Mind the Gap : distance et absence dans l’écriture dirigée vers Tu suivi de Le bon chien
Mind the Gap examines the issues of distance and absence in second person fiction. The analysis focuses on Pierre Vadeboncoeur’s L’absence, a hybrid text that is both a philosophical essay and a love letter. L’absence is used as a starting point to highlight the relationship between I and You in two works of fiction that are very different in form and status: Marceline Loridan- Ivens’s Et tu n’es pas revenu and Nathalie Sarraute’s Enfance. Part one-way dialogue, part split narrative, the two works challenge a set of novel concepts such as l’être augmenté (the enhanced being), l’empreinte (the imprint) and l’Ailleurs de l’écriture (the elsewhere of writing), developed by Vadeboncoeur to explain the unique dynamics of second person narratives. To address the other in the other's absence is to transcend that absence in order to create a distance instead and make a commitment to bridge the divide. This paper looks to explain how the distance between narrator and narratee is achieved and how closing that gap is both impossible and essential. Le bon chien is the fragmented story of a narrator who reminisces with her earlier self of many years back about a shared past that she believes she has freed herself from. It is the story of a well-behaved studious child, a dedicated hard-working ballerina, a faded lover—it is the story of a good dog.
Pierre Vadeboncoeur Nathalie Sarraute Marceline Loridan-Ivens Absence Distance Conversation Second person Recipient