- Full Text
- Scholarly Journal
French -- Main courante by Didier Daeninckx
Full text preview
Didier Daeninckx. Main courante. Paris. Verdier. 1994. 137 pages. 78 F.
Didier Daenincku's collection of brief episodes, based on police blotter (main courante) entries, is like a series of miniature murder mysteries, each with a surprise twist at the end. Reported factually in the first or third person in an upbeat, up-to-the-minute jargon, these anecdotes are linked by a resolute cynicism. Some of the stories are chilling, like "La mort en huit chiffres" and "Consigne automatique 548"; others are farcical and amusing, like "Le jeu-mystere" and "Le partage des taches." All involve death and/or murder, whether calculated, accidental, perverse, or a case of mistaken identity. The protagonist with whom the reader is meant to identify is usually a victim: of racism, sexism, or some other form of bestiality. Occasionally he is a brute himself, like the narrator of "Confidences," who kills his psychoanalyst after recounting the shameful story of murdering his own father.
Most of these stories are in themselves too slight to warrant more than a passing frisson. It is their relentless accumulation that stirs the reader to uneasy recognition of the horror hiding behind mundane reality. On another level, the book can be read as indicting a society which accommodates ready and random violence. The antiphonal juxtaposition in "Les versets etatiques" of polyanna public statements by Francois Mitterand (1977-88) with a series of ghoulish faits-divers (murders and suicides) serves to reinforce this interpretation. By extending the locus from France to Africa and even to outer space, Daeninckx presents violence and betrayal as global phenomena.
Gretchen Rous Besser New School for Social Research