Guibert Hervé - Angelic echoes: Hervé Guibert and company

ANGELIC ECHOES:
HERV GUIBERT AND COMPANY

In 1990 Herv Guibert gained wide recognition and notoriety with the publication of lami qui ne ma pas sauv la vie (To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life). This novel, one of the most famous AIDS fictions in French or any language, recounts the battle of the first-person narrator not only with AIDS but also with the medical establishment on both sides of the Atlantic. Photography critic for Le Monde from 1977 to 1985, Guibert was also the co-author (with Patrice Chreau) of a film script, LHomme Bless, which won a Csar in 1984, and author of more than twenty-five books, eight of which have been translated into English.

In this vibrant and unusual study, Ralph Sarkonak examines many intriguing aspects of Guiberts life and production: the connection between his books and his photography, his complex relationship with Roland Barthes and with his friend and mentor Michel Foucault (relationships that were at once literary, intellectual, and personal in each case); the ties between his writing and that of his contemporaries, including Renaud Camus, Frances most prolific gay writer; and his development of an AIDS aesthetic. Using close textual analysis, Sarkonak tracks the convolutions of Guiberts particular form of life-writing, in which fact and fiction are woven into a corpus that evolves from and revolves around his preoccupations, obsessions, and relationships, including his problematic relationship with his own body, both before and after his HIV-positive diagnosis.

Guiberts work is a brilliant example of the emphasis on disclosure that marks recent queer writing in contrast to the denial and cryptic allusion that characterized much of the work by gay writers of previous generations. Yet, as Sarkonak concludes, Guibert treats the notions of falsehood and truth with a postmodern hand: as overlapping constructs rather than mutually exclusive ones or, to use Foucaults expression, as games with truth.

(University of Toronto Romance Series)

RALPH SARKONAK is Professor of French at the University of British Columbia.

Angelic Echoes

Herv Guibert and Company

Ralph Sarkonak

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com

University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2000
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada

ISBN 0-8020-4794-7

Printed on acid-free paper

University of Toronto Romance Series

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Sarkonak, Ralph, 1949

Angelic echoes : Herv Guibert and company

(University of Toronto romance series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8020-4794-7

1. Guibert, Herv Criticism and interpretation. 2. Guibert, Herv Friends and associates. I. Title. II. Series.

PQ2667.U4612Z92 2000 843.914 C00-930074-0

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

In memory of
my friend and colleague Gordon McGregor
who died of AIDS-related illness in 1986

First, I should like to thank Les ditions Gallimard, Les ditions de Minuit, Les ditions du Seuil, and Gai Pied for allowing me to consult their archives. I sincerely thank Albert Dichy and Hlne Favard, who facilitated my always time-pressed research of the Herv Guibert archives housed at the Institut Mmoires de ldition Contemporaine. My research in France was funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, for which I am most thankful. I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Dean of Arts Office and the Dorothy Dallas Fund of the Department of French, Hispanic and Italian Studies of the University of British Columbia. A special debt of gratitude is owed the always helpful people at the interlibrary loan service of the Koerner Library for obtaining books and articles that I had despaired of ever finding. I have been aided by many individuals among whom are numerous students and colleagues, both here in Vancouver and elsewhere whose questions and comments have helped me clarify my ideas. I was extremely privileged to meet several people who knew Herv Guibert: Agathe Gaillard, Christine Guibert, Jrme Lindon, Mathieu Lindon, and one other person whose name I shall not divulge. I am most grateful to Christine Guibert for allowing me to consult the manuscripts of several of Guiberts novels, to include the extracts quoted, and to reproduce the photographs that are part and parcel of Herv Guiberts oeuvre. I should like to thank the following individuals for their help and encouragement, none of whom of course is responsible for any of my interpretations: Jan Baetens, Larry Bongie, Franoise Gaillard, Alec Globe, Richard Hodgson, Alistair MacKay, Gloria Onyeoziri, Charles Porter, Pierre Saint-Amand, Anne Scott, Anne Simpson, Tom Tomlinson, and Michael Worton.

Photographs by Herve Guibert () are courtesy of Christine Guibert.

Ship of Fools, painting by Hieronymus Bosch (), is courtesy of the Muse du Louvre, Paris. Reprinted from Sandra Orienti and Ren de Solier, Hieronymus Bosch.

Saint Sebastian, painting by Sodoma (), from Palazzo Pitti, Florence, is courtesy of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit Culturali. Reprinted from Charles F. Clark, AIDS and the Arrows of Pestilence.

Self-portrait () is courtesy of the The Estate of Robert Mapplethorpe. Copyright 1988.

After the Duel, painting by Antonio Mancini (), is courtesy of Museo Civico, Turin.