Recommend French literature/poetry/philosophy/psychology

[Spaceman Spiff]

I'm in France at the moment and have just discovered a brilliant bookstore with all sorts of great stuff. Basically I want to stock up on stuff before I go back east of the Atlantic.

So recommend me your favorite works (it must be French though). I tend to prefer "weirder" literature - absurdism/twisted tales of unrequited love/desperation and alienation/desolation - things of that ilk. Camus/Dostoevsky/Kafka are among my favorites to give you a better idea (so don't recommend me any Camus). Not as much of a fan of romanticism era lit, but if there's something you implore me to check out, I'll consider it.

Also interested in reading some Lacan if anybody can direct me to a good introductory text, that would also be swell.

As for poetry, I quite like Baudelaire, but haven't read any Verlaine or Rimbaud, so I'll probably pick up a copy of each.

Just picked up Les Gommes (Robbe-Grillet), Exercises de Style (Queneau), Les Fleurs du Mal (Baudelaire) and Un homme qui dort (Perec) to give you further idea of what I like.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Can't say much beyond Baudelaire, but as far as Lacan goes, I've read "The Mirror-Stage as Formative of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience" and it was quite interesting. I believe that's from early in his career. Whether it's a good intro to his works, I can't say.

[EvilShoe]

You might like Michel Houellebecq. The Elementary Particles is quite good.

[Melville]

Non-Camus and -Baudelaire recommendations:

Novels

My favorites:

Jacques the Fatalist and His Master by Diderot
Nausea by Sartre - existential phenomenology in narrative form. Thoughts of crab and lobster. Brilliant.
Swann's Way by Proust - the viscous textures of phenomenal and temporal experience. Also a great story of unrequited love.
Madame Bovary by Flaubert - Quixotic romance versus rationalism
Numerous books by Marguerite Duras: Summer Rain; Blue Eyes, Black Hair; The Lover; The Ravishing of Lol Stein

Of those, only Nausea matches the kind of book you're looking for, and you've probably read it already


Both great, and maybe somewhat more like what you're after (though what you're after seems very non-French):

Story of the Eye by Bataille - perversity, ecstasy, and death. Good stuff.
The Immoralist - guy yearns for, and luxuriates in, life while his wife withers. Gold.


These all have a distinctly French wispiness to them, but I liked them a lot:

Le Grand Meaulnes by Henri Alain-Fournier
Nadja by Breton (author of The Surrealist Manifesto), though I seem to be the only person who likes it
The Holy Terrors by Cocteau (the filmmaker)


Philosophy

Being & Nothingness by Sartre, though it's more tome-like than you'd be interested in, I think. Maybe there's a shorter book collecting the best bits. I haven't really cared for his shorter essays.

Although I've read little by Marion, that little was formative reading for me.

Of Grammatology by Derrida is definitely worth reading. As is Phenomenology of Perception by Merleau-Ponty. Both fairly tome-like, though you can probably read just the first part of the Derrida.


Plays

The Misanthrope by Moliere - all he really wants is to be with his beloved hussy, but she's too much of a hussy


Poetry

For Rimbaud, I'd recommend A Season in Hell over all his other stuff, though presumably it's very different in the original language. Also, my enjoyment of the poetry rested on the personal letters, which are definitely worth reading.

Maldorer by Lautreamont. Full of moral weariness, bile, and perversion. I didn't like it, as it all felt very forced to me, but it might be worth a try.

[Spaceman Spiff]

Cheers all

Melville: I've actually already read Nausea (and bits and pieces of Being and Nothingness) and didn't like it. I'm not a fan of Sartre's style of writing which was more concerned with over-flowering of words/sentences/ideas and obfuscation than clarifying his original concepts and moving on. He's just one of those too "writerly" guys who needs 50 pages to explain something that only really needs 10 and stuff like that is nearly always either beyond me or necessitates more willpower than I have, even if I find his ideas quite interesting (through wikipedia - heh)

Flaubert is exactly the type that I feel that I wouldn't be very interested in - turn of the century Europe, flanerie (don't know how to translate this), basically realism instead of "what is going on here"-ism, but I know you're an unabashed fanboy so if I can find a cheap used copy I might pick it up. Same thing sort of goes for Duras and Swann's way, but the Proust seems slightly more up my alley. No way I'll tackle the entire Search for Lost Time though.

The Bataille and Gide sound definitely more like my sort of thing. Actually, they are very French in that there is a tremendous amount of introspectively creepy and existential malaise in French literature, but it's not as celebrated as their medieval epics like Lancelot du Lac, Garguanta et Pantagruel or their turn of the century flowery prose stuff like Flaubert, de Maupassant, which I'm less interested in. Check out those books I mentioned in the first post. I think you would really like Perec and Robbe-Grillet in particular. They are both weirdos who love fucking around with you while you're reading their works.

Dunno much about Derrida, but I think I am more interested in the self, and philosophical inquiries on the nature of our minds and perception rather than something quite impersonal and less-material than the nature of writing (which is what I gather the Derrida is about?) This is why I asked for Lacan - one of my best professors was a huge fan and his work sounds more interesting to me. I think I would have a lot of trouble understanding what Derrida is talking about if I couldn't relate it directly to my own experiences.

Read the Misanthrope. It's quite funny. You should check out Ionesco if you ever get the chance. Rhinoceros is brilliantly nonsensical and allegorical all at the same time.

Noted on the Rimbaud. It's a great title in any case.

I might also pick up a Tardi comic but they are crazy expensive here. I know that Fantagraphics has recently released an english translation of Fucking war, which is typical Tardi in the trenches of WWI overseeing the chaos and mayhem - a huge orgy of destruction for an extra 10 metres of land - if you never got around to reading It was the war in the Trenches, then that might be a good starting place.. Might get one of the Manchette adaptations (his film noir stuff) with whatever pocket change I have though.

[Spaceman Spiff]

Forgot about Houllebecq. I've wanted to read him for a while. Has anyone read any Cendrars? I thought Moravaigne had a great concept but was slightly bored by it.

[Lucky]

I'm not going to even pretend to be knowledgeable in this area, but I will take this time to recommend Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Laclos.

[Qrazy]

Cheers all

Melville: I've actually already read Nausea (and bits and pieces of Being and Nothingness) and didn't like it. I'm not a fan of Sartre's style of writing which was more concerned with over-flowering of words/sentences/ideas and obfuscation than clarifying his original concepts and moving on. He's just one of those too "writerly" guys who needs 50 pages to explain something that only really needs 10 and stuff like that is nearly always either beyond me or necessitates more willpower than I have, even if I find his ideas quite interesting (through wikipedia - heh)


Read his plays. He strips his writing down. No Exit is the most famous but I prefer The Flies and Dirty Hands.

[kuehnepips]

... I've actually already read Nausea (and bits and pieces of Being and Nothingness) and didn't like it...

Drop dead asshole.

[Qrazy]

Drop dead asshole.

Someone's been hitting the bottle! :lol: