultère, elle a conduit la police, les tribunaux,
bientôt la législation, à considérer avec d’autres yeux qu’auparavant
l’institution du mariage. Mais cela ne veut pas dire qu’elle soit
politique. Ou alors elle l’est sans le savoir.
— Précisément !… Pamphile, je vous serais reconnaissant si
vous me pouviez montrer quel abîme infranchissable sépare la
critique, ou l’apologie, ou la peinture seulement, d’un état social, et
la politique ? L’un mène inévitablement à l’autre. Il n’est pas possible
d’attaquer, ou de porter aux nues, ou de décrire objectivement cet
état social, sans inspirer au lecteur le désir de le modifier ou de le
défendre. Une fois qu’on en est là, c’est de la politique.
— Soit. Il faudrait donc dire que l’homme de lettres peut
s’abstenir de faire de la politique active — mais que, de toute façon,
même contre sa volonté, il devient un animateur politique.
 — C’est mon avis. Supposez que j’écrive un roman « colonial »
sur les nègres, ou les jaunes, ou même les Français perdus de
Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, ou encore le bagne de Cayenne. Je n’ai
pas du tout l’intention de faire de la politique. Je dis ce que j’ai senti,
comme je l’ai senti. Mais alors l’opinion publique, mais alors les
membres du Parlement, réagiront. Ils se diront : « Comment donc,
ces gens existent ? Et voilà comment ils pensent, vivent, meurent. Il
importe de les traiter de telle ou telle manière. » Ainsi ce livre de
pure littérature deviendra un élément de politique coloniale.
— Je n’y avais pas réfléchi… Ce que vous dites me paraît
pourtant d’autant plus vraisemblable qu’un écrivain, comme tout le
monde, ne saurait s’empêcher d’avoir son idée sur les fins dernières
de l’homme et le mystère de l’après-vie, c’est-à-dire sur la religion ou
sur une religion, et que toute question religieuse, dans un État,
aboutit fatalement à une question politique.
— Vous m’avez compris.
— Cela revient à penser que beaucoup d’œuvres littéraires ont
pour origine, volontairement ou involontairement, une conception
sociale, et par suite politique ?
— C’est bien cela.
— Mais alors, moi, moi ?…
— Écoutez, Pamphile !… Vous comptez, n’est-ce pas, dans votre
génération, des jeunes hommes qui déjà se sont engagés dans la
carrière où vous voulez vous distinguer ? Quelle est leur attitude,
quelles sont leurs tendances politiques ?
— Il me semble qu’ils sont souvent réactionnaires. C’est, dirait-
on, la mode.
— Et quelles étaient les tendances des générations littéraires
précédentes, celles du second Empire ou du gouvernement de
Juillet ?
— Je crois me rappeler qu’elles étaient libérales.
— Oui et non, Pamphile !
— Mais, monsieur…
 — Pamphile, elles étaient simplement, comme aujourd’hui, dans
l’opposition. Car le secret est que, sauf de rares exceptions,
l’écrivain imaginatif est communément dans l’opposition. Cela
s’explique d’une façon bien simple : le présent est toujours rempli de
choses désagréables ou banales. La littérature, voyez-vous, c’est
comme l’« idéal » : la réalité, moins quelque chose — ce qui vous
ennuie. On ne saurait guère créer qu’en se projetant dans l’avenir,
ou en se rejetant dans le passé.
« Les générations littéraires nouvelles, sauf encore quelques
exceptions, semblent préférer le passé. Il y a pour cela quelques
motifs, les uns particuliers à la situation actuelle de la bourgeoisie,
qui a perdu ses privilèges, et, depuis la guerre, n’est pas
matériellement heureuse ; un autre, général, qui est que le passé est
matière à littérature infiniment plus aisée que l’avenir.
— Vous croyez ?
— J’en suis certain. L’avenir est tellement vague, difficile à
distinguer que, sauf pour des imaginations très fortes, telles que
celle de Rosny ou de Wells, il ne peut guère prêter qu’à déclamation
sentimentale ou effusions oratoires, qui peuvent du reste être très
belles ; et c’est à quoi ordinairement se bornèrent les romantiques.
Le passé au contraire est tout chargé, par tradition, par souvenirs,
par les œuvres mêmes des prédécesseurs et l’impression qu’elles
vous ont faite, d’émotions, d’images, de sensibilité. Ceci non
seulement dans le cerveau de l’auteur, mais dans celui du lecteur.
C’est un immense avantage. Il serait pénible d’y renoncer. Il est
permis de dire qu’à cette heure les plus larges lieux communs, ceux
dont l’effet est le plus sûr, sont en arrière, non pas en avant.
— Ni dans le présent ?
— Pamphile, pour voir dans le présent ce qui véritablement y est,
ce qui en constitue les traits définitifs, caractéristiques, il faudrait non
seulement un immense génie, mais un bon sens effrayant. Je n’ose
vous encourager à vous aventurer de ce côté ; ce serait bien
téméraire.
— Mais alors, il faut faire comme les camarades : le Passé ?…
 — Si vous voulez. Mais, aux yeux de la postérité on a autant de
chances d’être pris pour un imbécile en prétendant revenir à ce qui
fut, qu’en prêchant un devenir qu’on ignore. Même un peu plus : car
ce qui fut ne revient jamais, on se trompe ainsi davantage encore, et
l’action qu’on exerce sur ses contemporains, dès qu’ils s’aperçoivent
de votre erreur, est, dans ces conditions, éphémère. »
 CHAPITRE XII

ESPOIRS ET REGRETS

Pamphile m’apporte le dernier roman qu’a couronné l’Académie

Goncourt. Cela fait trois tomes, assez massifs.
« Avez-vous lu ?… demande-t-il.
— Non, dis-je, pas encore. Mais c’est évidemment un ouvrage
considérable. »
Il se met à rire, pensant que je plaisante. Je me montre
légèrement offensé : la plaisanterie serait facile. Je lui affirme que je
parle sérieusement.
« Eh quoi ! fait-il, prendriez-vous l’habitude de juger de
l’importance et de la valeur d’un ouvrage au poids ?
— Cela n’entre nullement dans mes intentions. Mais je m’assure
qu’il n’est pas indifférent, sinon du point de vue purement littéraire,
du moins de celui de l’évolution littéraire, qu’un ouvrage de fiction ait
trois volumes, ou qu’il n’en ait qu’un.
— Ceci est encore un de vos paradoxes !
— Non pas. Observez, Pamphile, qu’aux débuts du romantisme,
et même à sa plus glorieuse époque — ce romantisme dont il est de
mode aujourd’hui de médire, mais qui n’en a pas moins fécondé
notre littérature et laissé des chefs-d’œuvre impérissables —
observez qu’alors les romans n’en finissaient pas. Les Misérables