In Small Worlds,<\/i> Warren Motte categorizes Christian Oster as a “minimalist,” placing him in a group with other young French writers such as Jean Echenoz, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Marie Redonnet, and Eric Chevillard, who “exploit the principle of formal economy in their writing.” Each does so it his\/her own way, yet there is something that similar in their approach\u2014a terseness in their writing that tends to put a greater emphasis on the mindset of the characters (especially the protagonist) than on the description of the plot, setting, etc. The Unforeseen<\/i> fits squarely in this tradition, complete with all the typical charms and frustrations.<\/p>\n
The plot of the novel is hardly worth mentioning, but here it is: an unnamed narrator is on a trip with his girlfriend, Laure, to attend a birthday party. On their way, Laure gets sick. (“It is my fault: I always have a cold, they inevitably catch it. Once they have recovered, they always leave me . . . and I am left with my own cold.”) She shacks up in a hotel to recover, and sends the narrator on his way to the birthday party. Unforeseen events ensue, such as attending someone else\u2019s birthday party in a sick, drunken haze. <\/p>\n
What drives this narrative though isn\u2019t the plot points\u2014or the quasi-surprising ending\u2014but the way in which the narrator processes these events. Nothing is ever really thought through, and his selfish nature is both irritating (to the reader and those around him) and his main charm:<\/p>\n
\n“And, anyway, I\u2019m not waiting for anything or anyone,” she told me, “the only thing in you that holds me, the only thing with you that holds me, well, the only thing in me with you that holds me,” she clarified, “that gets me hooked, I mean, that makes me feel good, if you like, is your selfishness, and I can\u2019t get involved with your selfishness, I don\u2019t really have the time. I\u2019m sorry.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
How the narrator processes events, how he thinks about the world, is the primary charm of minimalist books like this one. Unfortunately, in contrast to Toussaint’s Television<\/i> or anything by Echenoz, or even Oster’s earlier book A Cleaning Woman,<\/i> this novel falls flat. The narrator is like Larry David without the funny. Or a less neurotic Woody Allen.<\/p>\n
Adriana Hunter’s translation is adequate, but there are some wonky lines that don\u2019t do the book any favors. The translation of a book so dependent on tone and word choice needs to be almost flawless.<\/p>\n
That said, this novel may not be a masterpiece, but it is worth checking out. It\u2019s a nice diversion and a pleasant example of one trend in contemporary French fiction.<\/p>\n
The Unforeseen<\/i>
\nby Christian Oster
\ntranslated from the French by Adriana Hunter
\nOther Press
\n$13.95 (pb), 257 pgs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Small Worlds, Warren Motte categorizes Christian Oster as a “minimalist,” placing him in a group with other young French writers such as Jean Echenoz, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Marie Redonnet, and Eric Chevillard, who “exploit the principle of formal economy in their writing.” Each does so it his\/her own way, yet there is something that similar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[6566,3406,1836,3426,1906,3396],"class_list":["post-256286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-adriana-hunter","tag-christian-oster","tag-cwp","tag-french-literature","tag-other-press","tag-the-unforeseen"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256286"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":362096,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256286\/revisions\/362096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}