Speak / Stop

Lefebvre (Poetics of Work) stages a sparkling dialogue about class, literature, and longing to escape one’s life. The first section, “Speak,” begins with the question, “May I begin?” and finds a chorus of unidentified voices mounting a campaign of delay and redirection against the would-be speaker. Over the course of the chorus’s free association, they riff on such authors as Proust and Flaubert, comparing themselves to the Verdurins, the salon hosts in The Search of Lost Time, and Madame Bovary, whose desperation resonates with their desire to escape their boring lives in the French countryside. The second and final section, “Stop,” can be read as an expression of what the author would say to the chorus of “Speak” were she given the chance. In it, Lefebvre refutes the chorus’s calls for the utility of art and takes aim at Flaubert’s insistence that writers should conceal the scaffolding of their work by including excised passages from “Speak.” She also reveals intriguing points of inspiration for her work in the Oulipo literary movement, which embraces the use of self-imposed constraints in the writing process, and a radio play by Nathalie Sarraute. The audacious self-critique regularly risks ponderousness, but for the most part it pays off. Readers of experimental literature are in for a treat. (Sept.)