{"id":302586,"date":"2015-09-29T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-29T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2015\/09\/29\/the-queens-caprice\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:57:30","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:57:30","slug":"the-queens-caprice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2015\/09\/29\/the-queens-caprice\/","title":{"rendered":"The Queen's Caprice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even though the latest from Jean Echenoz is only a thin volume containing seven of what he calls \u201clittle literary objects,\u201d it is packed with surprises. In these pieces, things happen below the surface, sometimes both literally and figuratively. As a result, his characters, as well as his readers, are faced with the unexpected. Sometimes the results are quite humorous, but sometimes they are so fascinating that the reader is not sure what to think. Whatever events take place in a piece, though, the French writer, who won the Prix Goncourt for I\u2019m Gone<\/em> (also available in English from The New Press), always proves himself to be a master of the craft that seems to be enhanced by the sharp clarity brought by translator Linda Coverdale.<\/p>\n

The pieces in The Queen\u2019s Caprice<\/em> are connected by history. That\u2019s not to say that they\u2019re works of historical fiction (although a couple of them come close). For the most part, Echenoz is more interested in showing how we respond to history rather than just recounting it. For example, in \u201cCivil Engineering,\u201d the longest piece in this book, we follow a former civil engineer named Gluck as he travels the world to write about famous bridges. The problem is that he\u2019s only focused on the bridges themselves and not the locations they\u2019re found in. <\/p>\n

\n

He would arrive at a site without ever paying attention to any possible tourist attractions and head straight for his objective. He card-indexed it, photographed it from every angle, examining in detail its setting, the places it joined, the space it spanned; he would cross it in both directions and then leave, and this had been going on for almost three years. His trips to bridges had taken him anywhere there were any and God knows they\u2019re everywhere. . . . Gluck saw them all, having the time and money to do so, now as a collector of bridges the way others collect aquatints or bad luck.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The \u201cbad luck\u201d at the end of that paragraph is no accident, by the way, as Gluck finds himself a witness to a historical event. It\u2019s just one example of how Echenoz uses subtlety to show tension between the past and present.<\/p>\n

\u201cCivil Engineering\u201d is not the only piece that does this. The narrator of \u201cIn Babylon\u201d summarizes Herodotus\u2019s account of his trip to Babylon but also points out problems with it, as if this modern-day person is more knowledgeable about ancient times than the Greek historian who lived during the fifth century. \u201cThree Sandwiches at Le Bourget\u201d presents a nameless narrator who is oblivious to the history surrounding him until he can\u2019t ignore it any longer. In \u201cNitrox,\u201d an underwater submarine that may have been captured by the Nazis during the 1940s becomes the setting for an unusual romantic adventure.<\/p>\n

Some of the pieces also find Echenoz playing with form. For example, the main character in \u201cNelson\u201d is a real-life admiral, Horatio Nelson, who helped defend Britain from its enemies in Europe in the early nineteenth century. Nelson\u2019s goal in this really short piece, though, is to simply enjoy a dinner party without letting his war injuries get in the way. \u201cTwenty Women in the Jardin du Luxembourg, Clockwise\u201d is a list of twenty important women in history and descriptions of how they appear in their portraits. The descriptions don\u2019t really tell us much, as in this example: \u201cSaint Bathilde, Queen of France, holds in her left hand a manuscript entitled Abolitio servitutis<\/em> and grasps the left edge of her mantle with her right hand. Coiffure: two braids pinned up the back. Jewelry: a cross pendant. Expression: determined.\u201d Then there\u2019s the title piece, which is a long, improvised description of a French countryside: \u201cSo the bluff leads into a trough one might qualify as a trench, a canyon, or, more simply, a ravine. Let\u2019s go with ravine.\u201d While reading this piece, one cannot help but wonder, \u201cWho exactly is the queen in the story\u2019s title?\u201d, which is answered in an unexpected way. <\/p>\n

The Queen\u2019s Caprice<\/em> is a book that could be easily finished in a day or two, but one will find greater rewards by reading each of these pieces at least twice. The first time, readers should make sure they familiarize themselves with Coverdale\u2019s notes and perhaps do some additional Internet research. Once they understand the context behind the pieces, they should use the second reading to savor every carefully placed word. That way, readers will have fun trying to find the clues that they may have missed the first time, clues that will bring even greater surprises.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even though the latest from Jean Echenoz is only a thin volume containing seven of what he calls \u201clittle literary objects,\u201d it is packed with surprises. In these pieces, things happen below the surface, sometimes both literally and figuratively. As a result, his characters, as well as his readers, are faced with the unexpected. Sometimes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-302586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302586","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\/166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302586"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":335676,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302586\/revisions\/335676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}