What do you think?
Rate this book
Between Life and Death
novel, tr Maria Jolas
183 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1973
3 people are currently reading
107 people want to read
About the author
Nathalie Sarraute
76 books231 followersNathalie Sarraute (July 18, 1900 in Ivanovo, Russia – October 19, 1999 in Paris, France) was a lawyer and a French writer of Russian-Jewish origin.
Sarraute was born Natalia/Natacha Tcherniak in Ivanovo (then known as Ivanovo-Voznesensk), 300 km north-east of Moscow in 1900 (although she frequently referred to the year of her birth as 1902, a date still cited in select reference works), and, following the divorce of her parents, spent her childhood shuttled between France and Russia. In 1909 she moved to Paris with her father. Sarraute studied law and literature at the prestigious Sorbonne, having a particular fondness for 20th century literature and the works of Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf, who greatly affected her conception of the novel, then later studied history at Oxford and sociology in Berlin, before passing the French bar exam (1926-1941) and becoming a lawyer.
In 1925, she married Raymond Sarraute, a fellow lawyer, with whom she would have three daughters. In 1932 she wrote her first book, Tropismes, a series of brief sketches and memories that set the tone for her entire oeuvre. The novel was first published in 1939, although the impact of World War II stunted its popularity. In 1941, Sarraute, who was Jewish, was released from her work as a lawyer as a result of Nazi law. During this time, she went into hiding and made arrangements to divorce her husband in an effort to protect him (although they would eventually stay together).
Nathalie Sarraute dies when she was ninety-nine years old. Her daughter, the journalist Claude Sarraute, was married to French Academician Jean-François Revel.
From Wikipedia
Sarraute was born Natalia/Natacha Tcherniak in Ivanovo (then known as Ivanovo-Voznesensk), 300 km north-east of Moscow in 1900 (although she frequently referred to the year of her birth as 1902, a date still cited in select reference works), and, following the divorce of her parents, spent her childhood shuttled between France and Russia. In 1909 she moved to Paris with her father. Sarraute studied law and literature at the prestigious Sorbonne, having a particular fondness for 20th century literature and the works of Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf, who greatly affected her conception of the novel, then later studied history at Oxford and sociology in Berlin, before passing the French bar exam (1926-1941) and becoming a lawyer.
In 1925, she married Raymond Sarraute, a fellow lawyer, with whom she would have three daughters. In 1932 she wrote her first book, Tropismes, a series of brief sketches and memories that set the tone for her entire oeuvre. The novel was first published in 1939, although the impact of World War II stunted its popularity. In 1941, Sarraute, who was Jewish, was released from her work as a lawyer as a result of Nazi law. During this time, she went into hiding and made arrangements to divorce her husband in an effort to protect him (although they would eventually stay together).
Nathalie Sarraute dies when she was ninety-nine years old. Her daughter, the journalist Claude Sarraute, was married to French Academician Jean-François Revel.
From Wikipedia
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 14, 2020
Although, judging from the reviews here and my general experience of other readers mentioning or discussing Sarraute as a writer, this is a lesser-read entry in her oeuvres, I've always felt that, besides the legendary Tropisms this was her most successful and accessible novel. It's true that it's about a writer and writing, so perhaps it's susceptible to the "mental masturbation" accusation, but I rather think that novelists are generally better when they write closer to their own experience, and since writers do spend a whole lot of time thinking about the inspiration, act, and effects of writing on their lives, I appreciate a great writer taking the time to tackle the subject in the form of a fiction.
As always with Sarraute's novels, the pretexts are, in a way, slight, the whole beauty being in the way she presents the material. Since the narrative here is perhaps a bit easier to follow than in her other works--which are often about even more subtle and seemingly inconsequential matters--I was able to relish and meditate more on her techniques while reading this one. The post its and notes I've written in my edition reminded me that I've even assigned this in a class once and taught it to university students (in a class on the anti-novel).
I guess the main way that Sarraute's writing is unique is that she eschews the novelistic tradition of creating specific, recognizable characters and so often falls back on he/she without the concrete descriptions and names that give characters solidity and reality, and even often goes even more vague with they, us, and thems. While partially disconcerting, no doubt, to readers who expect specific verisimilar characters with names, these vaguaries allow her to focus in on the subtle effects of human interaction almost in a vacuum. That is to say she shifts the focus from specific characters and onto the interactions themselves. The technique reminds me a bit of Marinetti, the Italian Futurist's advice to use verbs always in the infinitive, to capture the purity of an action and taking the focus away from the actor or acted upon. Thus the writer character remains vague and faceless here, but the processes or becoming a writer, writing, publication, criticism, and becoming known as a writer are so perfectly minutely shown that, as a writer myself, I couldn't have loved it more. It might be my all-time favorite book about writing for that exact reason.
As always with Sarraute's novels, the pretexts are, in a way, slight, the whole beauty being in the way she presents the material. Since the narrative here is perhaps a bit easier to follow than in her other works--which are often about even more subtle and seemingly inconsequential matters--I was able to relish and meditate more on her techniques while reading this one. The post its and notes I've written in my edition reminded me that I've even assigned this in a class once and taught it to university students (in a class on the anti-novel).
I guess the main way that Sarraute's writing is unique is that she eschews the novelistic tradition of creating specific, recognizable characters and so often falls back on he/she without the concrete descriptions and names that give characters solidity and reality, and even often goes even more vague with they, us, and thems. While partially disconcerting, no doubt, to readers who expect specific verisimilar characters with names, these vaguaries allow her to focus in on the subtle effects of human interaction almost in a vacuum. That is to say she shifts the focus from specific characters and onto the interactions themselves. The technique reminds me a bit of Marinetti, the Italian Futurist's advice to use verbs always in the infinitive, to capture the purity of an action and taking the focus away from the actor or acted upon. Thus the writer character remains vague and faceless here, but the processes or becoming a writer, writing, publication, criticism, and becoming known as a writer are so perfectly minutely shown that, as a writer myself, I couldn't have loved it more. It might be my all-time favorite book about writing for that exact reason.
July 6, 2022
A fabulous book, basically a close dissection of the frailties, the thoughts, and the successes and failures of a writer as he publishes his first major book (from the narrative, it seems that he’s known as a writer early in the book, and perhaps has even published a bit, but many people believe that he really hasn’t done much, written much, or lived up to his potential). Sarraute’s narrative style would have been quite experimental at the time, although many writers (Beckett, Proust, Celine, etc) have used some sort of identifiable variation of it… given how the vast majority of the (at least American) literature that’s published even today doesn’t come close to getting to the sublevel of psychological analysis that this book does, it still does strike one as very experimental, and like many books of this nature, I’d like to one day attain enough of a facility in French to read it in its original language.
Like Proust, Sarraute enjambs entire conversations into single paragraphs, in her case using em dashes to indicate toggling between speakers and quotes to indicate in a paragraph that a conversation is occurring. From p52, in a passage where the protagonist (who actually functions through most of the novel as the “object” rather than the subject, with people commenting on him or to him rather than him being the initiator of conversation and feeling… his feelings are then rendered in prose after the exchanges), early on, is describing the feeling of words to his family:
The people around him are becoming impatient… “What’s it all about, anyway? It’s annoying, all this mystery. What words? Tell us…—Oh no, why give examples? That will only confuse matters… make everything foggy… Each person reacts differently. Each one of us undoubtedly has his own little stock of words. You have some just as I have. They are perhaps not the same. But that’s unimportant. What I want to say to you is simply that they have something about them, these words do, that is very special…”
Sarraute closely focuses in the early part of the work on the meaning of individual words to the protagonist, and close attention to words and their connotations is shown to be the core of how a writer conveys… not meaning, so much, but more the interior world (it’s not clear to me that a word such as “meaning,” fraught as it is with how humans project themselves onto things that, objectively, don’t have the significance of their projections, would make it through the rigorous analysis of language that Sarraute advocates for through this character). Again, one of the more striking passages related to this obsession is the viewing of the narrator as “the object,” or “the other,” this time as a child, implying that the desire to be a writer has some sort of archetypal or innate quality to it. “Words… He repeats words to himself. He plays with words… and yet nobody ever says a thing to push him, we make a point of not encouraging him, those things much come naturally, and children are so smart, they sense perfectly the admiration of adults, they are such play-actors… I knew he had lots of imagination, already his school compositions were well expressed, but you’re right… all children… I knew that didn’t mean a thing, I used to see his lips moving, he talks to himself for hours… I thought that he was telling himself stories…” (p24). Later, as an adult, he can speak for himself (p78) on the nature of words: “Words, if they’re of good quality, will make other, much better ones, follow. You may be assured, you’ll not lose by it… Why are you smiling?—Oh nothing, I was just thinking of a story…”; and, then, “…the words have more brilliance, other rarer, more exquisite ones keep coming, the play of their nuances, of their shimmerings, is more subtle, their melody is more accomplished, its volume keep growing, as though it were produced by a concert of instruments…” (p65)
The structure of the novel then, is something to the effect of this: we learn of the narrator’s exactness with words while the novels sets the terms of his relations with his family, his partner, his audience; then, we turn to what it means to exactly observe and capture something, and how to sustain interest in it; finally, he succeeds with a book and we witness the resentment of the writer, his quirks, his personalities, and his insecure nature (which, as a writer, can never be eradicated, as one can never really leave something completely alone). The most powerful self-realizations of the book come when the novelist, now having been published, is reversed in the novel’s scheme of subject-object relationship… he finally becomes the subject rather than the one commented upon, and he feels the insecurity of the position in his life in the narrative (that is, as a now-successful novelist). The fact is, success brings a certain sort of ennui, worry, and numbness to his surroundings. Other factors have invaded the earlier relative emotional calm (even if he has always been in a turbulent state about the nature of his work):
“Everything about him, it’s true, had recently become somewhat inert… he has let himself be invaded by a sort of numbness… an anguished torpor… the kind that certain places include… luxurious ocean liners, big hotels, nursing-homes, expensive private hospitals… in which everything is downy, noiseless, tapestried, upholstered, muffled, veiled, screened, silky […] suddenly, in the warm, gleaming enameled bathroom, where he was relaxing, soaking away, getting limper, weaker every moment […] a little window had opened […] rising from a little back street, from an inside courtyard, familiar odors, sounds… whiffs of damp linen, garbage… a sort of muffled tumult of quarrels, insults, shouts, blows, laughter, singing… in which everything is in movement, swarming, it spreads out, lets itself go, disordered, formless, impure, innocent…” (p163)
Like Proust, Sarraute enjambs entire conversations into single paragraphs, in her case using em dashes to indicate toggling between speakers and quotes to indicate in a paragraph that a conversation is occurring. From p52, in a passage where the protagonist (who actually functions through most of the novel as the “object” rather than the subject, with people commenting on him or to him rather than him being the initiator of conversation and feeling… his feelings are then rendered in prose after the exchanges), early on, is describing the feeling of words to his family:
The people around him are becoming impatient… “What’s it all about, anyway? It’s annoying, all this mystery. What words? Tell us…—Oh no, why give examples? That will only confuse matters… make everything foggy… Each person reacts differently. Each one of us undoubtedly has his own little stock of words. You have some just as I have. They are perhaps not the same. But that’s unimportant. What I want to say to you is simply that they have something about them, these words do, that is very special…”
Sarraute closely focuses in the early part of the work on the meaning of individual words to the protagonist, and close attention to words and their connotations is shown to be the core of how a writer conveys… not meaning, so much, but more the interior world (it’s not clear to me that a word such as “meaning,” fraught as it is with how humans project themselves onto things that, objectively, don’t have the significance of their projections, would make it through the rigorous analysis of language that Sarraute advocates for through this character). Again, one of the more striking passages related to this obsession is the viewing of the narrator as “the object,” or “the other,” this time as a child, implying that the desire to be a writer has some sort of archetypal or innate quality to it. “Words… He repeats words to himself. He plays with words… and yet nobody ever says a thing to push him, we make a point of not encouraging him, those things much come naturally, and children are so smart, they sense perfectly the admiration of adults, they are such play-actors… I knew he had lots of imagination, already his school compositions were well expressed, but you’re right… all children… I knew that didn’t mean a thing, I used to see his lips moving, he talks to himself for hours… I thought that he was telling himself stories…” (p24). Later, as an adult, he can speak for himself (p78) on the nature of words: “Words, if they’re of good quality, will make other, much better ones, follow. You may be assured, you’ll not lose by it… Why are you smiling?—Oh nothing, I was just thinking of a story…”; and, then, “…the words have more brilliance, other rarer, more exquisite ones keep coming, the play of their nuances, of their shimmerings, is more subtle, their melody is more accomplished, its volume keep growing, as though it were produced by a concert of instruments…” (p65)
The structure of the novel then, is something to the effect of this: we learn of the narrator’s exactness with words while the novels sets the terms of his relations with his family, his partner, his audience; then, we turn to what it means to exactly observe and capture something, and how to sustain interest in it; finally, he succeeds with a book and we witness the resentment of the writer, his quirks, his personalities, and his insecure nature (which, as a writer, can never be eradicated, as one can never really leave something completely alone). The most powerful self-realizations of the book come when the novelist, now having been published, is reversed in the novel’s scheme of subject-object relationship… he finally becomes the subject rather than the one commented upon, and he feels the insecurity of the position in his life in the narrative (that is, as a now-successful novelist). The fact is, success brings a certain sort of ennui, worry, and numbness to his surroundings. Other factors have invaded the earlier relative emotional calm (even if he has always been in a turbulent state about the nature of his work):
“Everything about him, it’s true, had recently become somewhat inert… he has let himself be invaded by a sort of numbness… an anguished torpor… the kind that certain places include… luxurious ocean liners, big hotels, nursing-homes, expensive private hospitals… in which everything is downy, noiseless, tapestried, upholstered, muffled, veiled, screened, silky […] suddenly, in the warm, gleaming enameled bathroom, where he was relaxing, soaking away, getting limper, weaker every moment […] a little window had opened […] rising from a little back street, from an inside courtyard, familiar odors, sounds… whiffs of damp linen, garbage… a sort of muffled tumult of quarrels, insults, shouts, blows, laughter, singing… in which everything is in movement, swarming, it spreads out, lets itself go, disordered, formless, impure, innocent…” (p163)
June 25, 2024
A real hoot for someone who speaks French as a second language
Read
June 30, 2011Let's talk about beauty.
Between Life and Death is beautifully written, there is no doubt about that. In page after page of rapturous stream of consciousness, Sarraute examines the thoughts that enters your head as you write.
But I learned, after attempting to read Proust, that I can only take so much concentrated beauty. It gets old, it wears you down. There needs to be something else.
I read Sarraute's The Golden Fruits in college. It was far more lovable. Not only was the writing beautiful, but Sarraute worked within this very funny conceit, and I had a blast reading it. Between Life and Death, not so much.
I guess no one reads this anymore. I feel a little sad about that. It probably deserves someone's time and energy. Just not mine.
Between Life and Death is beautifully written, there is no doubt about that. In page after page of rapturous stream of consciousness, Sarraute examines the thoughts that enters your head as you write.
But I learned, after attempting to read Proust, that I can only take so much concentrated beauty. It gets old, it wears you down. There needs to be something else.
I read Sarraute's The Golden Fruits in college. It was far more lovable. Not only was the writing beautiful, but Sarraute worked within this very funny conceit, and I had a blast reading it. Between Life and Death, not so much.
I guess no one reads this anymore. I feel a little sad about that. It probably deserves someone's time and energy. Just not mine.
July 2, 2009
Je ne comprends pas (et je ne veux pas comprendre) l'idée d'écrire un roman si difficile. Je préfére un livre avec une intrigue et des personnages claires. Les nouvels romans sont pour plusieurs, mais pas pour moi.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews