Description
Book SynopsisExamining key novels by Michel Houellebecq, Frédéric Beigbeder, Aurélien Bellanger, Yann Moix, and other French writers, Christy Wampole identifies and critiques an emergent tendency toward “degenerative realism.”
Trade ReviewNot just a brilliant study of reactionary hysteria in contemporary French fiction, Christy Wampole’s book has powerful insights into the world at large—a world that her writers see as slipping out of their control but that is shaped by their desperate need to assert rhetorical authority over it. An indispensable guide to our current toxic landscape. -- Joseph Litvak, author of
The Un-Americans: Jews, the Blacklist, and Stoolpigeon CultureThis book is timely in its intervention, and it offers a bracing portrait of the new degenerative realists. Wampole makes a persuasive case for the coherence and significance of this reactionary literary tendency. -- Lee Konstantinou, University of Maryland
One of the smartest books I’ve had the pleasure to read in recent years. Compelling, stimulating, far-reaching, and indispensable.
Degenerative Realism is a rich, illuminating concept, plugged into the French national psyche while capturing the zeitgeist of our globalized economy, and full of potentialities for related fields. A must-read in a world caught between alternative facts and dire predictions. -- Philippe Met, University of Pennsylvania
In the wake of the cultural and economic crises that hit France through the era of post-truth and social media, contemporary French literature invented a new form of realism, which Wampole calls “degenerative realism.” A challenging, stimulating book on a controversial literary trend. -- Alexandre Gefen, CNRS-Université Paris Sorbonne
Degenerative Realism is a thought-provoking and valuable piece of work. -- Gerald Prince * The French Review *
[This book] marks a decisive, important theorization of a crucial–and deeply troubling–turn in contemporary French realism . . . Wampole’s study will doubtless provide the benchmark for further developments in the studies of the works and trends discussed under the auspices of ‘Degenerative Realism.' -- Patrick Lyons * French Forum *
[A] brilliant study . . . Wampole’s knowledge of the theory and context of declinist thought in France is second to none, and her readings in this vein are compelling. -- Douglas Morrey * French Studies *
Wampole’s readings are bold and creative, her prose lively and readable, her insights consistently profound and acute. -- Russell Williams * H-France *
Wampole’s
Degenerative Realism uncomfortably but salutarily draws our attention to the underbelly of the literature of progress that scholars of French studies prefer to read. In carefully teasing out the relations and resonances between our contemporary political landscape and what is transpiring on the literary landscape, Wampole shows how it is degenerative realism, with its dark, mostly unsavory texts, that is best positioned to force us out of our own illusions into examining the fictions that we pass off as realities in our lives. Becoming attuned to degenerative realism cannot help but change the way we read everything else, and in this regard, Wampole has produced a work that is deeply generative. -- Annabel L. Kim * Novel: A Forum on Fiction *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction. What Is Degenerative Realism?
1. Demography and Survival in Twenty-First-Century France
2. Endarkenment from the Minitel to the Internet
3. Real-Time Realism, Part 1: Journalistic Immediacy
4. Real-Time Realism, Part 2:
Le roman post-pamphlétaireConclusion. Novel as Nation: Forms of Parallel Decay
Notes
Bibliography
Index
